Biological Causes Of Crime Analysis

However, Darwin in One the Origin of Species in 1859 and later in The Descent of Man in 1871 came to the conclusion that all human races are certainly one kind. He used the word subspecies in the meaning of race to denote different variations. A common feature of such concepts is the interpretation of the essence of man primarily from the standpoint of biology. Thus, Darwinists believe that the main engine of social development is the struggle for existence and natural selection. Even though, German anthropologist Gerland in On the Extinction of Primitive Peoples in 1868 evaluated Darwin’s theory and came up with critical view about superiority of white race as superhuman when he stated that “Europeans destroyed out of rapacity or lack of …show more content…
In the early stages of development of criminology and in a vacuum of broader empirical knowledge, it was believed that the criminal type of personality falls out of human society. According to Rowe, that “criminology that developed in Western European societies at the height of their colonial powers shared an intellectual paradigm with the scientific racism of the period” (Rowe, 2012 p. 20). Scientists began to look for reasons of criminals in the biological characteristics of people. The theory of biological causes of crime was created by Cesare Lombroso. The biological approach to defining the criminals found its expression in the work of the Lombroso The Criminal Man in 1876 and then The Criminal Woman in 1893 (Rafter, 2011). Moreover, Lombroso transferred some provisions of Darwin's evolutionary theory to the field of crime research, therefore, “ensuring that scientific criminology began as a field heavily racist in content” (Raffle and Brown, 2011 p 31). He claimed that individual psychic abilities are localized in certain parts of the brain, and these sites have their specific manifestations on the external relief of the skull. Lombroso measured skulls of primates and inmates and concluded, that “criminals … are atavisms, throwbacks to an earlier evolutionary stage; they are more like dark – skinned ‘savaged’ than normal, law – abiding white people” (Raffle and Brown, 2011 p.29). Moreover, Lombroso declared, that common features for criminals are “thinning hair, lack of strength and weight, low cranial capacity, receding foreheads, highly developed frontal sinuses…darker skin, thicker, curly hair, [and] large or handle-shaped ears” (Lombroso cited in Bowling and Philips, 2002 p.57). Furthermore, Lombroso acknowledged, that “white races…represent the triumph of the human species,