Tappan, Paul W.

English

Northwestern University Illinois, School of Law: Scholarly Commons

Journal of Criminal Law and CriminologyVolume 44 | Issue 1 Article 21953Florita's Enquiry into the Causes of CrimePaul W. TappanFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclcPart of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and CriminalJustice CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons.Recommended CitationPaul W. Tappan, Florita's Enquiry into the Causes of Crime, 44 J. Crim. L. Criminology & Police Sci. 17 (1953-1954)FLORITA'S ENQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIMEPaul W. TappanThe author is Professor -of Sociology and lecturer in law, New York University,Associate Reporter on Treatment of the American Law Institute project on aModel Criminal Code, Consultant to the American Bar Association Commission onOrganized Crime and to the United Nations, Division of Social Affairs.He is editor of Contemporary Correction, and author of Juvenile Delinquency,Delinquent Girls in Court, The Habitual Sex Offender, Comparative Survey ofJuvenile Delinquency in North America and numerous articles in legal,criminological, psychiatric, and sociological joutnals-DrroR.It is refreshing to study the thoughts of. a widely experienced crimi-nologist whose approach to the subject of causation departs fromconventional treatments of the subject. The main line of Dr. Florita'spaper will meet little opposition among American readers: i.e. hisrejection of the idea that constitutional or physical abnormalities arethe causes of crime. While this view may stir some opposition amongnumerous European criminal biologists, the great majority of crimi-nologists here have rejected the Lombrosian and Hooten hypotheseson the role of physical factors, if anything, perhaps, too uncritically.The author's more positive affirmations as to causes of crime andhis excursions into various implications of his theory may stir somethought, however. Not that the views expressed in his document aredistinctly novel to our thinking, to be sure, but at a time when greatemphasis is being placed upon a strictly individualized approach tothe criminal as an abnormal deviate by many American criminologists,Florita's remarks may stimulate some reconsideraition of the complexityof the problems involved.At' the request of the Editor, the writer will make an otherwisepresumptuous dffort to interpret Dr. Florita's remarks insofar as theymay offer some special stimulus to our critical thinking in the States.The author appears to make these major points in regard to crimecausation:1. Crime is natural and normal, rather than aberrational behavior.Relatively few offenders are psychologically deviant, these few beingfound most often among murderers and sex offenders who constitutea small fraction of the criminal population: the extreme and dramaticcases that come to the attention of the medical authorities. As to thegeneral mass-run of criminals, however, the thieves, burglars, robbers,embezzlers, etc., he finds that they are products of the social andcultural pressures that lead quite directly and naturally into law viola-tions. As our sociologists in the United States have noted, the socialcontrol of human behavior today is based upon processes of grossPAUL W. TAPPAN"denaturalization," demanding stern repressions and behavioral sub-stitutions to bring conduct into conformity with the varied socialdemands, often denying expression to most natural human wants. Floritasuggests, much as Dr. Healy has before, that the offender is one whocannot find a socially acceptable channelling of his desires and who,therefore, achieves his satisfaction through means that the law dis-approves.2. Formulated as a causal hypothesis, the author suggests thatcrimes are generated by the life struggle and express our natural in-stincts in it; but these expressions are in conflict with the current("actual") needs for social order. The basic cause of these dis-approved responses lies in "deficient social education," a failure toestablish adequate repression or redirection of the strivings for "foodand a female." (This explanation of goals may well be considered fartoo simple an hypothesis of motives, of course.) It is peculiarly withinthe deprived socio-economic classes that training is deficient, and causalexplanations must be sought in a social etiology through which normalcriminals express natural impulses in ways that the law has prohibitedin the particular time and place.3. While Dr. Florita finds that physical and psychiatric deviationsoccur in some criminals, he suggests that social factors are anteriorto and responsible for these, and that such variations account not forthe individual's becoming criminal but rather for the kinds of crimesthat he may commit. Specifically he denies that these deviations arecausal, except perhaps in a secondary sense, the real cause beingalways of a social origin. Thus a social condition may generate aneurological state of which crime is an ultimate consequence. In suchcases, the author maintains, both the cause and the modes of treatmentshould be sociological rather than medical: educators, sociologists,moralists and legislators, not physicians or psychiatrists, should pro-vide the therapy. He thus proclaims, though he does not formulateit specifically as a preventive program, that the remedy of the crimeproblem lies in so educating children to fight for life according to thesocial rules that they will not need to violate the law. This requires,too, he suggests, more careful thought as to the content of the laws.This exposition of causation offers some germinal thought to thecogitation of American criminologists. In particular, it is useful inthese days of devotion to Freud to recognize that crime is not itselfan illness nor usually the product of illness in the sense of bio- orpsycho-pathology. It is more than likely that we are misled in ourliterature by the forceful impact of fascinating but quite exceptional[Vol.-4-C.4USES OF CRIMEcases in which some crimes against the person appear quite clearlyto be symptomatic of emotional disorders and unconscious drives.Even in these instances, Florita suggests, any satisfactory solution tothe problem should come from changing the social milieu out of whichdisorders derive rather than from partial measures of clinically manipu-lating the individual. It should be clear to American criminologists,who have been considerably influenced, by and large, by sociologicalresearch and analysis, that the phenomena of crime are defined by legaland social norms, and to a large extent, at least, by social causes,rather than by biological structure or psychological condition. A fairpart of recent publications in the field, however, have neglected torecognize the implications of society and culture.Dr. Florita's article should provoke further thought about thewhole problem of normation, though his treatment merely introducesthe problem. It appears that the literature on norms and deviationsshould make quite clear that legal norms are socially determinedstandards of required behavior, compulsives to action or avoidance thatmay differ radically from man's natural impulses. So, for example, inthe demand that the soldier or the policeman must stand and facefire, that the angry victim of a threatened attack must retreat, thatthe erotic bachelor must contain himself, and that the envious maynot appropriate. The law may set norms near or far from man'seasy grasp: its object is not to satisfy the individual but to securethe group, generally to the loss and if necessary to the condemnationof those individuals who cannot easily. conform or who will not do so.Such norms require frustration, sometimes neurotic adjustments, a senseof guilt active enough to support group controls.In marked contrast to such legal norms is the clinical standard ofnormality that is based generally upon an ideal. It may be defined, per-haps, as an optimum psycho-physical adjustment of the individual. It isnot always clear, however, as to what the individual should be adjustedto, but it appears that rather than an adaptation to legal and socialrequirements, emphasis is more commonly upon facilitating expression,avoiding neurosis or feelings of guilt, on healing the psychic woundsthat the individual may have sustained from social and familial pres-sures upon him. Insofar as medical psychology and related fields arepreoccupied with the neurotic and with the release of psychic constraints,they have had a limited utility for criminal diagnosis and therapy.Confronted by aggressive, antisocial, compulsive, and exploitativecriminal types, orthodox psychiatry appears thus far to have beenat a loss to determine either what goal of adjustment it should seek1953]PAUL ). TAPPANor what measures of therapy it may usefully employ. In any event,the goal orientation of psychotherapy in a private setting differs strik-ingly from the objectives of law and penology and, while these are notalways wholly incompatible, it is true nevertheless that many correc-tional clinicians have found it difficult or impossible thus far to co-ordinate their ends and methods with the necessities of penal law.The behavior scientist helps little to guide along the road to aneffective instrumentation of legal standards by his mere insistence thatcriminals are deviated and should be relieved of responsibility by rea-son of their illnesses. At least as strong a case may be made, if indeedFlorita has not made it, for exculpating the "normal criminal" who isdeveloped and warped through his environment.The norms commonly employed by the social scientist for purposesof measurement and evaluation of social problems differ significantlyfrom both the standards suggested above. We generally use a statis-tical criterion of normality and of degrees of deviation therefrom. Inthis sense it is ridiculous, of course, to speak of a "sick society" or ofmost men, criminal or otherwise, as being "ill," though social re-formers as well as some behavior scientists are wont to do so. Fromthe point of view of attempting to measure objectively the prevalenceof social or behavioral disorders, the social scientist cannot but beconfused by the imprecision and diversity of idealistic normative defini-tions from which it is impossible to determine with any nicety whois healthy, normal or adequate in personal and social adjustments, toa complex social order and, more particularly, to its innumerableminatory controls.This brings us finally to the point, noted in Florita's article, thatcriminal behavior may represent etiologically a quite natural expressionof normal impulses that, from the point of view of society's definitions,however, are insufficiently educated and controlled. One may be quitenormal in his psycho-biological structure and, so far as may be dis-covered, in his social conditioning and general social responses, yet bea criminal. In the experience of repeated crime he may find satisfyingexpression of his biological, psychological, and social needs in channelsthat are, from an etiological point of view, quite normal.It is unfortunate that in this article Florita has not defined more pre-cisely his notion of what "cause" is. The writer cannot agree to anyproposition that biological and psychological factors are not causal.Moreover, the utility of establishing social factors as antecedent causesis dubious, excepting insofar as it goes to the problem of initial pre-vention of the circumstances out of which crime develops. Nor has[VoL 4CA USES OF CRIMEsatisfactory evidence been established to support the proposition thatmedical and psychiatric authorities can make no important contributionto the treatment of criminals. The difficulty here is that each fieldof criminological specialization would like to provide all the answers.In this article, as in so much of criminological writing, there appears tobe a tendency to generalize too broadly on the basis of a single orienta.tion. It is valuable to have attention drawn again, however, to thesignificance of culture and group influences in producing crime and tothe need for broadly social treatment approaches (as well as theministrations of psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and caseworkers) to meet the complex problems of crime. Dr. Florita seesquite clearly, as often we do not, that crime involves basically mattersof law, society, and correctioir rather than general psychotherapy,whether superficial or profound. He does not stress sufficiently the rolethat clinical experts may play in working out techniques to aid in cor-recting the criminal and conforming him to the minimum, essentialdemands of the social order.19s3]

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