Positivist school (criminology)

The positivist school is a discipline of criminology that supports the consideration of criminals' circumstances in studying crime. The positivist school encourages criminologists to understand why people commit crimes and how well they understand their choices when determining their punishments.

The positivist school contrasts sharply with the classical school of criminology. This discipline supports assigning punishments that correspond to crimes, regardless of the criminals' circumstances. Classical criminologists believe that everyone knows right from wrong and that the criminal's choice to violate the law is enough of a reason for punishment.

Cesare Lombroso, who developed the positivist school, believed people were born to be criminals and could be identified by physical characteristics reminiscent of inferior animal species. While the school's attention to criminals' individual situations greatly influenced criminology in the twenty-first century, the biological aspects of the positivist discipline have been mostly rejected as unscientific and racist.

Background

Cesare Lombroso, who lived from 1835 to 1909, was an Italian criminologist and doctor who originated the positivist school. By the early 1870s, Lombroso had become interested in criminology—specifically, what made criminals different from law-abiding individuals. Around this time, an imprisoned thief and arsonist whom Lombroso knew died. Lombroso sought to perform an autopsy on the body to see if the man's anatomy differed in any way from those of non-criminals.

The autopsy revealed that the thief had an impression at the base of his skull. Lombroso believed the mark was also found in lower animals, such as apes and rodents. He wrote afterward that this anatomical difference was a genetic quality passed down from parents to offspring and that it caused criminals to revert to the instincts of prehistoric humans and other animals.

To Lombroso, criminals were anatomically suited to their crimes. He assumed all thieves were skilled with their hands and had wandering eyes. Murderers had emotionless expressions and hawk-like noses. Meanwhile, he presumed female criminals were shorter and had darker hair than non-criminal females. Overall, Lombroso believed all criminals had some identifying marks. Lombroso also associated tattoos with criminality since some Indigenous peoples decorated their skin.

Lombroso later looked for other signs of people's inclinations toward criminality. These included a person's pain threshold and disposition to lying. To this end, Lombroso used a crude lie detector machine that measured test subjects' blood pressure changes when introduced to stimuli such as food, electric shocks, and money.

However, Lombroso was forced to acknowledge that not all criminals actually display the primitive anatomical features that he claimed make them who they are. Some people commit crimes of passion or pure emotion, he argued. Others descend into criminality due to shortcomings in their upbringing. Lombroso theorized, for instance, that people might become criminals because they were mistreated in their youth and were never discouraged from acting badly. This behavior leads them to commit crimes in adulthood.

For all his work in the scientific aspects of crime and criminals, Lombroso became known as a pioneering criminal anthropologist. This is a scientist who studies the physical and mental traits of criminals to understand their crimes. Modern criminology has discarded Lombroso's conclusions regarding a criminal's appearance, for this approach amounts to a type of racial profiling. Simultaneously, Lombroso's insistence on science—particularly the idea that one's environment can inspire criminality—as a method of understanding crime continues to inform criminology in the twenty-first century.

Overview

Lombroso's science-based investigations into criminality form the basis of the criminology discipline known as the positivist school. It is founded on the principle of positivism, or the view that science is the only method by which one should analyze data and form logical conclusions. The positivist school specifically examines the psychology and emotions of criminals in judging crimes. Positivists believe crime to be a form of irrational behavior in which "ordinary" people would not engage. Therefore, people who commit crimes are suffering from some kind of abnormality, either of a biological or psychological origin.

Positivists might view someone's socioeconomic condition—for instance, poverty—as a factor in that person's eventual decision to commit a crime. Positivists refer to these circumstances when assigning blame to criminals. The worse the circumstances are judged to be, the less the criminals themselves are blamed. Punishments for such criminals are consequently lessened.

The positivist school of criminology opposes the classical school. The classical school was developed in Europe in the late eighteenth century. It asserts that, no matter the situation, people always consciously choose to commit crimes and are fully responsible for their actions. Punishments should be the same for the same crimes, and punishments should be proportionate to crimes. The classical school of criminology was conceived in an era when criminals were still being tortured as punishment for crimes. Those of the classical school supported providing criminals with fair judges and trials by jury.

The positivist and classical criminology schools are divided by one main philosophical difference. The positivist school subscribes to determinism, while the classical school asserts that people have free will. Determinism states that human actions are caused by forces outside their will, and they can do nothing to stop these forces. Free will is the ability to choose one action or another without being limited by external factors. The schools, therefore, disagree on the agents ultimately responsible for people committing crimes. Consequently, the types of punishments supported by each school differ based on where this responsibility lies: in outside factors or in pure free will.

People in the more modern era praise and criticize the positivist school. It has given criminology its focus on the influence of the environment on criminals' behavior. It also insists that judicial systems consider, for example, a criminal's mental illness when determining how to punish that criminal.

At the same time, some claim that positivist punishments seek only to rehabilitate criminals rather than punish them and that this does not actually deter others from committing crimes. This is the responsibility of the classical school, which seeks to punish every crime, always, no matter the criminal's particular life situation. Nonetheless, the positivist school continues to be useful, particularly in the area of juvenile delinquency, as troubled youths are generally seen as still capable of being reformed through positivist considerations.

Bibliography

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Burfeind, James, and Dawn Jeglum Bartusch. Juvenile Delinquency: An Integrated Approach. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2016, pp. 20–1.

"The Classical School of Criminology." LawTeacher, 26 Aug. 2021, www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/criminology/the-classical-school-of-criminological.php. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

Cox, Steven M., et al. Juvenile Justice: A Guide to Theory, Policy, and Practice. 6th ed., Sage Publications, 2008, pp. 87–8.

Mazzarello, Paolo. "Cesare Lombroso: An Anthropologist between Evolution and Degeneration." Functional Neurology, vol. 26, no. 2, 2011, p. 97, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3814446. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

“Positivist Criminology and the Positivist School.” MasterClass, 6 Jan. 2023, www.masterclass.com/articles/positivist-criminology. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

Simon, Matt. "Fantastically Wrong: The Scientist Who Seriously Believed Criminals Were Part Ape." Wired, 12 Nov. 2014, www.wired.com/2014/11/fantastically-wrong-criminal-anthropology/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

Walsh, Anthony, and Craig Hemmens. Introduction to Criminology: A Text/Reader. Sage Publications, 2008, p. 76.