The Positive School of Criminology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 84 pages of information about The Positive School of Criminology.

The Positive School of Criminology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 84 pages of information about The Positive School of Criminology.

The method which we, on the other hand, have inaugurated is the following:  Before we study crime from the point of view of a juristic phenomenon, we must study the causes to which the annual recurrence of crimes in all countries is due.  These are natural causes, which I have classified under the three heads of anthropological, telluric and social.  Every crime, from the smallest to the most atrocious, is the result of the interaction of these three causes, the anthropological condition of the criminal, the telluric environment in which he is living, and the social environment in which he is born, living and operating.  It is a vain beginning to separate the meshes of this net of criminality.  There are still those who would maintain the one-sided standpoint that the origin of crime may be traced to only one of these elements, for instance, to the social element alone.  So far as I am concerned, I have combatted this opinion from the very inauguration of the positive school of criminology, and I combat it today.  It is certainly easy enough to think that the entire origin of all crime is due to the unfavorable social conditions in which the criminal lives.  But an objective, methodical, observation demonstrates that social conditions alone do not suffice to explain the origin of criminality, although it is true that the prevalence of the influence of social conditions is an incontestable fact in the case of the greater number of crimes, especially of the lesser ones.  But there are crimes which cannot be explained by the influence of social conditions alone.  If you regard the general condition of misery as the sole source of criminality, then you cannot get around the difficulty that out of one thousand individuals living in misery from the day of their birth to that of their death only one hundred or two hundred become criminals, while the other nine hundred or eight hundred either sink into biological weakness, or become harmless maniacs, or commit suicide without perpetrating any crime.  If poverty were the sole determining cause, one thousand out of one thousand poor ought to become criminals.  If only two hundred become criminals, while one hundred commit suicide, one hundred end as maniacs, and the other six hundred remain honest in their social condition, then poverty alone is not sufficient to explain criminality.  We must add the anthropological and telluric factor.  Only by means of these three elements of natural influence can criminality be explained.  Of course, the influence of either the anthropological or telluric or social element varies from case to case.  If you have a case of simple theft, you may have a far greater influence of the social factor than of the anthropological factor.  On the other hand, if you have a case of murder, the anthropological element will have a far greater influence than the social.  And so on in every case of crime, and every individual that you will have to judge on the bench of the criminal.

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The Positive School of Criminology from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.