3.4 Positive School of Criminology
Positivism, the philosophy that knowledge should be based on empirical evidence shown in research, was developed by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1858), who is credited with founding the discipline of sociology. Influenced by positivism, those seeking to understand criminal offending could no longer propose ideas without providing some kind of proof. Early scholars in the positive school of criminology had to figure out how to gather data and analyze it in a way that might explain criminal behavior. The focus shifted from looking philosophically at why people committed crimes and the strategic use of punishment, to scientifically understanding potential internal reasons for criminal behavior.
Therefore, the positive school of thought was a major shift from both the ideas that external supernatural forces caused crime (pre-classical) or that criminal behavior was a choice (classical). Instead, positivist criminologists saw criminal behavior as something that was, to some degree, predetermined—or caused—by internal factors like one’s biological or psychological makeup. These new researchers looked at medicine, hereditary, and evolution to try to understand offending behavior. They had some good ideas, but also some outlandish and harmful ideas. The origins of biological and psychological approaches to criminology, as well as more modern understandings, will be discussed in Chapter 4. Additionally, the positivist school has changed over time, and many theories now assess social factors in criminal offending. Biosocial theories, for example, are those that consider the impact of both biological (internal) and social (external) reasons for criminal behavior. Also, many modern criminological theories examine how economic, political, cultural, familial, and other sociological factors impact criminal offending. Some of these are better described as “sociological theories” and fit within a variety of subcategories that we will discuss later.
Developing Crime Statistics
It may be hard to believe, but statistics were not always used to explain patterns in criminal behavior. You have the positive school of criminology to thank for all the statistical methods we want you to learn now. They are the ones who brought this type of analysis into criminology.
Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer and mathematician, was introduced to the statistical movement while in Paris (figure 3.10). Alongside French statistician Andre-Michel Guerry, Quetelet uncovered some significant patterns through the mapping of various statistical data (including crime) to geographical areas (Walsh & Hemmens, 2014). Quetelet initiated a government-backed census project, and they gathered data on various issues, including crime and other social factors. They then looked at relationships between statistical variables to figure out crime and social behavior during the 19th century. We do this a lot now, but it was a new practice then.
In 1825, Franc