Cesare Lombroso's Three Stages Of Crime

It’s said a discipline in science develops in three stages. The first stage is the theological stage where people say an event occurred because of a divine entity, like a god, or a force of nature. Next is the metaphysical stage, which is similar to the first stage, however, emphasis on the supernatural is lessened because problems and events are now due defects in humanity. Finally, the last stage is known as the positivity stage. Instead of merely speculating why an event occurs a thoughtful process of experimentation and observation culminate to a conclusion of why something happens. Correspondingly, the explanation of how biology influences crime started off as speculation, to now where experimentation and studies take place to confirm

One of those influenced was an Italian criminologist named Cesare Lombroso. Lombroso worked on the concept known as atavism. Atavism is an idea rooted in the belief that criminals are less evolved and have certain physical features that resemble primates. It seems that Lombroso’s work sounds like an offshoot of Phrenology; however, Lombroso based his idea on observation of criminal inmates. His observations showed that criminals had certain physical features which included masculine jaws and sloping foreheads. Despite taking a more analytical approach his reasoning was flawed because of his improper methodology. In most research in our present time, scientists test a hypothesis with experimentation. Some experimentation involves trials with people. In these trials participants are split into groups so that scientists can see the effects of what they are testing by introducing a factor to one group while the other group is not introduced, so scientists have a reference to how the groups will differ. Unfortunately, for Lombroso he never compared criminals with non-criminals. If he had done this, he would have found that the physical characteristics of criminals also matched those in the non-criminal

However, groundbreaking research on how biology and crime interact was done to ask the question whether humans are a product of their environment, or their genetics. Studies done on twins was seminal research pertaining to the question of nature or nurture. This was because twins are usually raised in similar social environments, thus researchers may study people that are very genetically similar in a controlled environment. Just to note there are different types of twins. One type of twins is known as dizygotic twins that are a product of two different eggs and two different sperms. Dizygotic twins are genetically similar as siblings. On the other hand, monozygotic twins, a result of embryo splitting, are genetically identical. The distinction between mono and dizygotic twins are important as bodies of research has found varying results between the two. Karl Christensen found after analyzing twins in Denmark over a period 30 years that if one monozygotic twin engages in criminal activates the likeliness the other twin will also engage is higher than dizygotic twins regardless of gender. Although it seems reasonable to claim a strong genetic basis for criminality, twin studies don’t have perfect control settings. In the social environment parents and friends may treat each twin differently which is difficult to account