The American and French Revolutions

Positive philosophy emerged during a time of tremendous social change. The American and French revolutions, the consolidation of a powerful middle class, and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution all marked these social changes. Among the founders of the positivist school of thought and, according to some, the first modern sociologist was Claude Henri de Rouvroy, the Comte de Saint-Simon. Positivists focus on cause-and-effect relationships. Causation is established when three to five conditions are met: (1) the presumed cause precedes the presumed effect in time, (2) the presumed cause and the presumed effect are empirically correlated with one another, and (3) the observed empirical correlation between the presumed cause and the presumed effect is not spurious, that is, the empirical relationship cannot be explained away as being due to the influence of some other factor or factors. A second difference is that positivists assume that criminals are fundamentally different from noncriminal, either biologically, psychologically, sociologically, or in some combination with all three. Positivists search for such differences through scientific inquiry. When differences are found classifications or categories, such as criminals and noncriminal, are created. Third, positivists assume that social scientists, including criminologists, can be objective or value-neutral in their work. Fourth, positivists frequently assume that crime is caused by multiple factors, such as hormone imbalances, below-normal intelligence, inadequate socialization or self-control, and economic inequality. Fifth, positivists believe that society is based primarily on a consensus about moral values but not on a social contract, as classical theorist believed.

The claim recently has been made that “the scientific study of crime actually began with biological theories, in the late 18th century,” and that, “until the early 20th century, biological theories and criminology were virtually synonymous.” Biological theories of crime causation are based on the belief that criminals are physiologically different from noncriminal. Early biological theories assumed that structure determines function. In other words, criminals behave differently because structurally they are different. The cause of crime was biological inferiority. Biological inferiority in criminals was assumed to produce certain physical or genetic characteristics that distinguished criminals from noncriminal. It is important to emphasize that the physical or genetic characteristics themselves did not cause crime; they were only the symptoms, or stigmata, of the more fundamental inferiority.

-Psychoanalytic theories of crime causation are associated with work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his followers. Freud did not theorize much about criminal behavior per se, but a theory of crime causation can be inferred from his more general theory of human behavior and its disorders.