Lombroso's Atavism Theory

One question of which the biological explanation asks is could we identify genetic markers in those with a predisposition to crime? Lombroso’s atavism theory is one of the earliest theories of inherited criminality and links outward physiological features to inherited criminal behaviour arguing it is easy to spot criminals as they are not fully evolved and criminality is innate rather than made. He stated that criminals had distinct facial features for example a large protruding jaw, large ears, extra toes and that they had no guilt and were unable to distinguish right from wrong. Lombroso’s theory is very much an outdated one and has since been highly criticised, firstly the theory is too determinist. Even if there was a relationship between …show more content…
One major study by Bowlby called the 44 Thieves aimed to test this hypothesis of frequent separations associated with a risk of behavioural disorders. The study consisted of participates aged 5 – 16, 88 children who had been admitted to a child guidance clinic. 44 of which had committed crimes and 16 of those affectionless psychopaths and the other 44 had not committed crimes and not affectionless psychopaths however they were emotionally maladjusted. The children and families were interviewed. This study found that 86% of affectionless psychopaths had experienced early & prolonged separations from their mothers, only 17% of the non-affectionless psychopath thieves had experienced such separations and only 4% of the control group (non thieves) had experienced such separations. This concludes that there is a link between early separation and later social and emotional maladjustment successfully supporting Bowlbys …show more content…
Other evidence supporting this theory is the statistic that suicide rates increase after the media coverage of just about any suicide for example after Marilyn Monroe’s death. Violence also increased after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr with the number of threats again government figures rising again supporting the idea that people imitate the behaviour that they see from the media and other role models. On the other hand there are many problems with Bandura research firstly lab experiments may not represent real life acquisition of criminal behaviour this means they may lack ecological validity and the controlled environment may not show real life results furthermore you cannot infer cause and effect relationship from the correlation. Natural experiments include Williams who found that levels of physical and verbal aggression of children almost double when a Tv was introduced to a Canadian town In contrast Charlton et al found no increase following the