The biological theory of crime

The argument

Proponents of this position hold that the causes of criminal behaviour are to be found inside the offender rather than in the society around them. On the biological theory, the disposition to offend is something a person carries in their body - inherited, constitutional, physiological - rather than something picked up from poverty, peer influence or circumstance. If that is right, the explanation of crime belongs at the level of the individual, and social conditions are at most the occasion for an offence rather than its cause. The theory takes its name from the form it was given in the 1800s, when the prison doctor Cesare Lombroso argued that criminals were in effect born criminals. Lombroso worked from the observation that many of the prisoners he encountered shared physical characteristics - long sloping foreheads, small chins set back into the head - and read these as outward signs of a brain that had not fully developed, or had developed wrongly. The inference ran from visible physical type to inner constitution to conduct. Those physiognomic claims are the theory's historical origin rather than evidence for it, and are not sustained today; what survives is the structure of the reasoning, which locates the cause of offending in the organism rather than the environment. That structure is why proponents say the theory has been revised rather than abandoned. Its current form sets aside the face and the skull and turns instead to biochemical and neurological research: to the prefrontal cortex, to neurotransmitters, and to hormones, whose effects on mood the theory holds can issue in criminal behaviour. The claim is no longer that an offender can be recognised by appearance, but that differences measurable in an individual's brain and body make offending more likely. The conclusion in either version is the same: crime is caused by the individual.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The main argument against this theory is that it identifies a biological difference in criminals and non-criminals. As of right now, there has been no evidence of a biological attribute that only people who have committed crimes have. Also, this theory ignores the many societal and environmental situations that may surround an individual and cause them to commit crimes.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Lombroso's method cannot support his conclusion. He catalogued the features of a prison population without a matched comparison group from outside prison, so the traits he recorded may be equally common in the general population, or may track poverty, injury and childhood nutrition rather than criminality. Later controlled comparisons, notably Charles Goring's, found no distinguishing physical type. [Rejecting P2] Research on the prefrontal cortex, neurotransmitters and hormones establishes correlations with traits such as impulsivity or aggression, not a cause of crime. Those systems are themselves shaped by head injury, deprivation, lead exposure and chronic stress, all environmental. Crime is also a legal category whose contents change with statute and jurisdiction, and no biological mechanism can pick out a category that changes when a law changes. As the counter notes, no biological attribute has been found that only people who commit crimes possess.