HISTORICAL

THEORIES OF
CRIME
Classical Theory of Crime and Punishment

A precursor to scientific criminology was the rational

thought and economic assumptions of the eighteenth-
century Enlightenment philosophy of CesareBeccaria
(1735–1795) and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).

Under this theory individuals are said to choose to commit

crime based on whether they will derive more pleasure
than pain. Burglars, for example, weigh the pros and cons
of invading someone’s property by taking into
consideration the existence of fences, locks, and guardians;
whether they think they will get caught; and, if they are
caught, whether they will be seriously punished.
Biological Theories of Crime

The idea that crime is freely chosen was challenged by

the early anthropologically and biologically based
formulations of the Italian school of criminologists,
including Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909),
RaffaeleGarofalo (1852– 1934), and Enrico Ferri (1856–
1928), who believed crime was caused, not chosen.
Analyzing convicted criminals and cadavers, these
founding scientific criminologists claimed to show that
crime was caused by biological defects in inferior
“atavistic” individuals who were “throwbacks” from an
earlier evolutionary stage of human development.
Heredity and Constitutional Theory of Crime

The idea that individual bodily differences can

explain crime carried into late-nineteenth-century
United States, with criminal anthropologists such
as Ernest Hooton, who believed in the criminal
man, and constitutional theorist William Sheldon,
who believed crime came from feeble minds and
inferior physical constitutions.
Genetic and Sociobiological Theories of Crime

With the advent of genetics, the biological theory of

crime became more sophisticated, incorporating
biosociology, and more nuanced, recognizing that
biology is not destiny and depends on an
interaction with the environment in a dynamic,
mutually influencing contingent relationship from
which crime is sometimes the behavioral outcome.
In the work of Anthony Walsh and Diana Feinstein,
biology is integrated with other theories of criminal
behavior.
Psychological and Psychoanalytical Theory of
Crime

One early challenge to the founding biological theories

came from the Freudian-influenced psychoanalysis
popular in the early twentieth century. For thinkers
such as Augusta Bronner, the root of crime lay in the
failure of family socialization in a child’s early years,
resulting in a defective personality. Thus, the antisocial
delinquent act of vandalism might be explained by
inadequate parenting leading to a failure to develop
affective ties with others and therefore a lack of respect
for their property.
Personality Theory of Crime

Criminal personality theory sees human personalities

and personality traits developing from interaction with
parents and significant others, which is why these
theories are also seen as a subcategory of trait-based
theory. Some traits produce tendencies or proclivities
toward crime. Hans Eysenck’s (1964) criminal
personality theory, for example, asserted that some
people were less susceptible to conventional
socialization because they were extroverted
personalities. Others saw crime resulting from extreme
personality defects such as psychopathy.
Cognitive Theory of Crime

Cognitive theory superseded both the criminal personality

theory of Hans Eysenck (1964), who asserted that some
people are predisposed to being under-socialized because
they are extroverted personalities—and the criminal
thinking patterns theory of Samuel Yochelson and Stanton
Samenow (1976, 1977), who maintained that people learn
to think antisocially and then become locked into that way
of thinking. While Samenow had moved the somewhat
static personality theory to a more dynamic cognitive
theory, major developments came from Albert Bandura,
who began as a social learning theorist, and Aaron Beck.
Differential Association and Social Learning Theory of
Crime

Traditional psychological learning theory was adapted to

explain crime by some psychologists and some sociologists
producing more of a social-psychological theory of crime as
a learned behavior. These theories emphasized that
humans are not just passively molded by external forces
but are actively involved in shaping their worlds and their
own identities.
that criminal behavior, like any other behavior, is learned.
It is learned in gangs and from peers, who are themselves
already excessively invested in defining crime as acceptable
behavior. Crime is thus a result of a differential association
with criminal learning patterns.
Social Control and Neutralization Theories of Crime

The shift from “faulty mind” theories as a major explanation for

crime was further encouraged by the neutralization theory of
David Matza and Gresham Sykes (1957; 1964) and the social and
self control theories of Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson
(1969; 1990). Neutralization is the idea that although people
may learn to behave conventionally, under certain
circumstances they also learn that immoral behavior is
sometimes acceptable. In this process various excuses and
justifications send people on a “moral holiday” where they drift
between convention and crime, free from moral constraint.
Symbolic Interactionist and Labeling Theory of
Crime

Labeling theory was rooted in the symbolic inter

actionism of George Herbert Mead, whose 1934
work on the idea that people’s minds contain both
an individually generated self-concept known as the
“I” and the internalized concept of themselves
based on their representation of others’ view of
them known as the “generalized other” or the “Me.”
Anomie, Structural and Subcultural Strain
Theory of Crime

By the 1940s and 1950s, a variety of other

sociological theories of criminal behavior emerged
that were tangential to, but informed by, the Social
Ecology and Environmental Theories. For of
anomie theory (which he called strain theory)
placed the cause of crime on the failure of capitalist
society’s education and vocational opportunities to
provide an adequate means for all those whose
aspirations
Feminist Theories of Crime

Feminist thinking challenged both

mainstream and critical criminology by
asking the obvious question about why 80-
90% of crimes were committed by men.
To understand crime, argue feminist
criminologists, it is necessary to understand
why women do not commit serious harms and
why men do
AnarchistTheory

Anarchists challenge the value of all forms of

power hierarchy, whether in corporations,
government, or socialism, believing instead
that decentralized democratic collectives
practicing nonviolent peacemaking
approaches to conflict resolution are the only
way to transcend our self-destructive cycle of
crime and violence
Integrated Theories of Crime

Others were inspired to call for an integrated

critical theory of crime that would lead to
comprehensive policy rather than knee-jerk law
enforcement actions (Barak, 1998). Thus, the final
timeline is of the development of different kinds of
integrated theory, which are theories that draw
together two or more of the other theories. These
began to appear in 1979 and had grown significantly
not least as a result of the work
Thankyou!!!!