Chapter 8: Medicine and Crime: The Search for the Born Criminal and the Medical Control of CriminalityCREATED BY: MAKENZIE HARDER, CLINTON PROHASKA, AND JOHN THURSTON

Introduction

Medical and biological approaches to crime became important in the middle-to-late 19th century.

Richard Moran explores the emergence of medical and “therapeutic” methods used to “treat” and control criminality.

Moran also discusses rehabilitative idea in treatment of criminals and recognizes the potential for its advancement in the future.

Cesare di Beccaria explained that one’s choice of destiny comes from the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.

Casper Lavater described the mind and body as interdependent, the nature of a person’s soul is written on his face, this was known as physiognomy.

Gall and Spurzheim developed a theory that many physical characteristics of the brain and skull had a relation to the mental capacities and temperament.

Cesare Lombroso stated that physical characteristics could be correlated with inward psychology based of his observation of tattooed soldiers being more deviant also known as the search for the born criminal.

After finding that many prisoners in an Italian prison had an indention in the back of their heads Lombroso made the connection that the indention was similar to that of “lower” animals thus Lombroso deemed criminals as a sub-species.

Robert Dugdale and the Jukes – after selecting the “juke” family from a prison he traced the lineage to find out of 709 fully traceable family members 180 were paupers and at least 140 were convicted of crimes. Roberts conclusion was that there was heredity in deviance behavior but environment still had a role to play in the development of the behavior.

Charles Goring believed that everyone possessed the mental, moral, physical traits of a criminal, it was a matter of the quantity of these traits that dictated a criminal.

Goring compared Soldiers and University students to inmates and found no real conclusive evidence other than the prisoners had an “inferior” body type which was small and narrow.

Johannes Lang concluded that monozygotic twins seemed to have a definite similarity where dizygotic twins were usually different from each other. Furthermore, one monozygotic twin was imprisoned the odds were that the other was too.

Ernest Hooton criticized Goring’s work, essentially created a large number (107) of sub races and tied them to a what the “average” crime was that they would commit.

William Sheldon – the three body types Endomorph-”relative soft roundness through the body Mesomorph-”relative predominance of muscle, bone, and

connective tissue” Ectomorph-”predominance of linearity and fragility”

Sheldon conducted a study at a Juvenile Delinquency center and created a risk assessment tool that would measure the potential for juveniles to become delinquent. He concluded that their physical traits were correlated with their potential for delinquency.

Transition to medicine let the punishment fit the criminal not the crime, the medical view and research begins here.

Parens patrae also known as the medical view which meant the politics of crime labeling were powerless (sins, crime, immoral.) Instead the political powers had a parenting role that would rest the care of deviance or “criminals” into the hands of the medical field to take care of criminality as Political power took the “parental role”.

The medical view wasn’t without tyranny just as before many mistakes would be made and moral grounds would be pushed greatly.

Burckhardt performed the first modern brain operation to change human behavior (labotomy)

Freeman and Watts introduced psychosurgery in the U.S. and developed the technique of cutting the frontal lobes of the brain by inserting an ice pick-like surgical instrument through the eye socket.

In the late 1960s psychosurgery became openly promoted as a technique to quiet political protest and racial conflict in America.

Jacobs and her colleagues brought into prominence the theory of a relationship between the XYY karyotype and crime.

Y Chromosome was theorized to possess an elevated aggressiveness potential.

X Chromosome was considered to contain a high gentleness component.

The Extra Y Chromosome presents a double dose of aggressiveness.

Research has described such XYY males as being unusually tall, mentally dull, having facial acne, and relatively high occurrence of epilepsy, which was believed many researches at the time to be the source of aggression.

Ivan Pavlov developed a contemporary theory known as classical conditioning in which he observed dogs that would salivate when food was placed in the mouths.

The food was referred to as an unconditioned response of salivation.

Pavlov then began to use a bell before food was given to the dogs and then noticed eventually that the sound created salivation leading to the becoming a conditioned stimulus which then caused the conditioned response of salivation.

Skinner introduced the theory of operant conditioning. There is a “reinforce” in which a reward is given to the subject each time he produces a desired behavior.]

The reinforcer is made contingent on the correct response while the response is known as the operant.

Operant Conditioning is based on the idea that behavior which is reinforced tends to be repeated, whereas behavior that is not reinforced tends to be eliminated.

Behavior Modification is known to have principles that have been employed in “therapeutic” settings to modify or alter human behavior.

Positive Reinforcement is the most commonly used technique of behavior modification. In addition, to increase the occurrence of a desired behavior, positive reinforcements or rewards are given each time the behavior occurs naturally.

Negative Reinforcement is used as a form of operant conditioning to increase the frequency of desired behavior.

Biotechnology involves the insertion of electrodes into the brain through a hole or holes in the skull. The brain is then electrically simulated until unwanted behavior occurs. Once the unwanted behavior is located (fits of rage, depression, euphoria), that area of the brain is heavy with electricity.

Jose M. R. Delgado proposed for an educational program to introduce respect for physical control of the mind proves successful, the “afflicted” person may come to participate voluntarily in a “therapeutic” program of mind control.

Delgado believed that citizens could wear transmitters that would allow law-enforcement to know immediately when they are attacked and where.

CIA and Mind Control was a project that involved the “research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in undercover operations to control human behavior.”