The Causes of Crime
No one knows why crime occurs. The oldest theory is that criminals are perverse persons who deliberately commit crimes or who do so at the instigation of the devil or other evil spirits. Although this idea has been discarded by modern criminologists, it persists among uniformed people and provides the rationale for the harsh punishments still meted out to criminals in many parts of the world.
Since the 18th century, different scientific theories have been advanced to explain crime. One of the first efforts to explain crime on scientific grounds was made by the German physician and anatomist Franz Joseph Gall, who tried to establish relationships between skull structure and criminal proclivities. This theory is now discredited. A biological theory was developed in the 19th century by the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who asserted that crimes were committed by persons who are born with recognizable hereditary physical traits. Lombroso’s theory was disproved by the British criminologist Charles Goring.
Another approach to an explanation of crime was initiated by the French philosopher Montsquieu, who related criminal behaviour to natural or physical environment.
Many criminologists of the 19th century attributed crime mainly to the influence of poverty. They pointed out that persons who are unable to provide adequately for themselves and their families through normal legal channels are driven to theft, burglary, prostitution and other offences. Present-day criminologists take a deeper view, they place the blame for crime on the whole range of environmental conditions associated with poverty.
Some theorists relate crime to the general state of culture, especially the impact of economic crises, wars and the general sense of insecurity. As a society becomes more unsettled and its people more restless and fearful of the future, the crime rate tends to rise. This is particularly true of juvenile crime.
Since the mid-20th century experts incline to multiple factor. They reason that crime comes from a multiplicity of conflicting and converging influence – biological, psychological, cultural, economic and political. An understanding of the causes of crime is still elusive, however, because the interrelationship of causes is hard to determine.
Punishment
Punishment describes the imposition by some authority of a deprivation -usually painful- on a person who has violated a law, a rule, or other norm. When the violation is of the criminal law of society there is a formal process of accusation and proof followed by imposition of a sentence by a judge. Informally, any organized group – most typically the family, may punish perceived wrongdoers.
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Because punishment is both painful and guilt producing, its application calls for a justification. In Western culture, four basic justifications have been given: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation.
Most penal historians note a trend over the last century toward more lenient sentences in Western countries. Capital and corporal punishment, widespread in the early 19th century, are seldom invoked by contemporary society. Indeed, in the United States corporal punishment as such appears to be contrary to the 8th Amendment’s restrictions on cruel and unusual punishment. Yet the rate of imprisonment in the United States growing, since the mid – 1970s, popular and professional sentiment tends to see retribution and incapacitation – rather than rehabilitation – as the goals of criminal punishment.
Criminal sentences consist of four basic modes of punishment. These are incarceration, community supervision, fine, and restitution. The death penalty is now possible only for certain types of atrocious murders and treason.
Punishment is an ancient practice whose presence in modern cultures may appear to be out of place because it purposefully inflicts pain. In the minds of most people, however, it continues to find justification.
Task # 16
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