Criminology is the systemic study of the ‘nature, extent, cause, and control of lawbreaking behavior’ (Lanier and Henry 1998: 2). For hundreds of years, criminologists have sought to explain the disproportional numbers of crimes committed by men as compared to women.
The earliest theory of criminology is the demonic perspective. The demonic perspective focuses on supernaturalism (possession) to explain crime as well as administer punishment. During the Salem witch trials of the 1600s in colonial America, numerous individuals were accused of witchcraft, and a disproportionate number of those accused were women. One theory of this disparity suggests that men used the witchcraft allegation to quell the growing political and social interests that women expressed in their communities (Erikson 1966). Others argue that those who fell outside the social order, including women who rejected heterosexual marriage and gay men, were punished (Pfohl 1994:38). In today’s world, the demonic perspective is used by evangelical leaders to explain events of mass violence like 9/11, and gays and lesbians are often targeted for their transgressive lifestyles. Similarly, demonic possession has been claimed by male serial killers including David Berkowitz.
The second major criminological theory, the classical perspective, emerged in the eighteenth century as a response to the arbitrary and unscientific demonic perspective. Associated with Beccaria and Bentham, it focused on philosophical concepts of the social contract and free will: individuals would be protected from injustices committed by the state or other citizens and, in return, they would exercise good judgment, according to their free will, and not commit crime. Many of the administrative justice concepts of the classical perspective, including Beccaria’s (1963), formed the basis of the human rights principles expressed in the US Constitution (Lanier and Henry 1998:67). Classical theory sought less to explain why crime occurred and more to administer forms of justice that would protect all equally under the law. A current application of the classical perspective, known as rational choice theory, extends the focus on free will and analyses why people commit crimes. This theory addresses choice structuring—the idea that people will engage in criminal acts if their net gain will outweigh their risks and potential losses—and initially emphasised the criminality of men; once women achieved greater social and economic rights, their rationality led them to commit crimes similar to those of men (Adler 1975).
In the nineteenth century, biological or pathological theory used positivism, purported empirical testing and biological determinism to suggest that crime was the result of biological or psychological predispositions. This theory is the first major criminological perspective to focus on males as the primary source of crime in society, and it focused on inherent biological abnormalities as explanations of why men committed crime. Biological criminologists argued that certain body types were associated with certain forms of crime (Pfohl 1994:108). Later works, including The Female Offender (Lombroso and Ferrero 1900), focused on the rare case of female criminality and suggested that female criminals were those who exhibited excessive male characteristics. As biological explanations of crime waned, psychological theories influenced by the work of Freud analysed the internal conflicts of the mind that resulted from childhood traumas in the offender (Lanier and Henry 1998:115). Contemporary pathological theories combine biological and psychological elements and target both male and female offenders. Testosterone is often cited as a physiological precondition that causes men to commit more crimes than women, particularly rape (Booth and Osgood 1993), while female physiology, including menstruation and menopause, has been used to explain the rare incidence of female offence (Pollak 1950).
The learning perspective is the first of a series of criminological theories that emphasises the nature of an individual’s involvement in social relations. Sutherland relativised previous theories of crime and said that ‘any person can be trained to adopt and follow’ patterns of crime and deviance (1934:51). According to Sutherland’s ‘differential association’ concept, the frequency of interactions with criminal offenders, the prestige of criminals and the duration of contact between offenders and potential offenders are all factors in an individual’s likelihood to engage in criminal lifestyles (Pfohl 1994:302–3). Suther-land also emphasised that concomitant with the development of criminal behaviours in social groups, ‘rough and tough’ attitudes increased the individual’s propensity to internalise criminal attitudes. Studies of the gang phenomenon present the influence of older male role models as a primary factor in younger males’ likelihood to join gangs and commit criminal activities (Cloward and Ohlin 1960).
A second social theory of criminology is social control theory. This theory analyses why some individuals engage in criminal behaviour and why others do not, and its analytical frame includes inner controls (including morality and conscience) and outer controls (including social control agents like police, teachers and parents). Social control theory has been used to explain the prevalence of crime committed by males, and many criminologists have emphasised that males are more likely to engage in crime because they have been socialised to rely on masculine traits like aggressiveness and toughness to resolve interpersonal conflict (Messerschmidt 1993). Additionally, other criminologists suggest that failed social bonds early in life, and broken ones later, lead to males choosing criminal over lawful behaviour (Lanier and Henry 1998:159).
Labelling theory is a contemporary perspective that analyses how self-concept affects an individual’s decision to commit crime. A number of influential studies argue that crime and deviance are the result of the interaction of offenders and those who respond to social violations and, more specifically, the nature of categorisation (or labelling) that is used to identify some individuals as criminal and others as law-abiding (Erikson 1966; Goffman 1963). The power of one individual to label another is key to labelling theory. In terms of identity and self-concept leading to the commission of crime, sociologists have emphasised that masculinity plays a major role in the socialisation of boys and thus leads to the prevalence of male offenders (Parsons 1964). Boys’ self-concept is often tied to the acting out of socially accepted masculine roles, and in some cases a boy’s gender can become a master status, essentially defining the essence of his personality (ibid.: 33). Such powerful labels, including ‘he is just a tough guy’, can lead a boy to accept the labels imposed on him and actually engage in the criminal behaviours that society is attempting to abate. Collier has called for the reappraisal of masculinity as it relates to criminology (1998). Particularly, criminologists need to address the complexity of masculinity—as cultural and political phenomenon—and analyse the ways in which theories of crime focus on limited and over-determined concepts of maleness.
Another major variety of criminological theories analyses how crime develops as a result of large-scale or macro social conditions. The first of these perspectives is social disorganisation theory, and it is associated with the Chicago School of Sociology. Members of the school identified major and rapid forms of social change, including immigration, upheavals like warfare and economic depression, and technological changes, as the primary factors in producing crime. Using ecological models of explanation, social disorganisation theory identified specific zones of crime, and these typically were found in transitional zones of the city. Shaw and McKay studied the nature of juvenile delinquency among boys in early twentieth-century Chicago and concluded that delinquency was most common in the inner city.
Strain theory, derived by Merton from Durkheim’s concept of anomie, focuses on crime resulting from discrepancies between socially constructed goals and the availability of means of achieving such goals. This criminological perspective emphasises that there is an inherent flaw in the nature of society—unattainable aspirations—and this leads people to pursue success and achievement by any means necessary. Money and autonomy are common goals that are connected to the value systems of capitalist nations, and when these goals are unmet, individuals may resort to socially deviant ways of achieving them. Strain theory is applicable to the understanding of males and crime, especially as the male emphasis on status and respect can result in the promulgation of criminal activity. Some current organisations, including Advocates for Youth in the United States, have directly addressed strain theory and masculinity by developing peer discussion groups focused on self-esteem and awareness.
Another major perspective in contemporary criminology includes conflict and radical theory. These theories are founded on the work of Marx; they suggest that the cause of crime is found in the ‘conflict that stems from the inequalities produced by capitalist society’ (Lanier and Henry 1998:236). Conflict and radical approaches analyse the ways in which capitalism’s economic and cultural systems produce a criminogenic society, one that is prone to crime. One explanation for the high percentage of males who commit crime is that males’ greater economic and social power, resulting from the gendered nature of capitalism, puts them in positions to commit crime. Conversely, women occupy positions of less prominence and are less able to participate in criminal activity. When men do commit crimes, they often do so to maintain the systems of exploitation common to capitalism. According to conflict and radical criminology, crime is systemic: it allows the powerful members of society to maintain their control of economic and cultural resources. One recent example of elite corporate deviance in the United States, the Enron case in which insiders gained huge profits from manipulating energy supplies while consumers suffered blackouts, illustrates the extent to which property crimes are connected to the exploitative elements of capitalism. Though a majority of the Enron criminals were male, some conflict and radical criminologists argue that if women were in the same positions of corporate power, they would commit similar crimes since the economic system produces crime regardless of the sex of the offenders. A recent extension of Marxist criminology, Marxist feminism, focuses on the ways in which men maintain exploitative relations within capitalism. For example, they claim that rape in capitalist societies illustrates the idea that crime is connected to the problems associated with capitalism: men rape not for sexual pleasure but for maintaining control within other spheres of society (Lanier and Henry 1998:275).
A final strain of criminological theory is referred to as critical criminology. The first critical approach is anarchist criminology. According to anarchist criminologists, men are the unwitting victims of the power dynamics of criminal justice systems. Most commonly, they are the ones committing crime, administering its punishment and often its victims. Closely aligned with this approach is abolitionist criminology. According to abolitionist criminologists, ‘punishment is never justified’ (Lanier and Henry 1998:287), and many call for the complete abandonment of traditional forms of criminal justice, including penology. As opposed to the masculinised model of justice that is common to most industrialised societies, the abolitionist approach focuses on restorative systems of justice that reduce pain rather than inflict it. A third critical criminological strain, peacemaking criminology, argues for a similar alteration of masculinised criminal justice systems. Peacemaking criminology opposes concepts like ‘the war on drugs’ and analyses the unjust nature of criminal justice policy, including boot camps, degradation punishment and the death penalty. In each of these examples, males are victimising other males through systems of retribution that perpetuate the violence they ostensibly seek to eliminate. Finally, feminist criminological theory addresses the unique statuses afforded to women in society and within the criminal justice system. According to some feminist criminologists, the disproportionate number of male offenders in many societies means that women face the harms of patriarchal society, including the physical, psychological and social vulnerability associated with crime. Feminist theorists have also written that many areas of the criminal justice system, including rape and pornography policy, are biased against women. Many have also addressed the erasure of women from criminology—both as victims and as offenders—and suggest the need to develop more comprehensively gendered scholarship and more equity for those scholars within the field (Lanier and Henry 1998:269). Many criminologists have called for a more explicit focus on masculinity in its relationship to the theories of crime and criminal justice practices of society. Some criminological theories have not emphasised masculinity as a multifaceted and socially complex phenomenon while others have deemphasised the status of men as victims within crime (Newburn and Stanko 1994).
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