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Second Criminological Theory

Decent Essays

The second criminological theory to be discussed is Biological Positivism (Lombroso, 1876). Biological Positivism (Lombroso, 1876) is a criminology theory developed in the early nineteenth century by an Italian army psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso (1835/1909) (Walsh & Ellis, 2007). It was developed based on a persons’ biological and genetic disposition and stemmed from a scientific approach (Williams, 2012). Lombroso’s popularised Biological Positivism (1876) focused upon the characteristics of the criminal as opposed to crime. Lombroso attempted to establish that criminals exhibited certain traits that resembled to different stages of human evolution (White et al., 2012). Lombroso labelled these traits as anomalies and established such traits …show more content…

For Cohen & Felson’s Routine Activity Theory (1979), predatorial crime occurs from the presence of three underpinning variables/elements of motivated offenders, suitable targets and an absence of capable guardians (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Applying these variables/elements to the circumstances of the local burglary offences identifies the offences to be predominantly occurring to suitable targets of multi-story residential apartments, where offenders have gained access by climbing several stories or a drain pipe, with no resident present in the dwelling (absence of capable guardians) and in an area populated with motivated offenders being refugees and housing commission residents (Cohen & Felson, 1979; QPS, 2017). Further to this, the theorists who developed Routine Activity Theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979) also propose that changes to everyday activities explain the causation of a trending crime rate (Jones, 2013). In relation to the local burglary offences, the offence dates ranged between 18 January 2017 to 1 February 2017, being the end of the December school holidays (QPS, 2017). This presents a time period whereby residents are returning to work and school, leaving their dwellings unattended which demonstrates a change in everyday activities (Jones,

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