1. Spot the (alleged) criminal

2. Spot the (alleged) criminal
Musician
Politician
Estate agent
What are their alleged crimes?

3. Today’s session You are learning about... You are learning to...
Physiological theories of criminal behaviour
Critically evaluate psychological theories

4. Physiological theories
Theories that link criminal behaviour to biological form and function
Atavistic form (Lombroso)
Somatotype (Sheldon)
Extra Y syndrome

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

6. Lombroso (1876)

7. Can you tell whether someone is a criminal just by looking at them?
How would you test this idea scientifically?

8. Lombroso (1876) A number of significant flaws:
Lack of a control group for comparison
Sample included people with psychological/physiological disorders
‘Crime’ is a social construction
‘Single defective gene’ theories - doubtful

9. 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)

10. Somatotype theory Sheldon (1949) ‘Constitutional psychology’
Criminality is linked to temperament
Temperament is linked to bodily build
Ectomorph
Endomorph
Mesomorph

11. Sheldon (1949) Relaxed and hedonistic Energetic and adventurous
Source:
Relaxed and hedonistic
Energetic and adventurous
Solitary and restrained

12. Sheldon (1949)
The mesomorph’s 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)

13. Sheldon (1949)
Sheldon’s 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?

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

15. Chromosomal abnormalitiesXY
XXY
Male with feminine characteristics
Male with exaggerated male characteristics
XYY

16. Chromosomal abnormalities
‘Extra Y’ syndrome was suggested to lead to:
High testosterone levels
Powerful bodily build
Heightened aggression
Propensity for violent crime

17. 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

18. 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?

19. 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