1. Biological Positivism
Lombroso , Eugenics & Social Darwinism

2. BIOLOGICAL positivist Criminology Late1800s Context
Reification of Science
Emergence of experts
Society as a social fact
1850s heredity studies
1840s ‘Mug Shots’ (Belgium)
Statistics
Growing underclass
Rise of the Penitentiary

3. Positivism
A method & a paradigm
Focus on actors not acts
Deterministic
Locate difference in people

4. Assumptions of Positivist Criminology
Causes of criminal behaviour is different than causes for normal behaviour
Consensus

5. Darwinism.. On the Origin of Species - Principles of Biology (1864)
Some specimens were "better adapted for immediate, local environment”
Influences Herbert Spencer…

6. Social Darwinism Herbert Spencer (1820 -1903)
‘Survival of the Fittest’
Hierarchy of social inferiority
Fitness becomes synonymous with health AND deserving
‘naturalness’
Not what Darwin intended….

7. Ethnocentric Social Darwinism
Progress/Civilization
Scientific justification for inequality
Tautology:
‘We’ are in power because we are more evolved
How do you know that you are more evolved?
Because ‘we’ are in power...
Image: Duncan Walker

8. Birth of Criminology: The Italian School
The foundations of biological explanations
Assumed people in prison = criminals
Cesare Lombroso
Enrico Ferri
Raffael Garofalo

9. Canada

10. Phrenology Founded on Aristotle ... “brain as the organ of the mind”
Exterior skull/interior brain
Mind – faculties & function
Requires ‘exercise’
Behavior – bumps in skull
1830s scientifically accepted
Criminal determined by trained phrenologists

11. Cecare Lombroso (1835 – 1909) Medically trained Psychiatry
Professor of legal medicine
Testified at trials
The Criminal Man (1876)
w/ Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

12. Criminal Classification
Born Criminals
Atavistic Man
Primitive
Less evolved/developed
1/3 of offenders

13. Lombroso
 Military observations: well-disciplined and aggressive or criminal soldiers
Deviations common to particular races/cultures
Autopsies
criminals & non
animals
‘inferior races’ – physically/intellectually

14. Criminal Woman
Smaller variations Less evolved than men? Naturally vengeful, weak and dumb ~ balanced by ‘feminine’ Criminal women: masculine (negative quality)

15. Sir Fancis Galton (1822-1911) Coined the term Eugenics Positive
Encourage ‘good birth’
Negative
Exclusion of ‘inferior’ populations
Recognized eugenics would have to have spiritual framework to work in his “vision”

16. Mental Hygiene Movement
Feeble-mindedness not curable
Burdensome populations $
Fear of ‘inferior’ peoples
Emily Murphy “The Black Candle” (1922)
Calls to limit immigration
How is this connected to Rousseau’s ‘Ideal Society’?

17. Implications Experts needed to determine defectives
Long term custody of ‘untreatable’ kids
Sterilization (gendered)
Domestics
1928 Sterilization Act in Alberta
Repealed in 1972
why? In the movie…

19. The Jukes
Robert Dugdale (1875) “The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Hereditary”
Impoverished family
Many assumptions
“Inept methodology”
Cost to taxpayers
Used to support negative Eugenics
Defining mental illness?

20. The Kallikaks Henry H. Goddard
Focused on IQ as manifestation of degeneracy
“Inept methodology”
Martin Kallikak
‘Feeble-minded barmaid’
Respectable Quaker woman

21. Positivist Criminology
“ Ye Olde History”?
Focus on the actor
Treatment of the individual

22. Critiques of Positivist Criminology
Cure for crime?
If no cure.....
Marked by poor methodology
despite scientific foundation
Repressive responses (not cure)
Pathologizing deviance
Illness of non-conformity
Discourse of non-responsibility
Industry of experts

23. Rehabilitation Treatment programs Treatment as punishment
Problem of delivery
Non-voluntary
Treatment as punishment
E.g. substance use, parenting...
Guard or Counselor?
Punitive environment
Critique from right
Can access programs ‘honest’ citizens can’t
Similar to issues of ‘training’ in Kingston