Lesson 5: Crime and deviance

L.O. How do we explain criminal and deviant behaviour?

Learning Objective:

• What are the different explanations for crime?

• Learning Skills: Reasoning and making links

What is happening?

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Biological explanation

• Are we born criminals?• Lombroso 1876 believed thatYou could tell if a person was aCriminal by the shape of their head, jaw, forehead and Nose.

What are2 questions you would like to ask Lombroso if he walked

into the room right now…

Lombroso

• Features of a criminal:• Sloping forehead• Long arms• Large ears• Asymmetrical head and face

• If you had these features and liked tattoos then Lombroso said you were a savage primitive man who was born a criminal!

Characteristics of a criminal

Lombroso

• Lombroso studied prisoners in Italian prisons I in 1876.

• He said that criminals were a separate species and did not have any morals.

He distinguished different types of criminals• murderers were said to have:

Cold, glassy, blood-shot eyes, curly, abundant hair, strong jaws, long ears and thin lips • Whilst sex offenders have:

Glinting eyes, strong jaws, thick lips, lots of hair and projecting ears.'

What questions would you like to ask Lombroso

.

A Biological Explanation for criminal behaviour?

• Tony Mobley:his lawyer argued hisgenes meant he was born to kill.

One of you is a defence lawyer one a prosecutor of Tony Mobley: Discuss

this case.

14 care homes.Depression

AnxietyPost traumatic stress.

Sociologists view of criminal behaviour

• How crime and criminals are socially constructed

• Socially constructed: views of what is criminal or deviant behaviour are influenced by the values and norms of the society we live in.

• So… society creates what is criminal and deviant if it goes against the norms and values of that time.

Socially constructed

• Laws can change from culture to culture and time to time.

Before 1967 to be a practising homosexual was illegal.

Psychological explanations

• PMS: what is it?• abdominal Bloating, Cramps, including leg cramps, Swelling of

body parts, hypoglycaemia• Depression, anxiety, Anger , Guilt, Fatigue, Aggressiveness• Intolerance, Irritability, Restlessness, Sugar and Salt Craving,

Increased intake of Alcohol, Hysteria

PMS case study

• Do you think the women mentioned in the case study should have been acquitted (freed) for their crimes?

Yes… because

NO…because

Maternal deprivation

• Research has shown that early childhood deprivation, lack of secure attachment in childhood could also lead to a person developing a criminal personality as they are looking for attention and affection from elsewhere.

• Deprivation: a lack of something

Explanations for criminal and deviant behaviour so far…

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Explain one theory to the person sat

next to you