Biological positivism

Biological positivism

Biological positivism is one of the theories that has been used to explain the origin of crime. Crime is when an individual goes against the rules and the laws that have been agreed upon by a community of a nation. In trying to look into the reason why people commit a crime, the environment is a trigger, according to the theory (Dr. Kris 2020). There is an environmental factor that might trigger an individual to commit a crime even though the criminals make the decision to commit a crime. Environmental factors might be involved in provoking or restraining a particular behavior. They, however, do not cause the commission of the crime.

According to Cesare Lombroso, ‘The Criminal Man,’ there are criminal behaviors that are motivated by an individual’s mental and emotional state. The individuals with emotional imbalance might be motivated to commit a crime by things in the environment, such as religion or certain occurrences. The theory suggests that people do not just wake up one day and decide to commit a crime or become criminals. There are motivational factors that build up with time in the criminals that lead to criminal behavior.

A psychopath, for example, is a person who is suffering from a mental disorder. In most of the circumstances, they portray violent or abnormal behavior. However, they don’t just commit a crime without a trigger. Something in the environment might have triggered them to commit a crime. These may include someone denying them what they want. However, they are not remorseful when they commit a crime. This is because they get the attention of the people. In the first crime that they commit, they might have a bad feeling, but the attention they get makes them want to commit the crime again, especially if they are not caught doing the crime.

The occurrence of this criminal behavior then becomes a habit. They take pleasure in committing the crime and getting away with the crime. They get the idea that they are untouchable and, in most circumstances, begin to develop an audience. This might be through giving the police several clues that lead them away from the crimes they have committed or to the crimes they have committed without getting themselves involved. The theory suggests that they take pleasure in committing a crime and getting them away with it while at the same time making everybody aware that there is a crime that has been committed, and no one can do anything about it. The more they commit the crime, the more they become bold in committing future crimes. In most of the circumstances, the crimes are of the same nature, such as killing little children, mutilating young girls, and killing them afterward. They are always domineering in nature and want to prove to everyone that they are better than them.

This character is typically developed as the criminals’ progress with their crime. They become fearless in doing the crime. When they are caught, they are not remorseful or apologetic for the crimes they have committed. Most of them are usually proud of their actions and may even refuse to cooperate with the authorities. Some of them refuse to take responsibility for their actions and put the blame on something they think is more than them. An example is blaming a spirit for telling them to commit crimes.

An excellent example of this theory has been presented in the German movie M-1931. The movie talks about a character by the name Hans Beckert. He is a psychopath who kidnaps little children from school by luring them with gifts such as balloons and candy and then kills them. Over a period of about a year, he has killed eight children, but no one seems to know who he is or where he stays. They name him the murderer. Concern parents take their time to go to school to escort their children home for lunch.  Elsie Beckmann is a little girl in the movie who is the next target of the murderer.

The murderer seeks an audience, which is why he wrote a letter to the police to release to the public, but they failed to play by his rules. He then decides to leave the letters to the media, which would then print the letter in the local magazine, and everyone would be informed. He wanted to domineer over the people, which is why he wanted to instill fear in all the people. Soon it even became chaos when people started turning in neighbors and strangers just for talking to a child due to the fear. The police are doing all that they can to find the murder, but instead, they meet dead ends such as Ariston cigarette butts, some sugar grains, and a bag that held candy. The police have found and inspected over 1500 clues but have not come up with anything substantial. The police have turned up the city looking for the murderer without a trace and have even disrupted the underworld of other criminals.

The underworld boss, Schranker, gets worried about the police shakedown and even comes to the conclusion that they need to find the murderer before the police start ruining business for them. The police and the underworld boss attend a lengthy meeting where they come up with strategies in which they can catch the murderer. In the process, they decide that the only way they can catch the murderer is by observing the children all the time without causing any suspicion that they are looking for him. They decide to use beggars who sit at every corner with a cigarette to check on who the murderer is.

They finally get a breakthrough when a blind balloon peddler hears someone whistling the same song he had heard earlier when a man purchased a balloon, the same day Elsie Beckmann was murdered. He then alerts the beggar of the street who sees a man directing a little girl into a candy store. The murderer makes a mistake of throwing an orange peeling on the sidewalk. The beggar plays a trick on him and pretends to slip on the orange peeling and clutches on the murderer for support. He then transfers a big ‘M’ on the back of the shoulder that he had previously chalked on his hand. The beggars are now able to follow the man with the ‘M’ on his shoulder.

On the other hand, the police are using their own clue in an attempt to trace the origin of one of the postcards that the murderer had to send to the local newspaper. They investigate the criminals and the mental patients that have been released and fit the profile of the killer. They reach the home of the Beckert, but he is not there, so the landlady lets them in. They come across the things that such as some Ariston cigarettes and a red pencil, the likes of which were used to write the postcard. They hence become certain that Beckert is the murderer.

At the same time, the little girl notices that Beckert had an ‘M’ on the back of his shoulder and offers to wipe it off. Beckert is now aware that his identity has been revealed and runs into an office building. The beggars then inform Schranker about the incident, and he sends a group of gangsters to find him. A night watchman sounds an alarm to notify the police, and in minutes before the police arrive, the criminals manage to catch the murderer and leave the building together with everyone else except Franz, a burglar. The police get a hold of Franz and lied to him that the watchman was killed during the gangster raid.

Fearing that he might be facing a murder rap, Franz told the police how the gangsters had managed to catch the murderer and take him to an abandoned distillery to face trial. Meanwhile, in the abandoned distillery, a kangaroo court is in session with the murderer as the accused. Beckert tells the underworld boss that what causes him to kill the little children is a spirit telling him to do it and an evil impulse that he has no control of. They all vote that the only way he cannot return to claim the life of another child is by eliminating him. Beckert’s appointed council, however, disagrees with them, saying that it is the uncontrollable impulse that takes over him; therefore, the blame should not be placed on him. The police then enter the abandoned distillery and escort the murderer away.

This movie gives a clear picture of how the theory works. The murderer is a psychopath who takes pride in killing little children and causing panic to the public. This is seen when he had killed eight little girls, Elsie Beckmann, and was going to kill yet another when he was caught. Apart from that, he rights letters and postcards to the local newspaper to inform everyone that he has done it again, and they have no power to catch him. He is a psychopath since when he is caught, he does not feel any remorse. He blames the incident on an evil impulse he claims he cannot control and a spirit telling him to do it.

As the theory suggest, the environment might influence a person to commit a crime, but it is the individuals who make the decision to commit the crime. In this case, the fact that Beckert was writing the letters to inform the public that he has done it again and that it was not the end, shows that something in the environment had triggered his state of mind which is the audience he had. However, the decision to kill the children was based on Beckert. The fact that he thrived in creating panic in the local population shows that he made the decisions to kill the little children and not the evil impulse he claims he cannot control.

What is missing in the story about Beckert that proves the theory is how he killed the first eight girls, why he killed them, and what made him commit his first murder. That information would have helped to describe why Beckert had portrayed such criminal behavior. However, the fact that the police used the records of the released criminals and patients with mental illnesses to find the killer suggests that he had either portrayed some criminal behavior or mental instability before he started killing again.

References

Dr. Kris Unsworth (2020). ‘Advanced Criminological Theory.’ The Handbook of Criminological Theory (2015): 318-335. Drexel University

“YouTube.” YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2020.