Law Essay：犯罪特征比较 Comparison of Criminal Traits

龙勃罗梭在犯罪学中开创了一门新学科，将身体异常与犯罪联系在一起。据说某些属性是生物劣势的结果，导致了犯罪的生活。一项观察性研究解释了来自坎特伯雷基督教堂大学的犯罪分子和心理工作人员组成的“大量照片”。独立t检验表明，两组在体格特征和罪犯等级方面无显著性差异。这些发现与先前在该领域的研究相联系。

龙勃罗梭是最著名的学科是犯罪人类学的创始人；与“出生的罪犯”相关的心理和生理特征的研究。发表了一个著名的犯罪人，他把犯罪行为归咎于“返祖”，这是一种遗传的状态，罪犯在这一过程中表现出对原始人类的进化。，罪犯基本上是一个与病理和返祖特性有关的生活异常。在研究了66名已故罪犯之后，他编制了一个假定与犯罪行为相关的身体特征列表。

 

Abstract 摘要

 

Cesare Lombroso’s (1960) Criminal Man led to a new discipline in criminology, placing a link between physical anomalies and crime. Certain attributes were said to be the result of a biologically inferior presence which led to a life of crime (Ellwood, 1912). An observational study interpreted a number of ‘mugshots’ made up of criminals and Psychology staff from Canterbury Christ Church University. Independent t-tests revealed that there was no difference between the two groups in terms of physical characteristics and ‘criminal’ rating. These findings tie in with previous research in the field (Goring, 1972; Saladin, Zalman & Breen 1988).

 

COMPARING THE PREVALENCE OF ‘CRIMINAL TRAITS’ BETWEEN CONVICTED CRIMINALS AND PSYCHOLOGY STAFF 罪犯与心理工作人员“犯罪特征”的比较

 

Cesare Lombroso (2006) is best known as the founder of the discipline criminal anthropology; the study of mental and physical traits associated with the ‘born criminal’. Lombroso published Criminal Man (2006), a famous study in which he attributed criminal behaviour to ‘Atavism’, an inherited condition in which offender’s demonstrated evolutionary throwbacks to more primitive humans. According to Lombroso (2006) the criminal was fundamentally a living anomaly concerned with pathological and atavistic characteristics (Ellwood, 1912). After studying 66 deceased criminals, Lombroso (2006) compiled a list of physical features assumed to be associated with criminal behaviour. Traits included asymmetrical faces and excessive body hair. A person was thought to be a criminal if they processed 4 or more traits.

 

Charles B. Goring (1972) subjected 37 of Lombroso’s (2006) characteristics to empirical testing and compared 2,348 London convicts with a control group of young Englishmen. Goring (1972) found little support for Lombroso’s work, instead suggesting criminal behaviour is simply an inherited lack of common sense. Support for Lombroso comes from a study by Hooton (1939), in which 13,873 male prisoners were compared with 3,023 males from a general sample. Hooton attributed criminal behaviour to biological inferiority, assigning a number of features such as sloping foreheads to criminals. Hooton was, however, criticised for his circular reasoning. Criminals were assumed to be physically mediocre and those features which distinguished criminals from others could be classified as precursors of biological inferiority.#p#分页标题#e#

 

Only a small number of modern studies have tested the relationship among attractiveness and criminal behaviour. Saladin, Zalman and Breen (1988) invited students to judge the physical attractiveness of a selection of male photos. Other students assessed the same photos and judged the likelihood that those pictured would commit a crime. Those rated as less attractive were more likely to commit crime. Similar results were also found in other related studies (Cavior & Howard, 1973; Kurtzberg, 1978).

 

The current study is building upon the previous contradictory evidence, and much like Goring (1913), the study will focus upon comparing Lombroso’s (2006) original anomalies within the criminal and general population. As a result of previous evidence my hypothesis states that there will be no difference between Lombroso’s (2006) ‘criminal traits’ amongst convicted criminals and the general population.

 

Method

 

Design

 

The design of the experiment consisted of independent measures as both groups were separate from each other.

 

Participants

 

There were 30 participants in total, 15 were Psychology staff members from Canterbury Christ Church University and the other 15 were convicted criminals.

 

Materials and Apparatus

 

Materials required for the experiment included the 15 criminal mugshots, 15 staff mugshots and finally a criminal characteristics coding sheet.

 

Procedure

 

The procedure involved going through each photo and deciding whether each person had Lombroso’s (2006) original ‘criminal characteristics’. These characteristics consisted of: asymmetric head, flattened/twisted nose, large ears, fat lips, enormous jaw, high cheekbones, narrow eyes and excessive skin wrinkles. Each photo was judged upon these criteria and whether they were present or not. The final part involved deciding whether each person was a criminal or not which was based on Lombroso’s (2006) ideas that if you perceived more than four characteristics then you were a criminal. In terms of ethical considerations the use of photos from the staff members would have required consent as well as the right to withdraw from the study at any point.

 

Results 结果

 

Overall frequencies for the ‘criminal characteristics’ identified in both sets of photos are given in Table 1. This data reveals that in terms of the ‘non- symmetrical face’ and ‘twisted nose’ characteristics these were marked as being present in the staff photos (4 and 8 time respectively) more so than for the criminal photos in which they were reported 2 and 6 times. All the other traits were identified more on the criminal photos however ‘enormous jaw’ and ‘high cheekbones’ were equally coded for at 7 and 9 times. Table 2 provides data showing the frequencies of the total numbers of ‘criminal characteristics' coded for in each group of photos. Both groups receive more total ratings in the middle of the scale, with the majority coded for 2 or 3 criminal traits. An independent t test yielded t(28) = .756, p > .05. The hypothesis was accepted: there was no difference between the criminal classification of ‘staff mug shots’ and ‘criminal mug shots’.#p#分页标题#e#

 

Discussion 讨论

 

Overall there was no difference between the criminal classification of the ‘staff mugshots’ and the ‘criminal mugshots’ which replicates similar findings obtained in studies by Goring (1972) and Kurtzberg et al, (1978). This implies that Lombroso’s original ideas and theories about certain characteristics leading to criminality have been undermined by this study. The data presented in table 2 can be described as normally distributed as the ends of the scale are sparsely occupied; however the majority of participants from both groups were coded as having between 2-5 criminal traits. According to Lombrosso a criminal was said to have four or more traits, therefore based on results obtained it can be said that the distribution of seemingly ‘criminal’ characteristics is actually very normal. One limitation to this study is that it is entirely subjective as one person is judging the photos on whether they are ‘criminal’ or not based on a set of perceived traits. This may lead to a lack of reliability as the same result cannot be guaranteed if the study is repeated. A further limitation concerning subjectivity is the classification of the criminal traits, for instance what constitutes as ‘enormous’ when describing the jaw or ‘excessive’ when labelling skin wrinkles. Further in depth classification is required to establish whether a particular trait is present. Although the results from this study and others suggest that Lombroso’s (2006) method of criminal profiling is out of date, it has led to the use of similar methods using information such as upbringing or substance use to establish whether a person is likely to commit a crime.