Spot the alleged criminal

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Spot the (alleged) criminal
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Spot the (alleged) criminal
Musician
Politician
Estate agent
What are their alleged crimes?
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Todays session
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Physiological theories

• Theories that link criminal behaviour to
  biological form and function
• Atavistic form (Lombroso)
• Somatotype (Sheldon)
• Extra Y syndrome

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Atavistic form theory

• Lombroso (1876)
• Criminality is inherited
• Genetic transmission of throwback/atavistic (i.e.
  primitive) features
• Physical features indicate criminal tendencies

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Lombroso (1876)
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• Can you tell whether someone is a criminal just
  by looking at them?
• How would you test this idea scientifically?

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Lombroso (1876)

• A number of significant flaws
• Lack of a control group for comparison
• Sample included people with psychological/physiolo
  gical disorders
• Crime is a social construction
• Single defective gene theories - doubtful

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Lombroso (1876)

• A number of significant contributions
• Later believed that most criminality was
  acquired environment, poverty, education
• Shifted study of crime to an empirical basis
• The father of modern criminology (Shafer, 1976)

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Somatotype theory

• Sheldon (1949)
• Constitutional psychology
• Criminality is linked to temperament
• Temperament is linked to bodily build
• Ectomorph
• Endomorph
• Mesomorph

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Sheldon (1949)
Source www.pponline.co.uk
Relaxed and hedonistic
Energetic and adventurous
Solitary and restrained
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Sheldon (1949)

• The mesomorphs personality makes him more likely
  to engage in criminal activity
• Thousands of photographs rated 1 7 for
  mesomorphy
• College students delinquents compared
• Delinquents had higher mesomorphy ratings (4.6
  vs. 3.8)

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Sheldon (1949)

• Sheldons constitutional psychology is no longer
  taken seriously
• But there is a small association between bodily
  build and criminality. How could this be
  explained?
• Influence of testosterone on body and behaviour?
• Effects of stereotyping and labelling?

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• Last year you looked at the effects of sex
  chromosome abnormalities on development. What
  did you learn?

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Chromosomal abnormalities
XY
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Chromosomal abnormalities

• Extra Y syndrome was suggested to lead to
• High testosterone levels
• Powerful bodily build
• Heightened aggression
• Propensity for violent crime

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Chromosomal abnormalities

• XYY males not actually as predicted (Graham et
  al, 2007)
• Normal testosterone levels
• Normal aggression levels
• Taller, but not necessarily more powerful
• Prone to developmental disorders and learning
  difficulties

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Chromosomal abnormalities

• XYY males are rare in the general population and
  over-represented in the offender population
• However, their crimes are not violent ones
• So why are XYY men at a greater risk of offending?

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• Single factor theories of criminality are always
  likely to fail
• Crime is not a natural or homogenous category
  of behaviour
• It is self-evidently the result of interaction
  between a range of factors
• Different explanations for different types of
  crime