In order to gain a full understanding of crime and criminal behaviour it is important to place a definition on the term ‘crime’ itself. Criminologists define crime differently in comparison to sociologist, psychologists and even amongst themselves, this is an important factor to note because the term crime covers a diverse range of issues across the border due to the differences in social morality and social norms. For instance (Blackburn 1993, p5) identifies crimes as ‘acts attracting legal punishment (…) Offences against the community’. However Looking at how society i.e. politicians, academics and members of the community view crime, we are able to gain an insight as to how crime and criminal behaviour is defined. This places a great emphasis on the difficulties of having a defined explanation of crime which does not lack uniformity. As a result there is an argument that understanding crime and criminal behaviour experiences some high complexity .The way in which criminologists try to explain crime is through various proposed theories. A theory is a ‘conceptual explanation of the phenomena around us’ and when developed properly can help us formulate an understanding of crime and why it occurs. This information can be made of use when new facts are developed. For example when looking at the relation between child abuse and prostitution (a behaviour that is considered to be criminal) we can identify that a theory behind this would be one that accounts for environmental factors. However theories are not actual facts for why criminal behaviours occur regardless of the fact that they are based on research carried out using different methodologies. Therefore it is of importance to question their validity and reliability. This essay aims to explore these theories in depth and analyse how they have developed over time but importantly it will look at how criminologist have different perspectives on criminal behaviour and how this impacts our understanding of crime. Furthermore the essay will attempt to come to a conclusion as whether or not we can understand or explain crime
Firstly it is essential to have a look at some of the earliest explanations for criminal behaviour in order to gain a full understanding of theories applied to the explanation of crime over time. One of the early explanations of crime was the classical theory which stemmed from the ideology of ‘freewill and rational. It was founded by Cesare Beccaria in the 18th century at a time when demonological approaches in understanding crime began to fade away and the Enlightenment period began to take over, resulting in a major shift in the way people viewed the world. This meant that the view of criminals also changed. Criminologist theorists started focusing on the dignity and worthy of the individual rather than solely focusing on the spiritual and religious explanations of crime. The whole explanation for criminal behaviour now circulated around the idea of freewill impacting rational choices; Freewill can be defined as the ability to act or make a decision in a manner that is voluntary. However the British oxford dictionary defines it as; ‘The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion’. This type of theory according to Edwin H Sutherland was a ‘theory of law making and law enforcement’ because it aimed to provide an explanation as to why we have laws and why the criminal justice system operates the way in which it does. Individuals such as Cesare Beccaria believed freewill was the core explanation for criminal behaviour as it essentially meant that criminals instead of choosing to behave in a way that was socially acceptable, made the choice and decision to act against the law. Therefore the law should work in a way to prevent such acts or behaviours from occurring through the enforcement of punishment. (Cesare Beccaria, Dei Delitti e Della Pene -On Crimes and Punishment, 1764) argued that all humans were gifted with the ability of forming a rational choice or decision based on their freewill. Therefore all decisions including those that were criminal were a result of rational choice with full acknowledgement and awareness of the consequences to follow. The consequences being a fair and just punishment that fits the crime and the rationality between gaining pleasure or pain. This means that criminals take into account the probable legal penalties and the likelihood that they will be caught when carrying out criminal behaviours. Therefore crime is ‘a rationallised behaviour which does not occur unless prevented by a proper threat of punishment’ (Edwin H Sutherland, Criminological theories, Second Edition, p.).Despite the attempts of this statement in outlining what criminal behaviour is, from an analytical perspective is over simplistic when trying to understand what crime is because it is not based on scientific evidence .As a result the argument in this theory becomes one that is none theoretical because it seems to fail to provide a scientific explanation of law and the justice system. This is a fair perspective to view the theory from because the theory essentially argues for a fair and just criminal justice system to satisfy the needs and norms of society but does not give a clear specification of what the law is .Thus it does not necessarily provide us with a clear formulated explanation of crime nor criminal behaviour. This is a drawback because arguably in understanding the law we are virtually able to understand crime as the law defines behaviours that are acceptable and those that are not. The theory fails to analyse criminal behaviour into depth by taking into consideration contributory factors such as biological or sociological factors, its only focus seems to be on the actions of the crime and how the law should be applied to those acts as a form of penalty or punishment. As a result it is fair to state that the theory to a large degree does not help with our understanding of crime.
However it can be argued that this belief of a fair and just system over the years eventually impacted the treatment of criminals through an evolution of social policies. Thus bettering our understanding of crime in some ways. For example (Edwin H Sutherland , Criminological theories , Second Edition p. ) argues that the ideas of Cesare Beccaria are still of relevance into today’s legal justice system; the right to speedy trial was incorporated in the constitution of the USA and its amendments of the Bill of Rights. Meaning social policies in our society today are still being formulated with regards to the ideas proposed by the classical theory. Cesare believed that ‘the law should work to enforce social policy that encouraged punishment given to criminals to be rational and fair’ (David W. Jones, Understanding Criminal Behaviour p.). This was because he argued that ‘punishment was essentially in existence because people chose to commit crimes, thus the punishment given should fit the crime and be server enough to deter criminals from committing crimes again’. Jeremy Bentham supported this argument and went on further to apply what was known as the deterrence theory to the explanation of crime. This theory shared similarities with the classical theory due to the fact that it was based on the belief that ‘people choose to obey or violate the law after calculating the gains and consequences of their actions (Deterrence theory, p.233).The fact that the argument of Cesare is to have punishment that fits the crime is of value because in some sense it has helped us gain some understanding of crime because through the knowledge of the variation in the types of punishments given , we have become more aware of the differences in the seriousness of criminal behaviours . For instance criminal behaviours such as GBH is more likely to receive a more server form of punishment in comparison to an act of shop lifting which is considered to be less serious in nature thus receiving a more fitting punishment like a fine.
On the other hand since the 18th century criminological theories for explaining crime have developed significantly and have effectively developed our understanding. From the 19th century we start to see a change in the approach taken by criminologists to explain crime. A new era of the positivism approach in understanding criminal behaviour begins and moves towards a more scientific view of criminal behaviour. From the 19th century Criminologist who started taking the positivism approach provided theories that explained law breaking and took into account delinquent behaviour in combination with the functions of the law. This differed from the classical approach because the classical theory failed to explain both the criminal behaviour and law to provide a clear understanding of crime. The key feature of this approach is that the theories attempted to shed a light on why individuals carry out deviant behaviours and what factors play a part in causing such behaviours .The way in which criminologist try to explore these answers is through the use of different methodologies that aim to outline whether criminal behaviours are a result of social, psychological or economic factors. For instance the positivism approach in looking at crime gave way for the biological theory. The biological theory opposed the classical theory argument and proposed that ‘criminal behaviour was a result of inborn abnormalities rather than being a rationally reasoned behaviour’ (Cesare Lombroso, Criminal Man 1876, p.). While the classical school of criminology was humanistic and focused on the crime itself, biological positivism was scientific and concentrated on the individual criminal (Wolfgang, 1972; Vold and Bernard 1986) .This meant that it acknowledged the physical traits, mental and psychological makeup of an individual whilst also understanding environmental impacts on criminal behaviour but disregarded it as an independent cause of the crime. However It is important to note that this was an early biological explanation of crime introduced by Cesare Lombroso and was formulated in the 19th century therefore in order to better our understanding of crime we must also look at the significant changes that have occurred since the 19th century in relation to how the biological criminologists view crime in today’s society. Lombroso used the observational method to observe the physical characteristics of prisoners. This led him to the conclusion that ‘criminals were physically different from non-criminals and the differences in their physical form illustrated biological causes of criminal behaviour’ (Cesare Lombroso, Theory Of A Physical Criminal Type 1876, p.) .From this it is fair to state that Lombroso viewed all criminals as being naturally born, meaning the ‘severity of punishment proposed by the classical theory will have no effect on natural born criminals’ (Edwin). We can argue that this is logical because if criminal behaviours are caused by an innate biological make up then the law cannot prevent crime from occurring.
The modern biological theories beg to differ as they account for social and economic conditions as contributory factors to criminal behaviour. The main argument now is that ‘criminal behaviour can be triggered by biological factors such a defect of the brain but no criminal behaviour is inherited or physiologically preordained’ (Edwin). A scientific methodology is used to provide a careful analysis of the genes and the brain of criminals in order to determine biological defects that trigger a criminal behaviour. This means that the argument has shifted from a simple speculation of the importance of physical appearance to a much deeper study of the effects of biological differences on criminal behaviour. As a result we can argue that criminal behaviour is behaviour that has potential of occurring due to the probabilities of actual occurrence depending highly on the environment and less on fixed biological assumptions. (Glueck and Glueck 1959) found that parental discipline , family cohesion , religious upbringing and a child’s exposure to delinquent peers are more effective predictors to criminal behaviour .Thus supporting the argument that criminal behaviour is not biologically fixed . All in all crime can be understood from this perspective as being the product of the individual’s environment along with their biological traits.
Another way in which we can try to understand crime is looking at the relationship between crime and sociological issues including social policies. These issues vary from class, race, age and gender. For instance statistics show that the population that is most likely to make up the prison population is men. This was information that was provided in a survey carried out in 2013. Though the survey failed to specify the age range, class nor race it was able to provide us with a slight understanding of crime because from this information we can argue that crime is more likely to occur due to criminal acts carried out by men .Therefore government institutions should implement policies that deter this from happening but also work to underpin the reasons as to why males are more likely to commit crimes over female. However the validity of such statistics can be questioned because criminologist who carry out such research might ignore criminal behaviours carried out by women and only focus on male crimes due to the fact that as part of social norms, society views women as being more vulnerable and victims of crime rather than actual perpetrators of crime. Consequently the statistics provided do not represent the true figures of women who commit crimes and go to prison. Research indicate that this was carried out in the 1970’s before feminist such as Carole smart started intervening, changing the types of methods used to investigate women and crime. Carole smart provided a critique criminological perspective that aimed to examine women crimes from a wider picture independent from sexist assumptions of women and men, thus gaining full awareness of criminal behaviours carried out by women. In her book (Women , Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique By Carole Smart , 1978 , p. 86 ) she stated that ‘Critique is a prerequisite for the formulation of an alternative perspective’ meaning that having a critical theory of criminology is the basis that could be argued as essential to us having a better understanding of crime.