Crime and Essentialism

Regarding something as having an innate existence or universal quality that cannot be altered or changed; a rejection of social factors as having an impact of the behavior of human beings and the access people have within a system.

One of the earliest explanations of crime Concerned with the size and shape of the

skull Popular from the mid 1700s to the mid 1800s

Thought that three major regions of the brain govern three types of behavior and personality characteristics:

Intellectual Moral Lower-more prevalent in criminals Because phrenologists could not

directly measure the three brain regions, they reasoned that the size and shape of the skull corresponded to the brain’s size and shape

Founder of the classical school of criminology

Founder of the positivist school

Viewed criminals as “atavist” or throwbacks to an earlier stage of evolution

Criminals were evolutionary accidents who resembled primitive people more than modern people

Evidence came from measurements of the bodies of men in Italian prisons that he compared to his measurements of the bodies of Italiam soldiers

In his book The Female Offender (1895) he wrote that women were more likely than men to be atavists

Thought women had many traits in common with children in that their “moral sense is deficient”

In 1939 published two books that reported the results of his measurement of 14k male prisoners and 3,200 control group subjects

Determined that compared to his control group, prisoners tended to have low foreheads, crooked noses, narrow jaws, small ears, long necks and stooped shoulders

Labeled criminals “organically inferior” and “low grade human organisms”

Hooton recommended that governments could reduce crime by sterilizing criminals or exiling them to reservations

body structure as a predictor of criminality

Somatology-people’s body shapes affect their personalities and the crimes they commit

Endomorphs Mesomorphs ectomorph

*Genetic explanations*Diet and Nutrition*Neurochemical factors*Early Puberty*Pregnancy and Birth Complications