Criminal Behavior

Physical unattractiveness, deformity, and disfigurement have been associated with evil since antiquity. In the Iliad, Homer described the wicked Thersites as possessing thin hair over a “misshapen head,” with one blinking eye and a lame leg. Physiognomy (the “science” of reading personality characteristics into facial features) traces its practice to Homer’s Greece. When Socrates was convicted for heresy and the corruption of youth in the fifth century B. C. , a physiognomist charged that his face betrayed a brutal disposition.

Greek culture embraced the notion that mind and body were interconnected; if a sound mind went together with a sound body, the implication was that a twisted mind resided in a deformed body. Aristotle confirmed this view in his Metaphysics when he reasoned that the essence of the body is contained in the soul. These opinions were ensconced into law in medieval Europe. Among those accused of demonic possession, ecclesiastical edicts interpreted large warts and moles on the skin as physical signs of the entry point of the devil into the soul (Einstadter and Henry 1995).

Secular law directed jurists to convict the uglier of two people who were under equal suspicion for a crime (Wilson and Herrnstein 1985). In an echo of these sentiments some years later, Shakespeare’s Cassius, in Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II), is judged a dangerous man by his “lean and hungry look. ” The link between unattractiveness and criminal behavior remained alive and well in 20th-century American popular culture.

In his famous comic strip and in the movies it inspired, cartoonist Chester Gould sharply contrasted the square-jawed, clean-cut good looks of detective Dick Tracy with cutthroat criminals like the flat-headed “Flattop,” the pointy-snouted “Mole,” the wrinkle-cheeked “Pruneface,” and the big-bottomed “Pear Shape. ” Hollywood imitated science in Johnny Handsome (1989), a feature film about a robber with grotesque facial deformities who reforms after receiving extensive cosmetic surgery.

Some of the earliest criminological researchers shared this thinking. Physiognomy persisted throughout the 18th century, most notably in the work of Swiss scholar Johan Casper Lavater, whose influential Physiognomical Fragments appeared in 1775. One hundred years later, Italian prison physician Cesare Lombroso published Criminal Man (1876), a famous study that attributed criminal behavior to what he termed “atavism,” an inherited condition that made offenders evolutionary throwbacks to more primitive humans.

By conducting autopsies on 66 deceased criminals, and comparing 832 living prison inmates with 390 soldiers, Lombroso created a list of physical features that he believed were associated with criminal behavior. These “stigmata” included sloping foreheads, asymmetrical faces, large jaws, receding chins, abundant wrinkles, extra fingers, toes, and nipples, long arms, short legs, and excessive body hair-hardly the image of handsome men. The notion that criminal behavior was related to physical anomalies was dealt a severe blow by the publication of Charles B. Goring’s The English Convict in 1913.

This study subjected 37 of Lombroso’s stigmata to empirical testing by comparing 2,348 London convicts to a control group that represented a cross section of young Englishmen. Goring found little support for Lombroso’s arguments, concluding that criminal behavior is caused by inherited feeblemindedness, not physical appearance. Undaunted by these results, Harvard anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton conducted an ambitious 12-year study that compared 13,873 male prisoners in 10 states with a haphazard sample of 3,023 men drawn from the general population, searching once more for physical differences.

Hooton published his findings in The American Criminal and Crime and the Man, both books appearing in 1939. The books attributed criminal behavior to biological inferiority and “degeneration,” ascribing a variety of unattractive physical characteristics to criminals (including sloping foreheads, compressed facial features, drooping eyelids, small, protruding ears, projecting cheekbones, narrow jaws, pointy chins, and rounded shoulders). By the 1930s, however, biological research was rapidly losing favor, as criminologists increasingly argued that social factors alone cause criminal behavior.

Hooton’s research was ridiculed in particular, one sociologist dismissing his findings as comically inept in historic proportions (or “the funniest academic performance… since the invention of movable type” [Reuter 1939]). Hooton was condemned for his circular reasoning: offenders were assumed to be biologically inferior, so whatever features differentiated criminals from noncriminals were interpreted as indications of biological inferiority. Despite the skepticism of many sociologists regarding these attempts to link physical unattractiveness to criminal conduct, self-derogation and general strain theories can explain this relationship.

Self-derogation theory asserts that youth who are ridiculed by peers lose self-esteem and the motivation to conform (Kaplan 1980). General strain theory claims that repeated “noxious,” unwanted interactions produce disappointment, depression, frustration, and anger (Agnew 1992). Both theories see delinquency and crime as means of retaliation that boosts one’s self-worth or vents one’s anger. Certainly, unattractive youths are prime candidates for noxious ridicule that results in low self-esteem and emotional strain.

Only a handful of modern studies have tested the relationships among attractiveness, criminal behavior, and perceptions about crime. Saladin, Saper, and Breen (1988), for example, asked 28 students in one undergraduate psychology class to judge the physical attractiveness of a group of photographs of young men. Forty students in another psychology class were asked to examine the same photographs and then assess the probability that those pictured would commit either robbery or murder.

The researchers found that men rated as less attractive also were perceived to be prone to commit future violent crimes, suggesting that unattractive people are more likely to be branded as criminals. Another study randomly scrambled 159 photographs of young men incarcerated in juvenile reformatories with 134 photographs of male high school seniors (Cavior and Howard 1973). College sophomores in psychology courses were asked to rate the facial attractiveness of these youth.

Significantly more high school seniors were judged attractive than males from the reformatories. In the fascinating policy-oriented research that became the basis for the movie Johnny Handsome, surgeons performed plastic surgery to correct deformities and disfigurements (e. g. , protruding ears, broken noses, unsightly tattoos, and needle track marks from intravenous drug use) on the faces, hands, and arms of 100 physically unattractive men at the time of their release from Rikers Island jail in New York City (Kurtzberg et al. 1978).

These ex-convicts were matched against a control group of equally unattractive inmates released from the jail who received no reconstructive surgery. When the researchers compared recidivism rates one-year later, those who received the surgery had significantly fewer rearrests. Apparently, improved appearance resulted in improved behavior. These research findings are preliminary and suggestive; more definitive studies using better measurements are needed. In particular, future research should relate ratings of physical attractiveness to the self-reported riminal behavior of persons taken from the general population. Such studies would rule out the possibility that unattractive offenders are more likely to appear in jails and reformatories simply due to the prejudices of the police and prosecutors. Nevertheless, existing research hints that the folk wisdom dating back to the ancient Greeks may have some basis in reality. Physical appearance is related to self-worth and behavior; as the adage goes, “pretty is as pretty does. ” When it comes to criminal behavior, the opposite may be true as well.

Tariff, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic In 1 991, has a very long psychiatric history. After years and years of his family trying to et him committed and just going from one hospital to another the story was not getting any better. One week before the murder he was arrested for a violent behavior at one of the hospitals. With Just a slap on the hand, he was released Into the community to go on to kill Kathy Vaughan just the next week. David Tariff has been evaluated and committed more then a dozen times in his life time.

Over the years he has been put on many of drugs to treat schizophrenic and bipolar such as lithium, Departed, Hallo, Carousel and Zappers and along with that, shock treatments have been given. After months of being in state hospitals and psychiatric reports, it has been determined that David Tariff is unfit to stand trial. After being found fit to stand trial in one county in Queens, New York another county in Manhattan says he Is not fit to stand trial.

Tariff Is now back at Rulers Island, where his attorney says he is not taking his medication all the time and has been suicidal in the last couple of months. The psychopath is unable to feel sorry for others in unfortunate situations or put himself in another’s place, whether or not they have been harmed by him. “They are all very egocentric individuals with no empathy for there, and they are Incapable of feeling remorse or guilt” (The Psychopath:Rebecca Horton, April 1999).

The study of the psychopath reveals a person who is not capable 1 OFF the difference between right and wrong but think it does not apply to them. The psychopath is incapable of normal emotions such as love and they generally do things without first considering the consequences. So, the question is, Does biology play a key role in explaining the offender’s criminality? Is there a real answer to this question? In this paper we are going to look at behaviors that constitute psychopath.

We will also discuss the specific behaviors demonstrated by David Tariff that align with behaviors of a psychopathic individual. We will also discuss the genetic or physiological evidence that supports the notion that biology played a key role in explaining the offender’s crimes. Is David Tariff a psychopath or Just another person trying to get away murder? The answer is up to the reader I guess but so far Mr.. Tariff is where he wants to be and going to court in the near future.

There are many theories that provide an explanation of criminal behavior. According to some theories, delinquent behavior is innate in an individual. Other theories say that crime is influenced by environmental, economic, and psychological aspects (University of North Texas, nd). Biological Theories According to the biological theories, criminals have a different physiological makeup from non-criminals. Their biological inferiority is what pushes them to resort to criminal activities.

There had been multiple studies that attempts to find out if criminality is hereditary through analysis of family trees, identical and fraternal twins, statistics, and adopted children. However, these approaches have proved futile because they cannot distinguish hereditary from environmental influences (University of North Texas, nd). Contemporary researches, on the other hand, has discovered a wide array of biological factors that have direct or indirect connection with criminal or delinquent activities.

Among them are lack of chemicals, minerals, and vitamins in the food they eat, sugar and carbohydrates-rich food, and hypoglycemia. Exposure to radiation, dysfunctions in the brain, and swallowing of food dyes and lead also play an important role in criminal behaviors. Likewise, criminal acts have something to do with hormonal abnormalities, particularly those that are connected with testosterone (the male sex hormone) and progesterone and estrogen (the sex hormones related to female). By injecting estrogen to male sex offenders would minimize their sexual drives(University of North Texas, nd).

In addition, biological theorists likewise believe that the interplay of biological, environmental and social conditions can have an effect on criminal behavior. The genetic makeup of the criminal gives them a predisposition to act in a certain manner. The environmental and social conditions determines the actual behavior as well as the definition of that act(University of North Texas, nd). Psychological Theories The belief that criminal behavior is caused by low intelligence gained ground in the United States.

In order to prove this view, a study was conducted in 1931 and reached a zero correlation between the intelligence of an individual and criminal behavior(University of North Texas, nd). According to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, criminal behaviors are associated with psychopaths or those who have internal problems that have been unresolved. Psychopaths are people who are rules by senseless guilt, subjective conscience, and no do not know how to distinguish right from wrong. In general, they find it hard to establish relationships with other people and do not know how to be emphatic(University of North Texas, nd).

Sociological Theories

According to sociologists, how people behave is determined by the social group as well as the social structure. The conditions of their society may cause them to commit crimes and delinquency(University of North Texas, nd).

Sub-cultural Theory of Delinquency

In the 1920s, the Chicago School, composed of sociologists, attempted to discover the connection between the crime rate of a community and its characteristics. According to this theory, social disorganization can take place in a neighborhood where the rate of delinquency is high.

Social disorganization takes place when:

1) there is absence of delinquency control;

2) the criminal behavior is most of the time with the consent of parents as well as the community;

3) the opportunity for delinquency presents itself; 4) there is minimal encouragement, training, or possibility for legal employment(University of North Texas, nd).

Anomie Theory

This theory was proposed by Robert Merton in 1938. Anomie explains the major difference between the cultural objectives and social structure of the United States. People experience strain as a result of their limited access to legal means of achieving wealth.

In order to cope up with this inadequacy, people accumulate wealth through illegal methods as well as through conformity. Other forms of adaptation, according to the anomie theory, include ritualism, wherein the individual does not pursue the wealth actively, and rebellion, where the individual does not accept both the goal of the wealth as well as the legal means of obtaining it(University of North Texas, nd).

Differential Association

This theory, introduced by Edwin Sutherland, is one of the major beliefs that explains the causes of criminal behavior.

According to Sutherland, criminal behavior takes place because the delinquent individual has been exposed to criminal elements and isolated from anti-criminal patterns(University of North Texas, nd).

Social Learning Theory

According to the principles of learning theory, the best way to approach criminality is to implement policies that would effectively punish criminals. Sadly, this is not being implemented in the United States. At present, the delinquent individual is usually not incarcerated and returned to the same community where they have been exposed to criminal behavior.

Likewise, the method of punishment lacks consistency and is not immediately implemented. Alternative or prosocial behaviors is not rewarded with positive reinforcement(University of North Texas, nd).

Social Control Theory

The social control theory does not attempt to uncover the reasons why criminal behavior is committed but rather focuses on why people conform and accept these behaviors(University of North Texas, nd). Travis Hirschi, in his 1969 book Causes of Delinquency, provides a comprehensive presentation of contemporary social control theory.

In his book, Hirschi concluded that delinquent behavior is likely unless the offender is exposed in a society that is characterized by attachment to other people, commitment to traditional means of action, involvement in usual activities, and concurrence to moral order and law(University of North Texas, nd). Moreover, Hirschi explained that the leading cause of delinquency is ineffective child rearing, which results to individuals with low self-control(University of North Texas, nd).

Labeling Theory

This theory places emphasis on the criminalization process itself as the reason for some crimes.

The criminalization process refers to the definition of criminals and delinquent behavior. According to the labeling theory, the first time a person commits a delinquent act and gets punished by the criminal system, they are already viewed as a criminal and it eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy(University of North Texas, nd).

Conflict Theory

This theory delves on the struggle between rich and poor, management and employees, majority and minority group. According to the conflict theory, society involves conflicts between rival interest groups and that the law and justice system functions in order to control subordinate groups.

Crime results from the lack of power(University of North Texas, nd).

Radical/Marxist Theory

According to this theory, capitalism demands competition of people in order to gain material wealth. Because of the uneven distribution of wealth, people have taken advantage of people who are less powerful than them as they accumulate wealth(University of North Texas, nd). According to the radical theory, criminal behavior is caused by what Marx calls class struggle (University of North Texas, nd).

Real Life Cases of Criminal Behavior For a period of two years, FBI Special Agent Robert Hazelwood and Janet Warren from the University of Virginia’s Institute of Psychiatry and Law conducted interviews of 41 men who were convicted for the rape of 837 victims. Based on the interviews, 55-61% of the criminals committed premeditated rape during the first, middle, and final act. 15 – 22% of the criminals said that their acts were results of their impulse while 22 – 24% said that the opportunity to rape presented itself(Hazelwood & Warren, 1990).

According to Janet Warren from the University of Virginia, there are methods of sexual attacks on women. The first one is called the ‘con’ approach. In this method, the rapist openly talks to their victims and asks if they can do anything to help them. As soon as the victim is within their control, that is the time they perpetrate their evil plans. This was the case used by one of the interviewed rapists named John, who was responsible for raping 20 victims(Hazelwood & Warren, 1990). The second method used by rapist is the ‘blitz.

Here the rapist physically assaults their victims by using chemicals or gases. Most of the times, however, they use their strength to overpower the woman. This was the case of 28 year-old Phil, who raped one of his victims in a vehicle(Hazelwood & Warren, 1990). Finally, the third method is the ‘surprise. ’ In this approach, the rapist pre-selects their would-be victim. The physical assault is perpetrated by the offender waiting for the woman. Weapons, such as guns or knives, as well as threats are involved in the surprise approach. 24-year old Sam chooses his victims by observing her patterns.

He was able to rape 20 victims before he was caught(Hazelwood & Warren, 1990).

Conclusion

There are many theories that explain the reasons why people resort to criminal behaviors. The causes of criminality may be psychological, social, or biological.

References

Explaining Crime. University of North Texas. Retrieved July 21 2008 from http://www. unt. edu/cjus/Course_Pages/CJUS_2100/2100chapter3. ppt

Hazelwood, R. , & Warren, J(February 1990). The Criminal Behavior of the Serial Rapist. Holysmoke. Org. Retrieved July 21 2008 from http://www. holysmoke. org/fem/fem0126. htm