THEORY OF CRIME AND DEVIANCE

Theory of Crime and Deviance

Theory of Crime and Deviance

Literature Review

The most notorious of these evolutionary approaches to deviant behavior was the theory of crime. Criminals had definite biological failings that prevented them from developing to a fully human level (Donal, 1994). They showed, perhaps, certain apelike characteristics, or sometimes merely 'savage' features that gave them the distinct anatomical characteristics from which they could easily be identified: large jaws, long arms, thick skulls, and so on (Donal, 1994). These atavistic features, Lombroso argued, also led them to prefer forms of behaviour that are normal among apes and savages, but are criminal in human societies (Gary, 2007). These criminal tendencies were apparent, Lombroso claimed, in their other 'degenerate' personal characteristics: the criminal, he believed, is idle, has a love of tattooing, and engages in orgies (Gary, 2007).

About 40 per cent of all criminals were 'born criminals' of this kind (Douglas,1999). They were driven into criminality by their biology. Other law-breakers were simply occasional, circumstantial offenders and did not have the 'atavistic' characteristics of the born criminal (Larry, 1998). An explanation of deviance must refer to the processes of socialization through which people learn to give meaning to their behaviour and to the processes of discipline and regulation through which some people come to be identified as deviants and to be processed in particular ways by a system of social control. Deviance in a sociological context describes actions or behaviours that violate cultural norms including formally-enacted rules (e.g., crime) as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., folkways) (Edwin, 2000). It is the remit of sociologists, psychologists and criminologists to study how these norms are created how they change over time and how they are enforced (Edwin, 2000). To a large extent, criminology and studies of deviance have developed along separate tracks although they show much overlap. Criminologists have typically limited themselves to issues about legality, crime, or crime-related phenomena (Stephan,1999). Students of deviance, on the other hand, have studied crime as well as a wider range of behaviors or conditions that are deviant by one or another of the definitions reviewed but are not necessarily illegal, such as suicide, alcoholism, homosexuality, mentally disordered behaviors, stuttering, and even such behaviors as public nose picking or flatulence, sectarian religious behaviors, and body mutilation (Steven, 2000). Hence, it is difficult to distinguish criminology clearly from studies of deviance (Larry, 1998).

Many criminologists concede that illegal acts are not fundamentally different from legal but deviant acts, except by the fact of illegality itself, which is largely an arbitrary designation by legal functionaries (Steven, 2000). At the same time, students of deviance readily acknowledge that many deviant acts are also illegal and they have found data about crime especially useful because it is more systematic than most data concerning legal forms of deviance (Marcus, 2004). Recognizing this overlap is obvious among those deviance scholars who employ a legalistic definition of deviance, but almost every comprehensive treatment of deviant behavior, regardless of the definition ...