This chapter addresses the causes of crime, the exploration of which has been a high priority within criminology as the main way of explaining crime and of informing responses to crime. The chapter begins by considering how criminologists understand crime and the causes of crime, comparing interpretivism with positivism as ways of exploring and thinking about crime. A central motivation for identifying causes is to validate the factors targeted through criminological responses such as sentencing, crime reduction and prevention activity, and policy. The dominance of positivist experimentation within criminology and the associated search for causes has been re-animated in the 21st century by the growing popularity of experimental criminology in the US, most notably the ‘what works’ experimental method of evaluating crime prevention programmes. The chapter then looks at contemporary challenges to the experimental ‘what works’ approach, namely realistic evaluation, the theory of change model, and chaos theory.
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22. Searching for the causes of crime
Chapter
4. The classical and positivist traditions
This chapter discusses in detail the two major themes in the formation of criminological thinking. The tension between these two traditions has existed since the development of positivism in the nineteenth century and is still of considerable importance in present-day debates about crime and ‘law and order’. It is common to single out France as typifying all that was bad with the administration of the criminal law in pre-eighteenth-century Europe. France provided an extreme example of what passed as criminal ‘justice’ throughout most of Europe. It was generally believed that crime was the consequence of evil. In some cases, it was assumed that the Devil or demons had taken over individuals and directed them to perform wicked acts. Alternatively, people whose faith in God was weak might have yielded to temptation and made a pact with the Devil.
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4. Theoretical criminology: a starting point
Keith Hayward and Wayne Morrison
This chapter offers a comprehensive introduction to how criminological theory has developed and is used. It presents a series of theoretical vignettes, each of which provides both an accessible introduction to a particular theory and informed signposts to more detailed readings. The discussions cover criminology's two founding doctrines: the ‘classical’ and ‘positivist’ approaches to the study of crime; biological, genetic, and psychological explanations of crime; the Chicago School of sociology; the ‘labelling’ perspective; Marxist/radical criminology; criminological realism; control theory; and cultural criminology.
