Criminology and the “Essence” of Crime

Ungrounded Versus Grounded Definitions of Crime

Definitions of crime can be placed into two broad categories—empirically ungrounded and empirically grounded. Empirically ungrounded definitions center on the question, what should be treated as crime? Such definitions may be grounded in logic (reason), but they are not the product of inductive empirical inquiry. They do not represent a systematic inference from observations of actions that have been treated as crime in different societies. Rather, they are assertions as to the kinds of acts that should be classified as crime; such assertions, of course, may be supported by a theological, metaphysical, or some other form of nonempirical argument. Historically, most definitions of crime presented by criminologists have been ungrounded in this sense, a fact that is very apparent in the harm-based definitions that have been proposed. Consider a few examples.

During the Enlightenment, Cesare Beccaria (1764/1819, p. 33) suggested that “injury done to society” should be used as the key defining property of crime. ⁵ This property was proposed (in part) to exclude considerations of the “sinfulness” of an act when constructing criminal law and prescribing punishment. ⁶ Thus, Beccaria’s definition of crime omits acts of heresy that do not harm society and opposes an increase in the severity of punishment for socially harmful acts that include an aggravating element of sinfulness. He made a proposal for what should be classified as crime and what would be a just punishment. He did not attempt to infer a conception of crime from actions that had been treated as crime.

Remaining in the tradition of the classical school but following the logic of Jeremy Bentham (1789/1948), one may define crime as actions that cause substantially more pain than pleasure for the members of a society. In this connection, an act that causes a net increase in pleasure should not be punished as a crime; and a punishment that causes a net increase in pain is unacceptable, if not criminal. Developing a plausible empirical measure of pleasure and pain at a societal level certainly would be a challenge, but that is not the present issue. The main point is that the definition of crime suggested by Bentham is not based on observations of actions that had been treated as crime. In fact, like Beccaria’s definition (and, in general, most harm-based definitions), it opposes many of the criminal laws and criminal justice practices of the 18th century, and of today as well.

Contemporary criminologists also have constructed several empirically ungrounded definitions that embrace some conception of harm as an essence of crime. Critical criminologists have been especially busy in this area (see Henry & Milovanovic, 1996; Pepinsky, 1988; Quinney, 1991; Reiman & Leighton, 2010; Schwendinger & Schwendinger, 1970/2001; Tifft, 1995). The Schwendingers (1970/2001, pp. 88–89), for instance, suggest that crime should be defined as a violation of basic human rights (e.g., “security to one’s person”) and, therefore, should include individual actions and social arrangements that support “imperialism, racism, sexism, and poverty.” Consider also the “constitutive definition” proposed by Henry and Milovanovic (1996). They argue that crime “must be redefined in terms of the power to create harm (pain) in any context” (p. 118). This harm may involve degrading someone’s current standing (“harms of reduction”) or preventing someone from securing a desired standing (“harms of repression”; p. 103). Henry and Milovanovic (1996, p. 119, also see p. 116) ultimately define crime as “the exercise of the power to deny others their own humanity.” ⁷ This definition, like the human rights definition of the Schwendingers, would encompass many actions and arrangements that are not prohibited by existing criminal laws.

In addition, there are ungrounded “integrated definitions” of crime that incorporate, if not emphasize, harm as a key reference point (see Hagan, 1985; Henry & Lanier, 1998; Agnew, 2011). Henry and Lanier (1998), for example, identify five kinds of definitions (legal, moral consensus, rule-relativist, conflict/power, and social harm) and construct a “prism of crime” that entails several dimensions derived from these definitions. Henry and Lanier’s integrated definition, like most contemporary harm-based definitions, emphasizes what should be classified as crime, at least by criminologists in the course of their research. In short, these contemporary harm-based definitions are not (and were not intended to be) inductive inferences from descriptions of actions that had been treated as crime in different societies.

A complete review of empirically ungrounded definitions of crime that have been proposed goes well beyond the scope of this article. The key point is that although most efforts to define crime are explicitly ungrounded, Garofalo, Durkheim, and Bonger favored the pursuit of a grounded definition based on what has been treated as crime. They tried to identify an essence of crime through research processes that were more empirical and inductive in their design. Although they made assertions as to what should be and will be treated as crime in the future, they nonetheless implied that their starting point involved an attempt to infer a definition of crime from accounts of acts that have been dealt with as crime in different societies. ⁸ Do all acts that have been treated as crime have something in common (beyond the label and the social response) that is not shared by other acts? Are there behaviors that have been treated as crime in all known societies? If so, do those behaviors have a unique attribute that distinguishes them from other behaviors? These were among the questions they addressed in their efforts to discover an essence of crime.

The ideal of an inductive scientific research process calls for empirically based concepts, concepts grounded in careful observations of the segments of reality they are held to represent. Even though their definitions of crime are far from completely grounded, this is an ideal that appears to have been embraced by Garofalo, Durkheim, and Bonger. Indeed, Durkheim (1893/1984, p. 60) explicitly claimed that he had identified the essence of crime “inductively,” and Bonger (1936, p. 1) described criminology as an “inductive science.” The remainder of this article provides a close look at their research on the essence of crime, beginning with Garofalo since his work appeared first and was a reference point for the inquiries of Durkheim and Bonger.

Garofalo: Natural Crime

In the late 1800s, Baron Raffaele Garofalo, one of the most visible advocates of positivism in criminology, emphasized the importance of establishing a scientifically acceptable conception of crime and attempted to construct one, an effort that led to his proposal of “the natural crime.” In Criminology (Criminologia), which was first published in 1885, he noted that although criminologists who embrace the natural sciences “speak of the criminal, they have omitted to tell us what they understand by the word crime” (Garofalo, 1905/1914, p. 4—emphasis in original). One critical problem with this omission, as Garofalo persuasively maintained, is that “before we can speak of a criminal, we must have the notion of crime” (p. 51). How can researchers identify criminals and describe their characteristics without a clear conception of crime? If criminals are defined as individuals who have a high propensity for crime, they simply cannot be scientifically classified without first having a definition of crime that conforms to scientific standards. Garofalo acknowledged this gap in the literature of early positivist criminology and tried to fill it through the development of his concept of natural crime.

To maintain an empirical standpoint and to work around the extensive intersocietal variations in criminal law, Garofalo (1905/1914) chose to limit his concept of natural crime to offenses that are characteristic of “civilized” societies. In his efforts to discover the definitive properties of natural crime, he did not pursue the possibility of identifying a unique essence shared by all acts that have been treated as crime in all places and at all times. Moreover, he noted that not one act forbidden by the laws of civilized societies has been forbidden in all societies—not even “parricide,” “murder from sheer brutality,” or “murder for the sake of robbery” (pp. 5–6). ⁹ Garofalo (1905/1914) described his concept of natural crime as a “sociologic notion” (p. 4), yet it is better described as a biosocial notion in that it is based on a 19th-century biosocial theory of human evolution. He held that true criminal acts are not only “harmful to society” but also wound certain common sentiments that constitute part of the “moral sense” of a society (p. 6). Accordingly, he explored variations in sentiments across societies and “the evolution of the moral sense.” Acknowledging the work of Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man) and Herbert Spencer (The Principles of Psychology), Garofalo concluded, “it is certain that every race today possesses a sum of moral instincts which are not due to individual reasoning, but are the inheritance of the individual quite as much as is the physical type of his race” (pp. 7–8). He viewed the moral sense of a society as something that developed through an evolutionary process and as something that is transmitted by both heredity and learning:

We must take as established … the existence of the moral sense of a race of people, created, like all the other sentiments, by evolution, and transmitted from generation to generation, either as the effect of psychologic heredity alone, or as the effect of such heredity combined with the imitative faculties of the child, and the influence of family traditions. (p. 9; see also Garofalo, 1905/1914, pp. 30–32)

Garofalo (1905/1914) placed sentiments of the moral sense into two classes: “Non-elementary” and “elementary.” The former include “national sentiment” (“love of country”), “religious sentiment,” “chastity” (and “modesty”), and, to a lesser degree, the “sentiment of honor” (pp. 15–19). Although the violation of one or more of these sentiments occasionally is punished as a crime in civilized societies, such a violation, alone, does not constitute a natural crime. On the other hand, elementary sentiments, according to Garofalo, include the altruistic feelings of “benevolence” and “justice” (pp. 19–33). Benevolence entails “the sentiment of pity or humanity,” which in its rudimentary form is the “repugnance to cruelty” that “grows out of sympathy for suffering” (pp. 21–23). Justice entails “the sentiment of probity,” a general feeling of “respect for all that which belongs to others” (pp. 30–31). It is around these elementary sentiments that Garofalo constructed his concept of natural crime.

On this basis, Garofalo (1905/1914) developed a conception of natural crime that has the following properties. He maintained that a natural crime is an act that is harmful to society (p. 51—emphasis in original). ¹² But as suggested above, for Garofalo, it includes an additional property. For an act to be a natural crime, it also must offend “one or the other of the elementary altruistic sentiments of pity and probity” (pp. 33–34—emphasis in original). What is more, it must offend them at a fundamental level, rather than “in their superior and finer degrees.” Natural crimes thus include “attacks upon human life and all manner of acts tending to produce physical harm to human beings,” “physical acts which produce suffering at once physical and moral,” “acts which directly produce moral suffering,” “attacks upon property involving violence,” “attacks (upon property) unaccompanied by violence, but involving breach of trust,” and “all indirect injuries to a person’s property or civil rights occasioned by false statements or entries made in some formal or solemn manner” (pp. 40–41). According to Garofalo, these are acts that “no civilized society can refuse to recognize as criminal and repress by means of punishment” (p. 5). He maintained that they represent “the true crimes of contemporary society” (p. 43) and are the primary subject matter of a “true science” (p. 45). Criminologists who aspire to be scientific thus are directed to focus on explaining natural crimes and describing the kinds of people who commit them, the true criminals of civilized societies.

By incorporating the property of harm to society, Garofalo (1905/1914, pp. 28–29, 38, 51–53) was able to exclude many acts of cruelty from his list of natural crimes. Violent acts that are perceived as useful to a community—such as various acts of self-defense, military operations during a war, and punishment of criminals—are not on his list. “Taking life upon the battle-field is the nation’s defense against external enemies; taking life upon the scaffold is its defense against internal enemies” (p. 51). Moreover, Garofalo concluded that such acts generally do not wound the sentiment of pity, because enemy soldiers and criminals tend to be objects of dehumanization. Regarding the latter, he states: “So, when we are shown a criminal totally destitute of moral instincts and therefore totally differing from us morally, we cannot see in him our fellow-being, and consequently cannot feel for him that sympathy which renders pity possible” (p. 52). Garofalo provided a similar line of reasoning to explain the lack of sympathy people express for enemy soldiers in times of war.

In addition, the priority given to elementary sentiments allowed Garofalo (1905/1914) to disregard many actions that have been prohibited by criminal laws of premodern societies—for example, offenses that concern only the state, religion, chastity/modesty, or the family (see pp. 34–42). Offenses that involve the violation of only nonelementary sentiments are not natural crimes. ¹³ However, this limitation, the exclusion of transgressions against nonelementary sentiments, places Garofalo’s concept of natural crime outside of the ideal of an empirically grounded scientific concept. On this matter, Durkheim (1893/1984, p. 64) concluded that Garofalo’s “notion of crime is singularly incomplete.” He maintained that Garofalo denied “the character of crime to acts that have been universally acknowledged to be criminal among certain social species, and in consequence is led to limit artificially the bounds of criminality” (p. 64).

Durkheim: Crime as Threats to the Collective Consciousness

In 1893, eight years after Garofalo had first presented his concept of natural crime, Émile Durkheim, working in the sociological tradition of the French “environmental school,” offered his views on the essence of crime. Durkheim (1893/1984), like Garofalo, acknowledged extensive intersocietal variation in criminal laws. In his words, “ … if there are acts that have been universally regarded as criminal, these constitute a tiny minority” (p. 32). Durkheim also agreed that the evolution of human societies has been accompanied by an important transformation in collective sentiments, a shift that parallels the change described by Garofalo. This is very apparent in Durkheim’s (1900/1969) description of the historical decline of “religious criminality” and the rise of “human criminality,” a shift that represents a weakening of sentiments related to “collective things” (e.g., respect for family, church, and state) and growth in the strength of sentiments related to “the individual” (e.g., respect for the lives, property, and freedom of individuals). ¹⁴ Yet, despite these similarities, Durkheim’s theory of evolution and his conception of crime differ markedly from those of Garofalo.

As stated above, Durkheim was critical of Garofalo’s failure to develop a conception of crime that entails all actions that have been treated as crime in all types of society—that is, a definition that can account for the criminal laws of every “social species,” not just those of civilized societies. ¹⁵ Remaining true to his sociological paradigm, Durkheim (1893/1984, 1900/1958, 1900/1969) also discounted the conclusion that strong sentiments of pity and probity among civilized people are in large part a product of biological evolution. Although he perceived a similar historical change in the content of collective sentiments, the source of the change, for Durkheim, was rooted in social factors (e.g., developments in the division of labor), not changes in human instincts brought about by a process of natural heredity. He held that increasing specialization (diversity) has left the members of modern societies “with no essential characteristics in common except those they get from their intrinsic quality of human nature. It is this quality that quite naturally becomes the supreme object of collective sensibility” (Durkheim, 1900/1958, p. 112). In other words, human nature has not changed in some fundamental way; rather, the arrangements of modern societies simply have made sentiments of pity and probity more important and visible. Moreover, Durkheim (1893/1984) explicitly rejected the contention that all true crimes, by their nature, constitute “a danger to society”: “There are a whole host of acts which have been, and still are, regarded as criminal, without in themselves being harmful to society” (p. 32). ¹⁶ Conversely, he noted that “an act can be disastrous for society without suffering the slightest repression” (p. 33). ¹⁷

In The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim (1893/1984) presented his conception of crime and the reasoning behind it. Crime, in this work, was a secondary interest for Durkheim. He held that it is important to identify “what in essence … crime consists of” to develop an adequate understanding of “mechanical solidarity” (p. 31), a social bond based on similarities among the members of a society. Durkheim’s primary interest was to investigate a historical shift in social structure and sources of social solidarity; his effort to identify the essence of crime was just one part of that investigation.

Durkheim (1893/1984) began his inquiry by noting that all crimes, at least under normal conditions, are “acts repressed by prescribed punishments” (p. 31). He then proceeded to look for a characteristic that was common to all such acts. In this way, he tried to establish a definitive conception of crime through an empirical research process. His objective was to find a unique property shared by all acts that have been treated as crime:

… if we wish to learn in what crime essentially consists, we must distinguish those traits identical in all the varieties of crime in different types of society. Not a single one of these types may be omitted. Legal conceptions in the lowest forms of society are as worthy of consideration as those in the highest forms. (Durkheim, 1893/1984, p. 31)

Within Durkheim’s (1893/1984) paradigm, the collective consciousness establishes crime in two senses: “From it, directly or indirectly, all criminality flows” (p. 43). On the one hand, criminality flows “directly” from the collective consciousness in that “an act is criminal when it offends the strong, well-defined states (sentiments) of the collective consciousness” (p. 39). For instance, a very intense collective feeling of respect for the institution of the traditional family may prompt the death penalty for a son or daughter who curses his or her parents; ¹⁹ likewise, an intense collective feeling of respect for human life may prompt a severe punishment for those who seriously injure or kill another person. On the other hand, criminality flows “indirectly” from the collective consciousness where an act threatens a governmental “organ” that defends and symbolizes the collective consciousness. ²⁰ In such cases, the act is often treated as a crime even though it does not directly offend a strong state of the collective consciousness (see Durkheim, 1893/1984, pp. 41–43, 60–61). In short, for Durkheim, the essence of crime is a significant direct or indirect threat to the collective consciousness of a society. If an act poses such a threat, it is a crime, and it is normally treated as such by society. ²¹

Because the collective consciousness is shaped by the unique history and structure of a society, it varies from one society to another. ²² Different societies, therefore, experience different behaviors as crimes and construct different criminal laws. This line of reasoning allowed Durkheim to apply his conception of crime to all types of societies, not just to civilized societies. He believed that his definition subsumed virtually all actions that have been responded to as crimes. “However numerous its varieties, crime is essentially the same everywhere … ” (p. 42). From one society to the next, crime remains a significant direct or indirect threat to the collective consciousness. Accordingly, understanding crime in a given society requires an understanding of the origin and content of its collective consciousness, particularly the strong and precise sentiments that comprise its core.

Although Durkheim’s definition avoids using criminal law as the defining property of crime, such law remains a convenient indicator of crime in his conceptual framework. Criminal law, for Durkheim, is perhaps the best index of actions that pose a significant threat to the collective consciousness of a society. However, the correlation between criminal law and crime is not perfect. Given Durkheim’s general social theory, if a society is experiencing an abnormal condition, the criminal law may classify some acts as crimes even though they pose neither a direct or indirect threat to the collective consciousness. These acts would not be true crimes, given Durkheim’s definition. Conversely, the criminal law may fail to prohibit some true crimes, acts that do pose a significant threat to the collective consciousness. Durkheim occasionally alluded to this imperfect correlation between criminal law and crime. For example, he writes,

… if by chance a penal rule persists for some time although disputed by everyone (indicating that the forbidden act is not a significant threat to the collective consciousness), it is because of a conjunction of exceptional circumstances, which are consequently abnormal—and such a state of affairs can never endure. (Durkheim, 1893/1984, p. 34)

The forced division of labor, for Durkheim (1893/1984, pp. 293, 309n, 310–322), is a social condition in which well-established regulations prevent people “from occupying within the ranks of society a position commensurate to their abilities” (p. 313). As an example of such a condition, he refers to the legal institution of inheritance, an arrangement that “gives to some the benefit of advantages that do not necessarily correspond to their personal value” (p. 314). According to Durkheim, “external inequalities” such as this are “unjust,” ²⁴ pose a threat to social solidarity in modern societies, and can even result in “class war.” He thus concluded that modern societies should attempt “to eliminate external inequalities as much as possible” (pp. 315–316, 321). It is clear that Durkheim viewed the law on this matter as lagging behind developments that were occurring in the structure and collective consciousness of modern societies.

This imperfect correlation between Durkheim’s definition of crime and criminal law is one way to separate his definition from a legal definition. The other important distinction is that Durkheim’s definition has more depth than a legal definition. It entails an answer to the question, what determines the content of criminal law? It rests on a theory that offers an explanation of why different societies have different laws and why laws change over time. In this sense, it is superior to a legal definition. Nevertheless, his proposed essence of crime does not escape the most apparent limitation of a legal definition—instability. Durkheim’s definition embodies cultural relativism. In every society, a significant threat to the collective consciousness may be a crime, but the collective consciousness, as noted, varies from one society to another, which, in turn, causes variations in the specific acts that are dealt with as crime. Whereas Garofalo’s concept of natural crime sacrifices breadth for greater (but not complete) stability, Durkheim sacrifices stability for breadth.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Bonger offered another definition of crime and, like Durkheim, chose breadth over stability. But unlike Durkheim, Bonger was more attentive to uneven distributions of power and more critical of the ideology that he believed is expressed in the criminal law of modern capitalist societies.

Bonger: Crime as Threats to Group/Class Interests

In the early 1900s, about a decade after Durkheim presented his definition of crime, Willem Adriaan Bonger, a Dutch criminologist, constructed an alternative definition from within a Marxist framework. Like Garofalo and Durkheim, Bonger (1905/1916) noted the existence of significant intersocietal differences in criminal law and did not use criminal law as the defining property of crime. And much like Durkheim (but unlike Garofalo), he chose to develop a conception of crime that would subsume these differences; in other words, his conception of crime was not limited to civilized societies. Moreover, Bonger (1936, p. 3) maintained, “A priori, one cannot speak of any action as being either immoral or criminal per se; there is, in fact, no such thing as a ‘natural’ offence. It all depends upon social conditions.”

Although one can find a few similarities with Durkheim’s inquiry, Bonger (1905/1916) situates his conception of crime within a different theory of social evolution. Whereas both Garofalo and Durkheim held that respect for human life and property is significantly more developed among modern people, Bonger questioned this assessment, maintaining that such sentiments are commonly underestimated among premodern people. He argued that there is a substantial body of anthropological evidence indicating that “primitive peoples” have strong “altruistic traits of character.” ²⁵ In view of this evidence, Bonger wrote “I am of the opinion that no one, taking the above facts into consideration, will maintain that man has always and everywhere shown the same egoistic traits, or that there has been a gradual evolution from egoism towards altruism” (p. 388). Moreover, he goes on to state, “ … it is impossible that egoism should be innate in man” (p. 390); rather, “ … it is certain that man is born with social instincts … ” (p. 402). ²⁶ Bonger then suggested that egoism is largely a product of the mode of production of a society; ²⁷ our innate quality of altruism, on the other hand, is either “suppressed” or enhanced by a given mode of production. For instance, capitalism is said to generate “egoism and at the expense of altruism” (p. 401), whereas the mode of production of many primitive peoples, an early form of communism, can at times generate “excessive egoism” toward outsiders but also enhances innate altruistic feelings toward group members (pp. 397–398). ²⁸

Working in a different theoretical framework and drawing on different empirical evidence, Bonger (1905/1916), not surprisingly, came to embrace a different definition of crime. In Criminality and Economic Conditions, he provided his definition and the rationale behind it. Bonger began his analysis by separating “punishable acts” that are criminal from those that are not criminal. In this connection, he excluded acts that prompt only “personal vengeance” or “group vengeance” as well as acts resulting in “moral disapprobation” alone (pp. 377–378). The punishable acts that remained were regarded as crimes, and Bonger proceeded to look for their essence.

In this inquiry, Bonger (1905/1916) rejected the idea that crime is an “abnormal act” from “a biological point of view,” a rejection of Garofalo’s concept of natural crime (p. 378). Bonger maintained that it is the “social environment” that determines which killings, beatings, and deprivations of property are classified as criminal homicide, assault, and theft, respectively. He then argued that a crime, nonetheless, is an “immoral act,” an act that is “harmful to the interests of a group of persons united by the same interests” (p. 379). ²⁹ Sounding much like Durkheim, Bonger continues, “Since the social structure is changing continually, the ideas of what is immoral (and consequently of what is or is not criminal) change with these modifications” (p. 379). However, Bonger quickly separated his viewpoint from that of Durkheim and even further from that of Garofalo by emphasizing that an immoral act, to be classified as criminal, “must be prejudicial to the interests of those who have the power at their command” (p. 379).

Crime, Bonger (1905/1916) concluded, is “an act committed within a group of persons forming a social unit,” and which “prejudices the interests of all, or of those of the group who are powerful … ” (p. 381). ³⁰ With this definition, he was able to accommodate variations in criminal laws across societies, since different societies and different groups within a society often have different interests. What is more, he has an explanation for the common observation that some criminal laws protect the interests of a small subpopulation in a society at the expense of the majority:

Power … is the necessary condition for those who wish to class a certain act as a crime … It follows that in every society which is divided into a ruling class and a class ruled penal law has been principally constituted according to the will of the former. (pp. 379–380) ³¹

Before proceeding, three characteristics of Bonger’s initial definition of crime warrant emphasis. First, like both the legal definition and that of Durkheim, Bonger’s definition lacks the stability of an ideal scientific concept. It contains an element of relativism. His essence of crime, a significant threat to the interests of those who control the criminal law, is a property that varies across societies with different modes of production. The acts treated as crime change, as a society moves from a slave economy, to feudalism, and on to capitalism because the social environment changes and the interests of slave owners, feudal lords, and the bourgeoisie are different. Likewise, these acts change again where a society makes a transition to socialism. In short, Bonger sacrificed stability for breadth. ³⁴ Second, Bonger’s definition, also like Durkheim’s, has more depth than a legal definition, since it is based on a theory that offers an explanation of intersocietal variations in criminal law. Finally, Bonger’s definition of crime is sensitive to differential distributions of power. Thus, it encourages a critical examination of the rationale behind particular laws and critical inquiries into the ways in which particular laws support the interests of some groups/classes more than others.

The Essence of Crime and Images of Criminals

As noted above, Garofalo (1905/1914, p. 51), quite understandably, maintained that “before we can speak of a criminal, we must have the notion of crime.” Garofalo, Durkheim, and Bonger provided three different notions of crime and, accordingly, imply three different images of criminals. Their conceptions of crime and images of criminals represent useful historical reference points for distinguishing ideological currents in criminology that range from the “far right” to the “far left,” although some noteworthy, if not intriguing, areas of overlap exist across their viewpoints.

To begin, it is important to clarify what is meant by a far right and a far left viewpoint in this article. A far right viewpoint is one that reinforces an uneven distribution of opportunities and valued resources (e.g., wealth and power) across the members of a society. It maintains that some people are superior to others and are entitled to far more opportunities and far more resources from the moment they are born. A far left viewpoint supports an even distribution of opportunities and little disparity in the distribution of valued resources. It stresses that people are more or less the same in their essential qualities and that large disparities in opportunities and resources are unjust. Between the far right and the far left, various “mixed” viewpoints also exist, perhaps the most notable of which supports an even distribution of opportunities but accepts large disparities in the distribution of valued resources. This mixed viewpoint opposes disparities in educational opportunities and the institution of inherited wealth, yet it tolerates large inequalities in “earned” wealth and power. Along this ideological continuum, Garofalo’s definition of crime falls on the far right, Durkheim’s definition is mixed and falls somewhere in the middle, and Bonger’s definition falls on the far left.

Garofalo’s (1905/1914) concept of natural crime includes several centrist (if not left of center) elements. For instance, he suggested that the following were natural crimes or may be acknowledged as such in the future: “the maltreatment of the weak and infirm,” “the imposition upon children of excessive labor or such work as tends to injure their health or stunt their physical development,” “the failure on the part of parents properly to care for their children,” and “cruelty to animals” (pp. 40–41, 44). ³⁵ Yet, despite these contentions, his concept of natural crime ultimately reinforces the far right position that true criminals, people who commit natural crimes, are abnormal and inferior to noncriminals. He stated, “ … not only is it impossible for a normal man to be a murderer, but it is equally impossible for him to be an incendiary, forger, swindler, or thief” (p. 50). Consistent with the atavist theory of Cesare Lombroso (1895-96/2012), Garofalo implied that true criminals generally are less evolved in that their instincts of pity and probity lack the intensity and scope of truly civilized people. He concluded,

Since crime consists in an act which is at once harmful to society and violative of one or both of the most elementary sentiments of pity and probity, the criminal is necessarily a man in whom there is an absence, eclipse or weakness of these sentiments, one or both. This is evident, because if he had possessed the elementary altruistic sentiments in a sufficient degree, any real violation of them on his part would have been impossible. (p. 61—emphasis in original) ³⁶

Unlike the image of criminals implied by Garofalo’s concept of natural crime, Durkheim (1893/1984) argued that criminals, although still deviants, are not necessarily biologically inferior. ³⁹ For instance, Durkheim (1895/1982) suggested that Socrates was both a criminal and someone who was more advanced than his peers. Such progressive criminals were not presented as typical criminals, but they were acknowledged. For Durkheim (1895/1983, p. 95), “It can happen that the criminal is a genius, as he can be below average.” He goes on to note, “At all times, the great moral reformers have condemned the reigning morality and have been condemned by it” (p. 97). In short, given Durkheim’s essence of crime, a criminal is simply someone who directly or indirectly threatens the core states of the reigning morality. If the reigning morality is “bad” (e.g., oppressive), its violation can be “good” (e.g., liberating) and the criminal may secure a place in history as a hero, an innovator who helped usher in a more suitable collective consciousness. Durkheim’s viewpoint thus resides to the left of Garofalo’s, outside the bounds of far right ideology. ⁴⁰

Durkheim (1900/1958) further distanced himself from Garofalo with another line of argument. He maintained that compared to civilized people, primitive people are not more violent because of their instincts; rather, they are more violent because of the different content of their collective consciousness, which is a “social fact” and primarily a product of social factors. In other words, although Durkheim agreed with Garofalo that civilized people generally have lower homicidal tendencies than primitive people, he rejected Garofalo’s claim that this is due to increments in the intensity and scope of altruistic instincts that have evolved through a process of natural selection. Referring to “the uncouth harsh temperament … of the lower societies,” Durkheim stated (1900/1958, p. 116): “It has often been held that this uncouthness is a remaining vestige of brutishness, a survival of the tooth-and-claw instincts of animal nature. In reality it is the product of a well-defined moral culture.”

Finally, in view of Bonger’s (1905/1916) definition of crime, a criminal is someone who significantly threatens the interests of all members of society or of those members who are powerful. Compared to the image of criminals implied by Garofalo and Durkheim, this image encourages a larger proportion of criminals (but not all criminals) to be seen as victims of inequitable social arrangements and laws that support the interests of a relatively small but powerful segment of society. Bonger argued that capitalism generates egoism in all classes. Among the proletariat and lower proletariat, it does so in large part by forcing them into unacceptable working and living conditions. “ … (T)he egoistic side of the human character,” Bonger asserted, “is developed by the fact that the individual is dependent, that he lives in a subordinate position, and that he feels himself poor and deprived of everything” (p. 423). Accordingly, their victimization in this sense drives them to victimize others, typically other members of proletariat and lower proletariat. The penal system then adds another round of abuse in that “ … society punishes severely those who commit the crime which she has herself prepared” (p. 672).

However, Bonger also maintained that some criminals are not egoistic. Some political criminals “risk their most sacred interests, their liberty and their life, for the benefit of society; they injure the ruling class only to aid the oppressed classes, and consequently all humanity” (p. 649). They remain criminals given Bonger’s (1905/1916) definition of crime, but they are portrayed as altruistic rather than egoistic. Bonger viewed many “active anarchists” as “ignorant” and “impulsive,” but he also concluded that “they are born with pronounced altruistic tendencies,” which persisted despite the egoistic currents that prevailed in their economic environment (p. 653). In short, just as Durkheim viewed Socrates and other “heretical philosophers” as criminals who ushered in a more advanced collective consciousness, Bonger viewed some political criminals as ushering in a more advanced economic system, or at least rebelling against the oppressive nature of the existing system.

Although Bonger (1905/1916) maintained that economic conditions have the greatest effect on crime, he also accepted the idea that individual factors explain some criminal acts and viewed “degeneracy both as a direct and as an indirect cause of crime” (p. 658). He even held that heredity plays a part in degeneracy and suggested some openness to eugenics (see pp. 659–660 and pp. 671–672). However, Bonger did not stray far from his focus on economic factors. He implied that many “pathological individuals” are victims in that degeneracy commonly results from environmental conditions (e.g., inadequate food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, and health care), and societies often have the capacity to improve those conditions. Socialist societies, by improving economic conditions, are predicted to have far less crime than capitalist societies. Nonetheless, in the former, “There will be crimes committed by pathological individuals, but this will come rather within the sphere of the physician than that of the judge” (pp. 671–672).

Overall, the essences of crime proposed by Garofalo, Durkheim, and Bonger support three different images of criminals and three different ideological standpoints. Given Garofalo’s concept of natural crime, all true criminals, or nearly all, are biological throwbacks to an earlier stage of human evolution, a viewpoint that fits neatly into a far right ideology. For Durkheim and Bonger, some true criminals may be significantly below average on particular biological traits and some may be significantly above average; but most criminals appear to be more or less biologically average people who have been exposed to problematic social conditions, such as anomie, a forced division of labor, or the environment of the proletariat or lower proletariat under capitalism. Of the three theorists, Bonger, at least in his early work, was most inclined to view criminals as victims, especially those criminals who emerge among the working classes. This outlook, while acknowledging the suffering caused by crime, moderates the social response and conforms to an ideology that resides significantly left of center.

Conclusion

The main purpose of this article was to provide a close examination of a neglected stage in the history of crime definitions. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, criminology became a distinct field of inquiry, and Garofalo, Durkheim, and Bonger were among its most important contributors. These scholars embraced the scientific movement of their era and seemingly favored efforts to develop definitions through inductive research processes. Yet, despite their empirical commitments, they arrived at three different definitions of crime. ⁴¹ Their proposed essences of crime represent contradictory views on human/social evolution and imply conflicting images of criminals. Moreover, they serve as important historical markers for inquiries into the ideological currents that flow through the field of criminology—with Garofalo’s definition of crime representing the far right, Durkheim’s definition representing a mixed ideology, and Bonger’s definition representing the far left.