Theoretical Approach To Crime Analysis

1.3 Theoretical Approach to Crime One of the earlier theories regarding the causation of crime is demonological theory. According to this theory crime is mainly due to evil spirits a person possesses. Explaining this theory , Barnes and Teeters (1966:119) opine that “ Since evil spirits infested the person and had to be driven out, the conventional notion of primitive punishment was either to exorcise the evil spirits to get rid of the one possessed by death or exile – ‘social death’. In part ,this doctrine was based on the concept of protecting the community or family group against further outrages by the offending individual. But far more important was the belief in the necessity and desirability of placating the gods “. The theory of

Hooton attempted to show that crime and other forms of anti-social behaviour are due to almost exclusively to physical and racial factors (cited in Barnes and Teeters, 1966:131). Crime was studied from the cartographic approach in England and France from 1832 to 1880. The early proponents of this approach Guerry, Quetlet and others were mainly concerned with spatial distribution of crime and delinquency.

Enrico Ferri, explaining the cause of criminality states that “Crime is the result of manifold causes, which although found always linked into an intricate network, can be detected however, by means of careful study .Explaining the causes of delinquency and crime , a British Psychologist Dr. Cyril Burt (1938) states that “ Crime is assignable to no single universal source nor yet to two or three, it springs from a wide variety , and usually from a multiplicity of alternative and converging influences” ( cited in Barnes and Teeters,

Albert Cohen (1951) criticized this theory on the ground that it does not offer any single explanation regarding the cause of criminality. Criminology until recently was regarded as a specialized branch of study within the discipline of sociology. Wolfgang (1963) opines that criminology should be regarded as a separate autonomous discipline because it has accumulated its own set of organized data, theoretical conceptualization and above all a scientific method.

1.4 Gravity of Crime: The National Crime Records Bureau, New Delhi provides crime Statistics every year. The crime statistics of 2009 reveal that in all 66, 75,217 cognizable crimes comprising 21, 21,345 Indian Penal Code (IPC) crimes and 45, 53,872 Special and Laws (SLL) crimes were reported. A recent report of the United Nations Secretariat’s survey on female criminality revealed that in developed as well as in developing countries the crime rate among women shows a tendency either to approach nearer to or exceed that of males. Incidence of crime has generally shown an upward trend. It is also noticed that like the male counterparts, a number of women arrested have also been rising each