English fo MP student book

UNIT 14 – Criminology

Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician, psychiatrist and (1) …… criminologist, who caused a sensation with the publication in 1876 of his book L'uomo delinquente. (Criminal Man). In this work, Lombroso employed Darwinian ideas of evolution to account for criminal behaviour.

Measuring the heads of (2) ….. and executed criminals (3) ….. the skulls of apes, prehistoric humans and what he and his contemporaries saw as 'primitive' peoples, Lombroso concluded that criminals were in fact (4) ….. of atavism.

Lombroso believed that his theory of atavistic (5) ….. had clear implications for the prevention and punishment of crime.

Not all of Lombroso's contemporaries were inclined to accept his (6)….. (7) ….. the biological basis of criminality. In many circles, his ideas met (8) ….. concerted opposition.

(9) ….., Lombroso had his admirers throughout Europe, and his theory of atavism captured the imagination of middle class writers and readers.

(10)….., Lombroso gradually came to think that social factors were also significant in disposing people to criminal behaviour. Even so, he still believed that (11) ….. forty percent of criminals were prisoners of their biological inheritance.

Opposition to Lombroso . These ideas were (12)….. from universally accepted. Even though they were embraced by several (13) ….. British academics, most were sceptical. French delegates (14) ….. the 1889 International Congress of Criminal Anthropology were likewise (15) …… They believed the origins of crime (16) ….... in social conditions rather than in (17) ....

tendencies.

¾ Activity 7

Pair work

Although the atavistic theory of deviance is outdated, for the sake of argument, try to think about and describe a notorious criminal. Do any of the criteria on the Lombrosian checklist apply to the character you have chosen?

STIGMATA RELATED TO AN ATAVISTIC CRIMINAL

-DEVIATION IN HEAD SIZE AND SHAPE FROM TYPE COMMON TO RACE AND REGION FROM WHICH THE CRIMINAL CAME

-ASYMMETRY OF THE FACE

-EYE DEFECTS AND PECULIARITIES

-EXCESSIVE DIMENSIONS OF THE JAW AND CHEEK BONES

-EARS OF UNUSUAL SIZE, OR OCCASIONALLY VERY SMALL OR STANDING OUT FROM THE HEAD AS DO THOSE OF THE CHIMPANZEE

-NOSE TWISTED, UPTURNED, OR FLATTENED IN THIEVES, OR AQUILINE OR BEAK-LIKE IN MURDERERS OR WITH A TIP RISING LIKE A PEAK

-LIPS FLESHY, SWOLLEN & PROTRUDING

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-POUCHES IN THE CHEEK LIKE THOSE OF SOME ANIMALS

-PECULIARITIES OF THE PALATE, SUCH AS ARE FOUND IN SOME REPTILES, AND CLEFT PALATE

-CHIN RECEDING OR EXCESSIVELY LONG, OR SHORT AND FLAT, AS IN APES

-ABNORMAL DENTITION

-ABUNDANCE AND VARIETY OF WRINKLES

-ANOMALIES OF THE HAIR

-EXCESSIVE LENGTH OF ARMS

-"EXTRA" FINGERS AND TOES

Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) searched for physical characteristics that were common to criminals and declared that he had discovered 'the criminal man.' Although Lombroso's findings have been invalidated, some research still continues into biological theories of crime.

¾ Activity 8 Victims and Perpetrators: A Sociological Approach

Use the data below to identify the persons and their association with various crimes. Work with a partner to exchange ideas.

a. "I pray someone will show me some mercy and give me a second chance at life. I'd like to have children someday."

b. Prison's no place for an innocent child

There's no room for the meek, no room for the mild.[…] Grant me one prayer as you did from the cross

For that thief who knew that his life was a loss.[…] Broken and penitent, forgotten and lost

on the ash heap of regret where my life was tossed. I've no other place left on this earth

Remember me O Lord! Renew me by birth. Come to this prison, enter my cell

Save me, forgive me, in this man-made hell.”

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c.That we can learn a lot about a man from the books and films he chooses is borne out by our character. One of his favorite books was The Turner Diaries written by former American Nazi Party leader William L. Pierce, under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. Its hero – Earl Turner – responds to gun control by making a truck bomb and blowing up the Washington FBI Building.

d.Post mortem examination of the seven bodies found in the yard revealed large concentrations of the drug Flurazepam or Dalmane, as it is commercially known. Police later found dozens of prescriptions for the drug among personal papers of the accused. As the investigation progressed, detectives discovered that she had cashed over sixty benefit checks belonging to the deceased - after their deaths.

e.“The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people.”

f.Throughout her life, she was a devoted mother to her three children. However, when her husband died, her children turned on her, forcing her to sell her home and all her possessions. Destitute through no fault of her own, she moved into a boarding house and was never seen again.

g.A millionaire who owned 250 acres of breathtakingly beautiful land that was adjacent to federal parklands. Attempts had been made by the federal authorities to buy the property, but he was not interested in selling. Claims that there might be pot

(marijuana) growing on the land, made by agents who did aerial surveillance, were used to get a search warrant.

An official inquiry suggested that agents had hoped this raid would lead to asset forfeiture of the property. The coroner's report listed the cause of death as homicide. No marijuana was found. He did not even smoke it. In January, 2000, his family won a $5 million wrongful death settlement from the government over the shooting.

h.In 1946, she married for the first time but was widowed two years later when her husband died of a heart attack. Alone and in desperate need of money, she tried forging checks. Eventually she was caught and sent to jail for a year but was paroled after six months. Soon after her release, she fell pregnant to a man she hardly knew and gave birth to a baby girl which she gave up for adoption. […] In 1960 she was arrested in a brothel. She claimed she was just visiting a friend but was given ninety days in Sacramento County Jail. […] As time went on she became involved in various illegal activities that gradually became more serious and would probably have landed her in jail for a longer term had she not found work as a nurse’s aid, caring for the disabled and elderly in private homes.

i.“We should not have to ask the government for permission to put what we choose in our own bodies, nor should we need the state's fiat to buy and sell these things. Our homes and ourselves should be inviolate. We are not the property of the state, that it should protect us from ourselves.”

j.He was so into firearms that he answered the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “gun shop owner.”

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k.She preferred older men, preferably those who were receiving benefits. They, in turn, were attracted to her snappy clothes and warm, caring manner. Her system was simple; she would win her victims over with her charms, steal their benefit checks and cash them by forging their signatures.

l.We might remember that the War on Drugs is a new phenomenon. I reflect much on this as I sit in prison until the next century for a crime that did not exist at the beginning of this one. There was no drug prohibition in the 19th century. “

Read these specialist opinions and discuss with your partner.

Sigmund Freud , the founder of psychoanalysis, suggested that criminality may result from an overactive conscience. When treating patients, Freud noticed that many of those who were suffering from unbearable guilt (of a non-criminal kind) went ahead and committed crimes in order to be apprehended and punished.He also suggested that criminal behaviour depends on an insatiable need for immediate reward and gratification.

For more information, have a look at …

Sigmund Freud - A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,

NY:Liveright, 1920

From “guilt” to “anger” …

Criminals are “angry” people who feel a sense of superiority, expect not to be held accountable for their acts and have a highly inflated selfimage.

Adapted from Samuel Yochelson and Stanton Samenow – The Criminal Personality, NY: Jason Aronson, 1976

A social perspective is highlighted in Adler …

"A criminal is not interested in others. He can cooperate only to a certain degree. When this degree is exhausted, he turns to crime.” or …

“Crime is a coward's imitation of heroism.” See …

Alfred Adler -"Individual Psychology and Crime," in The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, London, Routledge & Kegan, 1925. "The unsocial individual will look for an a-social solution to regain self-respect.”

An interesting collection to consult …

Adde Davidson (ed.) - The Collected Works of Lydia Sicher: An Adlerian Perspective, QED Press, 1992

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Before writing, work with a partner to plan your essay.

What makes a perpetrator tick, psychologically? Write an essay (no longer than 150 words) based on the specialist’s opinions quoted above.

Consider what has influenced their lives up to the time of the criminal offence. Think about factors that shape personality, both positive and negative. Think about how “normal” people adjust to their society and how criminal personalities develop. Can people become criminals “against their will?”

Imagine being a criminal’s psychoanalyst. Choose a fellow student to be your “patient”. You may use the following prompts and any more of your own in building up your dialogue:

There are comedies about Mafia gang bosses "going soft" and seeking psychiatric help. Would this ever happen in reality?

There are many slang expressions in the world of crime. Here are some examples of how to refer to lawbreakers:

perp (short for: perpetrator), operator, made man (US: member of the Mafia), parking-meter thief (petty thief), trigger man (hit man), JD (juvenile delinquent), MINS (US jail slang: Minor in Need of Supervision), shut eyes (child molester), firebug (arsonist)KG (known gambler)

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¾ Activity 13 Explain the following in your own words.

“It is only when a system of cultural values extols […] certain common symbols of success for the population at large while its social structure rigorously restricts or completely eliminates access to approved modes of acquiring these symbols for a considerable part of the same population, that antisocial behaviour ensues on a considerable scale.”

Robert K. Merton – Social Structure and Anomie ASR, 3. 1938

¾ Activity 14 Career Criminals and their Victims

Read the texts carefully

Alvin Karpis: Pursuit of the Last Public Enemy

(1)Alvin Karpis was a career criminal from the age of ten. Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, he started out running errands for petty gamblers, pimps and bootleggers, saying later, “I just naturally liked the action.” Jumping ahead fifty years–after serving thirty-three years in prison– he summed up his crime career:

(2)“My profession was robbing banks, knocking off payrolls, and kidnapping rich men. I was good at it. Maybe the best in North America for five years from 1931-1936".

(3)Karpis and Fred Barker had met in a Kansas prison. When they both were free in 1931, the gang began to develop. At first, there were night time burglaries of various shops, like jewelry and clothing stores, but soon they moved into daylight bank robberies. The participants were almost always Fred Barker and Karpis. Then, depending on the conditions and requirements of the targeted bank, there was an informal underworld workforce of experienced thieves and stickup men from which the remaining crew was selected - resembling today’s Temporary Help agencies!

(4)The friendship between Karpis and Fred Barker, who shared an organized, planned approach to each “job”, helped the gang to be so prolific and earn them so much money that they lost count of the grand total. In 1932 alone, they robbed eleven banks that Karpis - who had a nearly perfect photographic memory - could recall offhand.

(5)Consider what the fluctuating, part-time members of the gang represented to the FBI and potential prosecutors; they had to sort through several aliases trying to find matches with particular (but not all) crimes known to be perpetrated by the Barker-Karpis mob. Not only were there multiple crimes across many states, but also several suspects using numerous aliases—even the informants co-operating with the FBI may not have known the offenders’ correct name. On one occasion, Karpis and another contemporary gangster boss, Fred Hunter, were both using the same alias (“King”) simultaneously.

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(6)This was long before the computerized instant identifications available today which can sort and match the aliases, eyewitness testimony, fingerprints, photos, etc. in seconds —and reach automated conclusions about which suspects committed certain crimes. Also, surveillance cameras in the 1930’s banks were non-existent. It actually may have been easier to track Karpis and Barker because they were more recognizable due to their notoriety and were full-time robbers, whereas the other gang members came and went.

(7)Karpis pointed out several times in his autobiography the charges and even convictions levelled at other outlaws for crimes the Barker-Karpis bunch actually committed. Some of these arrests/convictions were supported by eyewitness testimony - well meant, but incorrect.

(8)The use of multiple aliases resulted in the FBI departing on incredibly time-consuming “wild goose chases”, pursuing leads on possible gang members, or people that might have had a fleeting role in the Karpis-Barker gang. On one occasion at least, the search was for a person already dead - Doc Moran. He was a real doctor who had performed gruesome “fingerprint removal” operations on Fred Barker and Karpis. His downfall came when the two patients found out that he was telling hookers about his unusual medical skills. When he vanished, Barker's comment was: “We shot the son of a bitch; anybody who talks to whores is too dangerous to live.”

(9)In early 1936, FBI files recorded the pursuit of Doc Moran’s "ghost" and their attempts to track down a con man named William Mead to determine if he was a Barker –Karpis kidnapping conspirator – he wasn’t. This represented approximately 15%-20% of an FBI file, as Mead had used no less than twenty-five aliases.

(10)In 1931, when the gang started forming, Alvin Karpis was twenty-three years old, Fred Barker thirty, and FBI director J.Edgar Hoover, who was to become the personal nemesis of Karpis, was thirty-six. Hoover had been appointed Director of the Bureau seven years earlier.

(11)During 1931-1933, the Barker-Karpis gang successfully looted banks at such a rapid pace, it became routine. As part of the planning and strategy for each bank, the gang tried to carry more firepower than they anticipated the police would have. The machine guns came from either a connection in New York or the gang members walked into a rural police station after midnight and told the officer on duty, at gunpoint, they wanted the machine guns. In other words, armed robberies of police stations.”

(12)Their operational area was the Midwest, and they shuttled back and forth among St. Paul, Chicago, Toledo, and Cleveland. Other secondary cities they hit were Reno, Kansas City, Tulsa. As the “heat” became more intense, beginning in 1934, Hot Springs, Cuba, Florida, New Orleans and East Texas were targeted.

(13)They followed the old fugitive adage of continuously shifting locations. As Karpis stated in his autobiography, “It wasn’t good for our nerves to spend too much time in the same few rooms.”

Give your comment on Karpis’s view on his potential career development. Point out the various aspects the occupations mentioned might have in common or diverge from what you know.

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“In another set of circumstances, I might have turned out to be a top lawyer or a big-time businessman or made it to any high position that demanded brains and style, and a cool, hard way of handling yourself. Certainly I could have held the highest job in any line of police detection work. I out-thought and defeated enough cops and G-men to recognize that I was more knowledgeable about crime than any of them - including the number-one guy, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI.”

1.Karpis and Barker met in a Kansas prison.

2.The two ex-cons used to carefully plan each operation

3.Both had a nearly perfect photographic memory.

4.The FBI had trouble in sorting through a large number of aliases.

5.On one occasion, Barker and Hunter were simultaneously using the same alias (“King”).

6.Surveillance cameras in banks were very primitive at the time.

7.Doc Moran had performed fingerprint removal operations on major gang members.

8.The statement: ”Anybody who talks to whores is too dangerous to live” is meant to justify Moran's murder.

9.The machine guns for the operations were often provided by robbing urban police stations.

10.Karpis died in prison.

# Exercise 5

Give the correct definition for the lexical items in the text.

b)to travel between A and B and back

c)to shift gear

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¾ Activity 15 “Would-Be” Victims

Discussion

-Why does a particular person fall victim to a violent crime?

-Some people are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, others are chosen randomly and some victims are deliberately targeted.

-Profilers rely heavily on victimology – a complete history of the victim – in their approach to classifying, analyzing and solving a violent crime. Determining why a victim was targeted often gives investigators the motive, which can then lead to the offender.

-"We have to answer the why before we can move on to the who," is how former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt expressed it.

-When someone becomes a victim, virtually everything about that person's life takes on significance.

¾ Activity 16

Before reading the texts, discuss with a partner the (lifestyle) factors that are important for these people as potential victims:

a)a banker in a small town in the USA

b)a big-city pimp

c)an independent prostitute in a medium-sized town

d)a female jogger who runs alone

e)a gay-bar owner

f)an insurance salesman

g)a petrol-station attendant

Try and think of other not so obvious victims where the lifestyle factors are highly significant.

Now read the information carefully.

Before trying to ascertain who the killer might be, the profiler examines the lifestyle of the victim in considerable detail.

The "Crime Classification Manual," based on data compiled by members of the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and other professionals, suggests that a history of the victim include: lifestyle, personality, family, friends, marital status, dating habits, leisure activities, employment, income, transportation, disabilities, dress, criminal history, alcohol and drug use or abuse, reputation, habits, fears, assertiveness, likes and dislikes, and activities and significant events prior to the crime.

Somewhere on that list, there may be something that exposed a person to being singled out as a target.

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One of the most important elements of crime analysis is risk assessment — was this person at low or high risk of becoming a victim? Certain lifestyle variables raise or lower vulnerability to violent crime. Those at high risk are typically people whose lifestyles and environments expose them to violence. A high-risk victim might be a prostitute who works in a neighborhood where drugs and crime are very common and the population transient.

At low risk would be a housewife living in a nice residential neighborhood who stays home with her children and doesn't go out much at night, other than to dinner or a movie with family and friends.

Investigators determine what type of perpetrator would enter these environments to “find” that particular victimeven if , by chance!

Consider, too, the risk factor for the perpetrator…

Authorities also consider the level of risk taken by the offender in the commission of the crime – daylight is more of a gamble than night, a busy street more risky than an isolated underground car park or wooded area.

The predator who attacks a prostitute would likely be comfortable, rather than fearful, in a district with a criminal element. He may well be familiar with the neighbourhood.

A housewife's attacker could be someone she knows, or she may be a victim of opportunity. If not, authorities want to know who was in the area, in addition to people with a reason to be there. If she was specifically targeted, where did the subject first notice her and how much planning did the perpetrator need for the crime?

Profiling includes interpreting the offender's behavior and interaction with the victim. Victimsboth living and deadcan provide invaluable information about their attackers.

A dead victim can offer physical evidence and information about the type of confrontation and assault that took place. What can be ascertained is whether the killer used just enough force to subdue and then subsequently to kill the victim. Or did he torture and brutalized her/him because her/his pain brought him pleasure.

In serial crimes, the victim's appearance can indicate the offender's preferences – he may prey on children, blonde women, nurses or gay men. The signature aspect of the crime, perhaps posing or mutilating the victim's body, helps profilers determine the killer's fantasies and gain insight into the way his mind works.

# Exercise 6 Profiling

Each paragraph has a sentence or part of a sentence removed (…). From the box below the text, identify where to put the missing parts.

A. Various aspects of the attack itself and the rapist's interaction with the victim (…)

Rapists differ in motive and treatment of their victims. Often, a small idiosyncrasy can link the attacker to a series of rapes.

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