Positivist School
Definition
The nineteenth-century tradition, associated with Lombroso, Ferri, and Garofalo, that rejected free will and sought causes of crime in measurable biological, psychological, or social factors. It applied scientific methods to the study of the offender.
- Key figures
- Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, Raffaele Garofalo
- Era
- Late nineteenth century
- Rejected
- Free will as the basis of criminal responsibility
- Method
- Empirical measurement of biological, psychological and social traits
Common questions
How does it differ from the Classical School that preceded it?+
The Classical School treated the offender as a rational actor who freely chose crime and deserved proportionate punishment for the act itself. The Positivist School instead looked for causes outside free choice, in the offender's biology, psychology or social environment, and argued that treatment should fit the individual rather than the offence.
Why is Lombroso's atavism theory now rejected?+
His claim that criminals were biological throwbacks identifiable by physical stigmata was never supported by controlled comparison groups and collapsed once later researchers tested it properly. The theory is taught today as a historical case study in scientific racism, not as valid criminology.
What did the school leave behind that is still used?+
Its insistence on studying the offender empirically rather than reasoning from first principles helped establish criminology as a data-driven discipline, and it underlies later individualised approaches to sentencing and rehabilitation, even though its specific biological claims have been discarded.
Related terms
- Atavism
- Lombroso's concept that born criminals were evolutionary throwbacks to a more primitive human type, identifiable by physical stigmata. The concept is scientifically...
- Classical School
- The eighteenth-century intellectual tradition in criminology, associated with Beccaria and Bentham, that treats offenders as rational actors and argues for proportionate, certain,...
- Labelling Theory
- The perspective, associated with Becker and Lemert, that deviance is not a property of the act but a consequence of the social...
- Social Disorganisation
- The condition of a neighbourhood in which social institutions have weakened to the point where they can no longer effectively regulate behaviour...
- Strain Theory
- Merton's 1938 theory that crime results from a structural gap between culturally valued goals and the legitimate means available to achieve them....