hi and welcome to criminal justice in a
nutshell my name is John Fisher and
today we're standing outside in front of
the old main building here at Howard
College to talk to you about positivist
criminology positive positivist
criminology was brought to us in 1874
1876 by Caesar Lombroso with a book that
he wrote called the criminal man okay at
this time we have found that classical
criminology or rational choice theory
had been in effect for a hundred years
or 110 years and the thought with
rational choice theory is that every
human being every man every woman on
earth would measure and weigh the
decisions that they made and we they
make those decisions with their own
freewill seto Lombroso rejected this he
would come at a time in world history
where we had Charles Darwin and
evolution and sociology was coming about
where they said that every society in
every individual was affected by so many
different outside forces and outside
influences such as war and famine and
wealth or lack of wealth and class and
all of these different avenues within
the positivist movement affected the way
that we lived our lives and we lived our
lives in a way to where our actions our
behaviors and of the choices that we
make were affected by biology biology
biological factors which was brought to
us primarily by Caesar Lombroso there
were psychological avenues that you know
such as Sigmund Freud and then there
were social issues and social avenues
that affected our behavior have brought
to us by Augusta comped Co n te okay so
Caesar Lombroso was considered the
father of the positivist movement he's
not the father of criminology he's the
father of the crime of the positivist
movement within criminology he
he said that crime and criminal behavior
can be detected based upon anomalies
which he called atavistic
characteristics within the human body
he said that criminals had reverted back
to an earlier stage of human evolution
and that we could tell by looking at
people their behaviors their actions
their propensity for committing criminal
activities in criminal behavior
so we sit here and we find ourselves
just in all with the change in attitude
we went from the prescience days and the
dark ages where we saw people were
committing crimes because they were
possessed by the devil and the devil
made them do it that's our story and
we're sticking to it to Caesar Caesar
Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham who said
that we committed crime because of our
own free will and we decided to take
that action and we decided to go there
and do that the positivist movement said
no there are outside forces or there are
other forces that force us to do the
things that we do
Caesar Lombroso for example believed and
with his studies he found that people
with extended foreheads or strong jaws
and long arms and were able to jump real
high were atavistic and thus they were
criminal in nature some of the other
positivist theories that we find some of
the other positive theories that we have
within the positivist movement with
Josef Franz go the golf theory was for
Knology and you could look and you can
feel your head and you can feel the
bumps and the dips that were in your
skull and that would determine your
behavior they were using a rudimentary
form of the scientific method and they
would measure
the distance between your eyes how big
your ears were how far your ears stuck
out from the sides of your head and we
would determine and we would look at all
of these different things and we found
that people with the same common traits
the same biological common traits would
commit specific or certain crimes okay
and this is how the biological Movement
worked well the bio
along the same time as the biological
movement or the biological criminology
we had the psychological criminology
again one of the leaders of this was
Sigmund Freud and within the
psychological movement we said that
there was something wrong with the brain
there was something wrong with the
chemistry within the brain and because
of these shortcomings that because of
these psychological problems or issues
we committed crime and we committed
crime on such a state and such in nature
that it was almost impossible to change
we also found that this simplemindedness
was hereditary you know just like with
Susan Lombroso crime was something of
being a criminal with something that you
were born into it was either caused by
heredity or it was caused by mental
illness mental illness they said was
also something that was brought about by
our ancestry and we found the eugenics
program coming in in the late 1800s and
into the early 1900s and the eugenics
program through the adoption studies and
through the twin studies and through the
Killick acts and the Juke family
longevity studies we found that there
was a lot of crime within families and
it just kept going and going and going
through the generations okay an event if
they were simple-minded and if they were
unable to find their niche and find a
way to be able to hit the inside
without being criminal we needed to
ensure that they did not procreate that
they did not bring any more life into
the world so they started a
sterilization program you can read the
three generations without imbeciles you
can read Madison grants the passing of a
great race and what you're going to do
is you're going to learn and you're
going to find out about how the G genex
program was set up to ensure got the
ideal for the eugenics program was to
create a community of society in
neighborhood a country where the IQ
ranged between 160 and 250 because we
didn't want stupid people on the planet
we didn't want stupid people in the
community because these people were
believed at the time to be criminal in
nature and will do nothing but commit
crime the third aspect of the positivist
movement was that society committed
crime and that the influences within
society ensured that we committed crime
because we were poor because we lived in
the wrong neighborhood because we did
not have a good group of friends and
then our friends influenced our
behaviors and this positivist movement
or this association theory at when
Sutherland in 1935 brought us the
differential association theory that
said that we commit crime and we commit
criminality based upon our associations
and the priorities that we place in life
so if we find ourselves wanting to if we
find ourselves with a whole bunch of
friends who are bad and who are
committing crime they're dealing drugs
or they're doing whatever we're going to
do that same thing because we become
that which we hang out with
another thought was poverty poverty is
going to commit crime or the thought
what that if you're poor you're going to
commit crime so we need to redistribute
the wealth we need to take the money
from the rich and we need to give it to
the poor so that the poor will not
commit crime anymore
because we have this idea this theory
this thought that crime is only found
within the inner city within the area of
town within the area of the community
where there is no money so they're
forced to commit crime just to make ends
meet okay
this is the positivist movement this is
the positivist thoughts in criminology
I do want to thank you very much for
listening to this episode of criminal
justice in a nutshell have a good day
