2.10 Criminological Schools and Their Theories

Each criminological school of theory produced its own renowned historical figures. They also produced their fair share of foundational theories that attempted to answer the questions of criminality: the who, what, when, where, how, and why of criminal behavior. This section will discuss some of those theories, but keep in mind that there are many more out there.

2.10.1 The Classical Theories

We begin with Thomas Hobbes. Remember he developed the concept of social contract, which theorized that humans were rational and had the capacity to consider the consequences of their actions. Social contract thinkers believed people would be willing to invest in laws if they believed those laws were created by the government to protect them (Fedorek, 2019). Social contract thinkers would also be willing to give up some of their own self-interests as long as everyone else did the same.

Building on Hobbes and other social contract thinkers at the time, humans were assumed to have free will. We can choose one action over another based on perceived benefits and possible consequences. Moreover, human beings are hedonistic. Hedonism is the assumption that people will seek maximum pleasure and avoid pain (punishment). Consequently, if we grant the assumptions of classical theory, we can hold people 100% responsible for their actions because it was a choice. These assumptions have been the basis for the American criminal justice system since its inception. Although theories may have changed the landscape of understanding criminal behavior and may have changed the philosophies of punishments over time, the criminal justice system has maintained the assumption that crime is a choice. Hence, we can hold offenders 100% responsible for their actions (Fedorek, 2019).

Cesare Beccaria was disgusted with how the courts treated the accused. He wanted the courts to apply a more fair and equal treatment to the convicted instead of the cruel and harsh sentencing practices of the time. This is where his concept of proportionality comes in – the punishment must fit the crime committed. Judges were the seat of power during the time of Beccaria, and many laws were made based on the decisions of those judges. Beccaria sought to change all of that, but the Catholic Church refused (Fedorek, 2019). He claimed the sole purpose of the law was to deter people from committing the crime. Deterrence can be accomplished if the punishment is certain, swift, and severe. These ideas may seem like common sense today, but they were considered radical at the time. Beccaria’s works would later influence many future criminologists in their development of theories such as Deterrence Theory and Rational Choice Theory.

2.10.2 Positivist Theories

Cesare Lombroso said that he could tell who a criminal was just by taking body measurements. Charles Darwin theorized that some humans were evolutionary throwbacks to lesser developed humans. There were even Biological Positivists who claimed that physical features were also a prediction of intelligence. A few decades after Lombroso’s theory, Charles Goring took Lombroso’s ideas about physical differences and added mental deficiencies too. In his book The English Convict (1913), Goring argued that physical abnormalities were also evidence of mental degradations and subject to scientific experimentation for proof (Goring, 1913). The focus on mental qualities led to a new kind of biological positivism – the Intelligence Era.

Alfred Binet – the inventor of the IQ test – advocated for the idea of intelligence as a fluid mechanic. His argument was that human intelligence was not static and that we could gain and lose intelligence as we got older and more experienced. Binet wanted to evaluate school-aged youths to determined who was intellectually competent and who was not. Unfortunately, H. H. Goddard, an American psychologist, disagreed and believed that intelligence was fixed and could not change. Goddard performed IQ tests on students and used the results to categorize them based on their perceived “intelligence.” Subsequently, those who underperformed were institutionalized, deported, or sterilized (Fedorek, 2019). Goddard’s work on intellectual sterilization would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell (1927), which allowed for the continuation of a Virginia state law for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions to promote the health and safety of the patient and the welfare of society (Buck v. Bell 274 US 200 [1927], 2023).

Even after Lombroso, Goring, and Goddard, research into intelligence revealed that it was still as critical to criminality as race and social class in predicting behavior (Hirschi & Hindelang, 1977). This is because we measure and perceive intelligence based on our own perceptions and assumptions. How do we really measure intelligence? Is it general academic knowledge? Is someone “gifted” merely because they are academically so, or are there other considerations that could define the term? Is intelligence inherited? If a couple are having children and they are not mentally incapacitated, what does that mean for their children? What about the opposite? Does a mentally incapacitated individual mean that his/her offspring will be mentally deficient as well? There are also other questions, including those involving environmental influences on intelligence and cultural influences (Fedorek, 2019). Remember, Criminologists try to answer as many questions as possible.

That takes us then to criminal personalities. How do we explain sociopaths and psychopaths? In the section on Positivists, the Gluecks researched adolescent youths to determine if there was a relationship between personality types and criminal behavior. Their Individual Trait Theory pointed out that criminals differ from non-criminals on a number of biological and psychological traits. These traits cause crime in interaction with the social environment. But having the personality traits that are linked to criminal behavior does not necessarily mean that one is going to become a criminal. What is important is how many of these personality traits are present in a person (Fedorek, 2019). You could be sitting next to someone in your classroom who possesses some of the same personality characteristics of a sociopath and you would never know, or you may have them and not know it.

The point is biology and psychology do play a role in how we interact with our environment and how we react to the laws that attempt to regulate behavior. Our environment also influences our behavior both psychologically and biologically. It is all an extremely complex process that is very difficult to understand.

2.10.3 The Chicago Theories

The Chicago School of Criminology is still highly influential in the field of Criminology almost 100 years after its introduction. When it started in the 1920s, it relied on the foundations of Classical and Positivist theories and expanded on them to take criminological theoretical development to a new level. Burgess, Parks, and McKenzie had postulated on the urban dynamic as a living organism and the environment it produced being ripe for criminal behavior based on Burgess’s “Concentric Zone Model” (see Figure 2.8). As discussed in an earlier section, that model stated that criminal behavior was more likely within a “Zone of Transition” between the areas where people lived and worked.

Shaw and McKay, who were students of Park, discovered that within the zones of transition, there were properties that made them more likely to have higher rates of crime based on certain criteria. Their Social Disorganization Theory stated that crime in communities were caused because informal social controls break down and criminal cultures emerged. They lack collective efficacy to fight crime and disorder. What does all of this mean? Informal social controls are those rules within a community that are unspoken: community pressures, neighborhood watches, religious groups, etc. These are the norms and values of a community that go beyond normal laws of a city/state/country. If a community does not do a good job of policing itself outside of the established laws, then it will have a higher risk of a criminal element and therefore a higher chance of criminality within its population. Collective Efficacy is the ability of that community to control the behavior of its population. If a community has low collective efficacy, then groups will splinter off that could potentially rebel against the majority and increase the risk of deviance within the community. Juveniles are especially susceptible to this type of activity as they will undoubtedly break off from the main group and form their own subcultural groups.

Once a criminal subculture is established within a community, it will attract like-minded individuals, and criminal behavior will increase within that community. This is the presumption of the Differential Association Theory, first theorized by Edwin Sutherland, another Chicago School Positivist. Sutherland theorized that criminal behavior would become chronic and repeated if it was reinforced through interactions with antisocial subcultures. To put it more simply, criminal behavior was a learned activity from interactions with individuals who had motives and directions that were conducive to criminal deviance. Much like we try to find groups that are akin to our likes and hobbies, the same can be said for those who are more closely relatable due to those types of deviant behaviors as well. If you were to take a few minutes and think about all the subgroups in your school, you could certainly categorize individuals into specific groups: Jocks, Preps, Goths, Emos, Geeks/Nerds, Wannabes, Druggies, etc. The same can be said for the criminal subcultural groups who are differential to the main group and are more prone to breaking the rules set forth by the norm, like the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, Yakuza, and the Triads, to name a few.

2.10.4 The Neoclassical Theories

This is where criminological theory really began to take off. The Classical, Positivist, and Chicago Schools laid down some great foundational works, and the Neoclassical theorists took off and ran with it. While the Classical theorists saw crime as a matter of the pursuit of self-interest in the absence of punishment, Positivists viewed crime as an adaptation of biological evolutions that could be measured through scientific experimentation. Chicagoists theorized crime as a manifestation of environmental influences, and the Neoclassical School argued that criminal behavior was specifically generated based on certain criteria and that at any given time, if the circumstances were right, crime would be highly indicative of that situation.

Taking Beccaria’s formulation of criminal behavior as a risk/reward action, Cornish and Clarke theorized that criminality was indeed a rational choice. Crime was seen as a choice that was influenced by its costs and benefits and was more likely to be deterred if its costs were raised. Information about the costs and benefits of crime could be obtained by direct experiences with punishment and avoidance, and indirectly by observing others who offended. Through years of observation and experimentation, it was later concluded that while criminal behavior could be considered a rational choice, most deviant behavior was situational and the perceptions of the risk of violation of the law failed to influence a person’s decision-making process but not their perception of the opportunity of the reward for the outcome of the criminal act (Piliavin, Gartner, Thornton, & Matsueda, 1986).

Remember, the Neoclassical School theorists decided to use the threat of punishment as a deterrent to crime rather than as a means to an end to crime. If a threat of punishment was severe enough to keep a crime from being committed, then a “rational” individual could theoretically make the choice to not commit that specific crime for fear of receiving a punishment that would not be in his/her/their “best interest.” But that raises another question: “What is an appropriately proportionate punishment for a specific crime that would influence a rational person to not want to commit it?”

Which then takes us into the Human Ecology portion of the Neoclassical Theories. If you recall, Human Ecology is the study of how the environment influences human behavior. It was first introduced to criminological theory by the Chicago School and later adapted by Felson and Cohen into their Routine Activity Theory, which states that changes in daily routines can affect crime rates. Think about what that means: as our technology has evolved and we have become more dependent on services to complete everyday tasks—banks, grocery stores, gas stations, clothing outlets, etc.—and as we as a society have begun to venture out into the great wide expanse of our world, we have also given ourselves up to the opportunity of unknowingly becoming the victims of crime. Our daily routines have increased our likelihood of being victims of such crimes as Armed Robbery, Carjacking, Purse Snatching, Kidnapping, Bank Robberies, Theft, Muggings, Assaults, and even Murder (Felson & Cohen, 1980). Our dependence on being out and about and our need for social interaction has also made us more prone to criminal activity to the point that more resources are being allocated to the public sector to try and ensure our safety now more than ever.

2.10.5 The Contemporary Theories

As we continue to build through the history of criminological theory development, we arrive at the Contemporary Section. The beauty of this particular part is that the theorists have the advantage of all of their forefathers’ works to guide them in their deliberations. Couple that with advancements in medical/biological sciences, psychological/social sciences, technological advancements in statistical analyses, and historical context that has now spanned multiple centuries, and there is now a recipe ripe with ingredients to build new theories. Within this period, many new and exciting theories of crime causation have been introduced and continue to try and answer the ultimate question: “Why do people commit crime?”

One of the most explosive new theories of crime causation to come out of the Contemporary School came from James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. In 1982, they both published an article that theorized that crime was a byproduct of the physical aesthetics of a community. The more a neighborhood took care of its surroundings—buildings, parks, public spaces, etc.—the less inclined it would be to attract the criminal element (panhandlers, vagrants, thieves, vandals, drunks, and rowdy teenagers). They theorized and observed that the reverse was also true: whenever a community experienced a downturn in its physical appearance, the crime rate increased. This “Broken Windows Theory”—where “serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked” (Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 4)—was adapted from the Social Disorganization Theory of Shaw and McKay and has influences of Differential Association Theory from Sutherland. The main argument for Wilson and Kelling is informal social control –  the ability of a community to regulate its own inhabitants despite formal law enforcement regulations. Recall back to Social Disorganization Theory and the use of these informal social controls: neighborhood watches, church groups, close-knit neighborhoods, and so forth. The strength of a community and its “collective efficacy” in keeping the grass cut, the streets clean, the parks free of litter, the storefronts clean, the street corners free of vagrants, no prostitutes, no panhandlers, no drug use, no gangs, no broken windows—this is the hallmark of a safe neighborhood according to Wilson and Kelling.

Another key Contemporary Theory is Labeling Theory. This theory states that once a person is stigmatized by a label of “criminal,” it is extremely difficult to remove that label from their persona regardless of the measures they take. Labeling Theory has many uses outside of the criminological field. Think about it: How many times have you “labeled” someone based off of a perceived action of that individual? How many times has someone “labeled” you? Are you the embodiment of that label, or are you more than just the description of that label? What would do to remove the label from your perceived description of you as a person? In the world of crime causation, Labeling Theory excludes people from normal social activities simply by means of their previous antisocial behavior. People who become labeled as criminals become hardened in that role and typically will fall deeper into that label to the point where they no longer can identify with any other personality trait other than that of “criminal.” In sociological terms, there are ascribed statuses and achieved statuses, those that are worked towards and those that are given. Labeling Theory can work in the same way.

Contemporary Theories have one major core theme that all the rest fail to take into consideration: gender. Every school of theoretical thought leading up to the Contemporary School have only observed and researched criminal behavior from the male point of view. It wasn’t until the 1970s when Dr. Freda Adler introduced the Feminist Theory of crime causation to the discussion of criminality that Criminology began to think of causation from an entirely new perspective. The Feminist Theory simply states that crime cannot be understood without thinking about the role that women have to play in its causation. Crime is shaped based on varying social experiences between men and women. Focusing solely on the male perspective of the crime experience (patriarchy) completely overshadows the experiences of the female perspective and leaves out the opportunity to understand the role women have in the social framework of deviance. Women are certainly capable of being criminals, however the circumstances that lead them to becoming deviant can be different for them than it is for men. Furthermore, the higher risks of victimization for women must also be taken into consideration when the issue of rehabilitation treatments are being prescribed through the justice system.

Taking the Feminist Theory a step further, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced her theory of Intersectionality, which posited that it was not enough that gender be considered with regards to criminal behavior, but also race and class. Criminal causation was a byproduct of discrimination and disadvantage created by systemic and institutionalized mechanisms meant to propel one dominant group over another. Prejudice, bias, and even racism were driving forces behind much of the causes of criminal behavior in many instances of non-majority groups, according to this theory. Criminologists needed to understand not only what it meant to be non-male, but also what it meant to be part of the non-majority group in order to fully grasp the inconsistency of opportunities in social experiences that could lead to a life of crime, according to the intersection of race, class, and gender.

And finally, the Contemporary School gave Criminologists the ability to take different theories of crime causation and marry them together in order to explain deviant behavior. Dr. Cullen initially developed this Integration Theory – the use of components of other theories to create new ones to explain crime – because trying to generalize behavior into one specific causation model was proving to be problematic. If we looked at a trend of criminal behavior over a long period of time, we could see that one theory could not quantitatively explain that trend completely by itself. However, using Dr. Cullen’s Integration Theory of Crime, criminologists could take multiple theories and use them interchangeably to fully grasp the phenomenon and more thoroughly explain the intricacies of crime causation within that specific occurrence.