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For thousands of years, mankind has developed and applied vague or specific thoughts about
what behavior should be labeled as criminal, who the criminals are, and what the causes of crime
may be. Philosophers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century put forward the rational
criminal who is free to make choices and criticized the cruel and unjust criminal justice system.
The scientific study of crime started in the beginning of nineteenth century with mathematicians
searching for empirical regularities between countries and areas in administrative governmental
data. Sociologists, psychologists, and physicians introduced societal and individual causes of
crime in a comprehensive way. Later, new developments in other disciplines triggered new
thoughts on the causes of crime, notably strain, control, and cultural theories. These have been
dominant for about many decades, although critical theories emerged in the 1960s and 1970s of
the twentieth century. Recent developments of theoretical criminology point at including
disciplines that have not been very involved in the field of crime like neurosciences and
econometrics so far.

The First Rudimentary Ideas

For thousands of years, mankind has developed and applied vague or specific thoughts about
what behavior should be labeled as criminal, who the criminals are, and what the causes of crime
may be. In the heydays of the Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Inca, or Roman empires, criminal laws
were introduced to criminalize certain behaviors and how to deal with criminals (Kerner 1998).
These written (in stone, on papyrus, walls, or clay tablets) or oral laws (UK) were introduced to
protect the social cohesion of the empire, the existence of primary groups, or the power of those
who were in charge. Till that time conflicts were settled by private parties; the state was not
involved.

In the Middle Ages, the search for the causes of crime in Europe was more than ever regulated
by religious motives: those who committed crimes “must” offend God’s will and “therefore”
must be possessed by the devil. Draconic tortures were applied to release the man or the woman
from that evil. Until that time scientific knowledge as we have nowadays did not exist. Monks
copied unique written texts about religion or other affairs that were stored in monasteries.
Spiritual explanations were at that time the dominant thought about the causes of crime.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466 (?)–1536) was one of the first philosophers who wrote about the
“natural” causes of crime. He related the occurrence of criminal behavior not to the “spirit” of
the individual but to poverty in general (although without any empirical evidence). The physician
G. Battista della Porta (1535–1615) was the first who systematically was searching for
observable causes of crime. He opened the brains of hanged criminals in order to study
irregularities in their shape, color, and structure. In the age of Enlightenment, new vague
thoughts about crime were developed, of which the rudiments can still be found in
criminological theory of today. During Enlightenment intellectuals promoted the idea of ratio
and philosophy and in general the upcoming scientific work. They challenged widespread
superstition and abuses of rights of residents by those in power and by the church. Combined
with the upcoming Protestantism, the individual became more and more central in the new
philosophies (as they called science those days). This was an important period in the study of
crime, because many of our contemporary fundamental assumptions about the causes of crime
originated in the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth century (although the words may be
different and specifications may have been very well elaborated during the last 300 years).

The Upcoming Scientific Search For Causes Of Crime

What happened? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, science in general begins to expand
and to make progress in explaining many (natural) phenomena. New instruments made it
possible to explore in more detail the human body, several illnesses, and nature in general. The
fast growth of mathematics laid the foundation of many new natural sciences like physics,
chemistry, medicines, biology, anthropometry, and physiognomy. Social philosophers stood near
the cradle of the political and social sciences and of early psychology. The cruel and unfair
criminal justice system of their time inspired many philosophers to suggest improvements of
criminal law. Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) focused on the
issue of the criminal justice process and how to deter individuals from crime (Marsh 2004). They
came up with the precursor of rational choice paradigm in which individuals are assumed to
assess the benefits and costs of criminal behavior. If the benefits are higher than the costs, they
will commit a crime. It was assumed that people have a free will to make decisions to commit
crimes. That was revolutionary in a period when spiritual and religious thoughts dominated the
thinking of people. It took about 200 years of silence until an economist and Nobel Prize winner
Gary Becker again suggested rational choice decision making as an explanatory model of why
individuals commit crimes (Becker 1968). Today, the rational choice perspective is popular in
criminology, especially in geographic criminology. Routine activity theory and crime pattern
theory that explain why crimes cluster at certain places are, for instance, based on the rational
choice perspective as well as the basic principles of crime prevention (Clarke and Felson 1993;
Cornish and Clarke 1986; Felson 2008).

Long before the name of criminology was introduced by Raffaele Garofalo in his 1885 published
Criminologia, researchers empirically studied crime under the label of moral statistics or
criminal science. The foundation of empirical criminology was laid in the beginning of that
century when Belgian, French, and British mathematicians and statisticians like Guerry (1832),
the astronomer and first PhD of mathematics of Ghent University in Belgium Que´telet (1984
[1831]), Ducpe´tiaux (1827), and Rawson (1839) and Fletcher (1848) of the Royal Statistical
Society of London tried to uncover regularities in the social and geographic distributions of
crime and criminals between counties, areas, cities, and countries (Beirne 1987; Weisburd et al.
2009). The publication of the Comptes Ge´ne´rales de l’Administration de la Justice Criminelle
en France in 1825/1826 inspired them to explore official data on crime in more detail (Weisburd
et al. 2009, p. 6). These scholars were the first who studied crime as a social phenomenon that is
unequally distributed over society (Guerry 1832, 1833, 1864). Que´telet (1847) discovered the
normal distribution in statistics in order to assess the “normality” of empirical regularities he
demonstrated in research. These scholars were inspired by the reform movement in their
countries of which fighting illiteracy and illness among the poor was the priority political issue.
That is the reason why they studied the empirical relationships between illiteracy and wealth and
personal and property crimes in France, England, and the low countries (now the Netherlands
and Belgium). They did not systematize their thoughts into structured theorizing. Instead, they
made up inventories of all kinds of correlates of possible causes of crime and criminals (good
examples of that kind of inventories are Afschaffenberg (1906) and Parmelee (1918/ 1919)).

Later in the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin formulated his evolution paradigm on the origins
of species (and like many original thinkers encountered conflicts with religious powers of his
time). Darwin’s revolutionary thoughts completely changed the human perspective on the roots
of mankind. The physician Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) was fully impressed by Darwin’s
theory. He elaborated Darwin’s innovative way of thinking and applied it to the explanation of
crime (Lombroso 2006 [1878]). As physician he studied sentenced criminals as if they suffered
from a drawback in the evolutionary process, believing that “those” people can be recognized by
outer stigmata. Scholars in his time had an optimistic and naive view on science (positivism)
assuming that scientific knowledge could change the world in a better place to live in. Lombroso
later studied in his career many other topics as well (mostly social aspects of crime), among
others the spatial variations in the distribution of crime across areas, provinces, and countries
(Lombroso 2006 [1878]).

A landmark in the study of crime causation was the work of the sociologist Emile Durkheim
(1858–1917). He built on the analyses of social philosophers and the first sociologists who
observed in the nineteenth century macro-social processes in the speedy developing societies in
Europe (Bierstedt 1978). Saint-Simon (1760–1825) can be viewed as the first who envisaged the
new industrial society, and together with the younger Auguste Comte (1798–1857), he analyzed
the disruptive consequences of the many European political revolutions. The abrupt changes in
political structure and society that they observed led to a bigger gap between the state and the
families and individuals when intermediate institutions disappear. Also Georg Simmel (1858–
1918) was very critical at the new technical, urbanized materialistic culture that emerged in
Europe. Ferdinand To¨ nnies (1855–1936) focused more on the social changes in society. In his
view, societies transformed from Gemeinschaft into Gesellschaft, leaving behind the small-scale
agricultural villages with strong social cohesion and informal social control. In modern societies
of a Gesellschaft type, trade and industry took the lead; laborers recruited from rural areas and
ties between people were weakened. People in Europe became more individualized, and
sociologists feared the negative consequences for society and for crime rates. Durkheim built on
their thoughts and focused on the relationships between people and the impact of societal
changes on them (Durkheim 1951 [1897], 1964 [1893]). He argued that relationships between
people are based on cohesion, division of labor, religion, (scientific) knowledge, and morality,
and when societies become more heterogeneous, their collective conscience is diminished.
Anomic societies lose their power to regulate social relations between people, and increased
levels of crime are a consequence. People with less ties feel free to break the moral rules more
easily. Central is the idea that external forces from society (measured by structural features)
explain why people commit crime. Durkheim demonstrated empirically that in societies with
lower levels of social integration, people tend to commit more suicides and more crimes.

Further Developments In Early Twentieth Century

Durkheim had a profound influence on the emergence of two important theoretical perspectives
in criminology: the anomie paradigm and control paradigm (Cullen and Messner 2007). Growing
up in the relative deprived neighborhoods of South Philadelphia as a son of a Ukraine immigrant
family, the sociologist Robert Merton (1910–2003) experienced personally at young age that the
American society offered unequal opportunities to different social groups (Coser 1977; Cullen
and Messner 2007). He published at the age of 27 his famous article on anomie and social
structure in which he stated that the American society promoted central material ends (American
dream) to pursuit (cultural) goals to all citizens, but certain social groups – especially the lower
classes – encounter structural closures to reach these ends in a legally prescribed way (Merton
1938). The discrepancy between culturally defined goals and legal opportunities create tensions
or strains in society that people try to reduce by applying adaptive behavior patterns. Merton’s
anomie theory aims to explain why aggregates (social groups) withdraw from society, conform,
become rebellious, ritualists, or innovative. According to Merton, innovative people try to reach
cultural accepted goals by committing crimes. Among others, Merton inspired many
criminologists to study the role of subcultural values (Albert Cohen (1918–)) and poverty on the
overrepresentation of the lower classes in the official crime statistics. Richard Cloward (1928–
2001) and Lloyd Ohlin (1918–) focused on the differential opportunities of people having to use
legal or illegal means to reach material goals and developed a typology of kinds of subcultures
by merging differential association theory (see later) and anomie theory. Robert Agnew (1953–)
elaborated Merton’s anomie theory in an individualistic way for his strain theory (Agnew 1992,
2006). In that theory he stated that three kinds of strain (negative relationships and stressful life
events when other people prevent a person from achieving valued goals, take away something
valued, or impose on the person that is unwanted) may lead to criminal behavior as a kind of
response pattern. Steve Messner and Richard Rosenfeld elaborated the idea of American dream
as cultural goal that leads to more competition between citizens (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997).
And more competition between citizens in the context of a relatively dominant economic
institution vis-a`-vis family, education, and other social institutions leads to more crime in
societies, an idea that has also been raised earlier at the beginning of twentieth century (Bonger
1969 [1905 and 1916]).

Durkheim on the other side inspired other influential criminologists to focus on the effects of
social control on crime. Travis Hirschi (1935–) is the best known protagonist of this perspective.
In line with Durkheim’s reasoning, Hirschi stated in Causes of Delinquency that if an individual
is not tied to society, he is free to deviate from the norms, e.g., free to commit crimes (Hirschi
2006 [1969]). That view was opposite to the mainstream and dominating cultural deviance
theories of his time. Hirschi was especially critical of the differential association theory, arguing
that individuals need a certain level of commitment to society and social ties with other people to
refrain them from crime. The family (especially parents) plays a central role in establishing ties.

Hirschi was certainly not the first to introduce the concept of social control as a condition for
crime. A number of predecessors can be mentioned. Edward Ross (1866–1951), one of the most
influential sociologists of the United States, was the mastermind of the concept of social control.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, he pointed at internal and external kinds of social
control that regulate criminal behavior (Ross 1918 [1901]). Walter Reckless (1899–1988)
focused later on social control as exercised by parents on their children: parental supervision
(Reckless 1940, 1961). When parents do not succeed in supervising their spouses, the children
will develop weak self-control and weak other internal controls. If they succeed, kids can resist
the worst neighborhood influences that normally lead to more crime (containment). Albert Reiss
Jr. (1922–2006) specified kinds of social control into personal and social control that both refrain
youngsters from criminal behavior (Reiss 1951); Jackson Toby introduced the concept of “stakes
in conformity” referring at how much a person has to lose when he breaks the law (Toby 1957),
later followed by F. Ivan Nye who distinguished four dimensions of social control (direct social
control, internalized social control, indirect social control, and access to legal means (Nye
1958)). All of their work was integrated by Hirschi and specified in testable propositions.

The idea of social control has been expanded in several new directions. Travis Hirschi,
collaborating with Michael Gottfredson, proposed a general theory of crime in which was stated
that human’s low self-control was the key explanatory mechanism in the explanation of crime
(Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). Low self-control is developed by psychological deficits or by
parents in unorganized families by “inconsistent” parenting styles on their offspring. Blumstein
and his colleagues (1988) started more empirical research on criminal careers, putting aside static
views on offenders. The idea of a small group of active offenders was revealed by Wolfgang and
his colleagues in their Philadelphia study (Wolfgang et al. 1972). Later research found out that
offenders are influenced by the number and nature of risk factors they encounter during their life
course (Farrington 1988, 2002; Loeber and Wikstro¨ m 1993). This life-course perspective has
been developed by several scholars. Dan Nagin developed a method to analyze empirically
various trajectories of offending (Nagin 2005). John Laub and Robert Sampson (Laub and
Sampson 2003; Sampson and Laub 1993) initiated the developmental criminology and explored
the idea of varying social controls during the life course that may be responsible for the
variations in crime when people coming of age. They based their analysis on the data of two
matched groups of 500 delinquents and 500 nondelinquents collected by Sheldon and Eleanor
Glueck for their pioneering empirical study on juvenile crime in the 1950s (Glueck and Glueck
1950). Rolf Loeber in Pittsburgh (Loeber 1990), Marc LeBlanc in Montreal (Leblanc 1997), and
Farrington with his longitudinal study of male laborers in London (Farrington 2002, 2003) have
brought up new dynamic views on the causes of crime. Terry Moffitt’s distinction between
adolescent-limited and persistent criminals also inspired many present studies on criminal
careers, recidivism, and redemption (Moffitt 1993). Although her distinction between two groups
of offenders is probably too simple, she inspired may researchers to study criminal careers with a
variety of explanations for distinct career trajectories (Cullen 2011). In the 90s of the last
century, new promising horizons emerge from the idea that perhaps neurological defectives play
a role as cause of crime (Rafter 2008; Raine 1993). In the future, when scientists know more
about DNA and the human gnomes, new kinds of causal theories will be developed and tested.

The City Of Chicago And Its Scholars

The city of Chicago played a special role in criminology. It is probably the most researched city
in the world. From 1850 till 1930, the city grows from 4,470 to almost four million residents
from all continents longing for a new and hopefully prosperous future. Various scholars in
sociology, economy, psychology, and criminology carried out innovative theoretical and
empirical studies on the structural changes of their city in the newly established University of
Chicago. Inspired by former journalist Robert Park (1863–1944), pragmatic academics like
Ernest Burgess (1886–1966), Clifford Shaw (1896–1957), and methodologist Henry McKay
(1899–1980) started quantitative and qualitative geographic criminological studies on the impact
of urbanization processes on human behavior and institutions (without being aware till 1933 that
in Europe there already existed a long tradition of this kind of research) and on the spatial
distribution of crime in cities. A very important contribution stems from William Thomas (1863–
1947) who introduced the concept of social disorganization in criminology (based on his ideas on
social change (Thomas 1966: p. 3)). Later Louis Wirth (1897–1952) elaborated that concept
(Thomas 1966; Thomas and Znaniecki 1918/1920; Wirth 1938). George Mead (1863–1931) laid
the foundation for his symbolic interactionism, inspiring social control theory and labeling
theory (Mead 1974 [1934]). Thorsten Sellin (1896–1994) developed his culture conflict theory of
crime (Sellin 1938), and Edwin Sutherland (1883–1947) elaborated in different versions his
differential association theory (Cohen 1968; Sutherland 1924, 1934, 1939, 1947), while Burrhus
Skinner (1904–1990) created his operant version of behaviorism (Ronald Akers based his social
learning theory partly on his thoughts) (Skinner 1976). The concept of social disorganization is
still in the center of many etiological and geographic studies in criminology (Kubrin and Weitzer
2003; Sampson 2010). Robert Bursik worked in the 1980s in the Chicago tradition and
elaborated that concept to study the effects of changing neighborhoods on crime concentrations
in that city (Bursik 1984, 1986, 1988). With colleague Harold Grasmick (1993), Bursik also
highlighted how different types of community controls (private, parochial, public) were related
to neighborhood crime, disorder, and citizen’s fear of crime. Robert Sampson (1995) and his
colleagues continued that line of investigations by putting forward the idea of collective efficacy
as one of the explanatory characteristics of neighborhoods (Morenoff and Sampson 1997;
Sampson 1987, 1995, 2010, Sampson and Groves 1989; Sampson et al. 1997). The Chicago
school was and still is not a united framework of thought but an umbrella under which various
brilliant scholars have been developing divergent theories, especially on the causes of crime.
Various scholars of all over the world are studying the spatial clustering of crime in their cities.
New specialized developments are to be observed in the field of crime pattern theory
(Brantingham and Brantingham 1991), of crime location decision models, or of the mobility of
offenders, based on ideas that have been developed many decades earlier. One of the most
popular theories on spatial crime distributions is the routine activity theory (L. Cohen and Felson
1979; Felson 2008) that has influenced spatial and environmental criminology for the last 30
years now. New methodologies and better administrative data and surveys to include
measurement of social processes (Raudenbush and Sampson 1999) allow to study smaller units
of analysis, elevating clusters of crime and victimization, even in neighborhoods where normally
there is a low level of crime (Eck and Weisburd 1995; Oberwittler and Wikstrom 2009; Sherman
and et al. 1989; Weisburd et al. 2009). A new criminology is emerging to address the issue of
unequal crime places in cities, not large neighborhoods anymore.

Symbolic interactionism as developed by Mead was important not only for sociology but also for
criminology in two respects. Edwin Sutherland (1883–1947) built his famous differential
association theory in the 1930s and 1940s on the theoretical roots of symbolic interactionism
(Sutherland 1947). Criminal behavior is learned in a social process within social groups by an
excess of positive definitions to law violation above negative definitions towards law violation.
He also combined the macro perspective of Chicago sociology on urbanization, social
disorganization, and social groups with the micro theory of Mead on how people learn attitudes
and behavior in intimate groups. Sutherland not only studied the crimes of young people in this
respect but applied his theory also on homeless people as well as professional thieves and
managers of powerful corporations (Sutherland 1937, 1983 [1949]). Sutherland had a great
number of students who dedicated their academic life in exploring, defending, and extending the
differential association theory (Cressey 1964, 1969; Glaser 1972). The differential association
theory inspired many empirical studies on the impact of peers on the criminal behavior of
adolescents.

After The Second World War: The Rise Of New

Criminological Theories
In the roaring 1960s of previous century, a young generation opposed the authority of states and
the power of social and legal institutions on several ways, leading to various nontraditional
criminological theories: labeling theories, critical criminology (of all different schools of
thought), and feminist criminology (the same). Howard Becker (1928–) put forward the labeling
perspective and focused on the role of moral entrepreneurs in society to criminalize people and
behavior (Becker 1963). As proclaimed by symbolic interactionism, people can change their
identity because of the reactions of other people on their behavior. Becker studied the culture of
so-called deviant groups in society and how law enforcement pushes them to deviate more often
and seriously from the norms of conventional society. Becker’s legacy is also partly built on the
studies of others. Frank Tannenbaum (1893–1969), sent to prison for a protest demonstration
when he was a young man, focused attention on the negative consequences of the criminal
justice system, especially the prison system on individuals (Tannenbaum 1938). Erving Goffman
(1922–1982) became famous in psychiatry and in criminology for his study on total institutions,
like prisons, (mental) hospitals, or army camps, that are in full control of those who were forced
to live in it (Goffman 1961). Edward Lemert (1912–1996) distinguished between primary and
secondary deviance (broader than crime) and demonstrated that official reactions force people to
change their identity into a deviant one (Lemert 1951, 1967). Stigmatizing criminals or mentally
ill people forces them to continue their deviant behavior or as Becker called it, the state
(especially the police) amplifies deviancy in society. Inspired by the roaring 1960s and the
1970s, more critical criminologists focused the attention to all kinds of sources of conflict in
society that promote crime. Richard Quinney (1970) argued that crime emerges in a politicized
society when those who are in power control the lower class by criminal law; William Chambliss
stressed the power of interest groups to influence the legal system and studied state crimes
instead of crime of those without power (Chambliss 1969; Chambliss and Seidmann 1986), and
Turk elaborated the conflict perspective by proposing a theory of criminalization that attempted
to explain that societal conflicts between authorities and individuals will result in criminalizing
the individual (having less power) (Turk 1969). Critical criminology became more influential
when Walton, Taylor, and Young published their criticism on traditional theoretical thinking in
criminology, including labeling and conflict traditions (Taylor et al. 1973), later followed by
(Taylor et al. 1975). The emergence of feminist criminology was related with the second-wave
emancipation and liberation of women in the western world in the 1960s and 1970s. Criminology
was (and mostly still is) a male-dominated scientific discipline focusing on male problematic
behavior. Klein was one of first critics of male criminological theories (Klein 1973), stating that
traditional theories largely explained the criminal behavior of men and the few theories that
explain criminal behavior of female offenders used simplistic and stereotypical assumptions
about women. Smart also raised serious questions about the assumptions of many criminological
theories on the nature of women in general and on the female offender in particular as law
abiding by nature (Smart 1976). Feminists also emphasized gender differences in treatment by
the criminal justice system as offenders and as victims. Often female offenders are punished
more harshly than males and often psychiatrically by the justice system “because their criminal
behavior is against their law-abiding nature,” and women who are victimized are not “true”
victims but rather seduce the “innocent” male offender. Freda Adler’s Sisters in Crime argued
that women, once liberated, will play a role in the male world and consequently (have to) act
more aggressive and competitive like men (Adler 1975). Because of the progressing
emancipation of women, they will have higher crime rates in the future. By 1980 feminist
criminology could be classified into different schools of thought: Marxist, socialist, liberal, and
radical schools (Jagger and Rothenberg Struhl 1978). However, these classifications were soon
replaced with uniquely feminist approaches (e.g., doing gender; sexed bodies, intersectionality
(Daly and Maher 1998; Simpson 1989)).

Integrated And Elaborated Theories

John Braithwaite (1951–) started from an anomaly between labeling theory and other theories
like strain and control theories predicting that the criminal justice system is aiming at reducing
crime and at the same time stimulates crime (Braithwaite 1989). Braithwaite introduced the idea
that the outcome of justice processing depends on the kind of shame that is exploited by the
system. Disintegrative shaming leads to more recidivism and integrating shaming reduces future
criminal behavior; reintegrative shaming will reduce crime in the future because offenders will
stay integrated in society. David Garland (1955–) extended the sociology of punishment by
opening the discussion between punishment and control in an area of expanding culture of
control in which the media, politics, and moral entrepreneurs play their part (Garland 2001;
Garland and Sparks 1995). His inspiration comes from classic philosophers and sociologists as
Durkheim. By creating fear and anger about their safety among the citizens, control can expand
far beyond the limits of civil rights in the contemporary world we are living (Garland 2001).

The Current State Of Theoretical Criminology

One of the conclusions of this brief overview is that during the last centuries, a great number of
causal ideas have been developed in criminology to address the explanation of criminal behavior
or crime rates. Many of these ideas are still presented and discussed in full length in the
textbooks of our discipline to teach new generations of students in criminology. In most cases,
after the presentation of the theories, criticism is presented as well, leaving the freshmen in doubt
whether there might be one theory in criminology that meets the criteria of the discipline. From a
distance the discipline looks like a battlefield of masses of rival and conflicting ideas about the
causes of crime. Is it social class or mental deficits that cause crime? Is it the (inherited or
socialized) propensity of crime or is the social and physical environment responsible for humans
to commit crimes? Or are the laws of states the cause of crime?

Some may argue that this “wealth of ideas” is a blessing for the discipline; others would argue
that its presence demonstrates the impotence of theoretical criminology. There is no superior
theory (despite the claims of individual scholars) that can explain more and better than other
theories, let alone can predict that a person will commit a crime in the future given the conditions
of that theory. In the past, criminologists and others have also heavily and regularly criticized the
state of causal theory. In the 1930s of last century, the mathematicians Michael and Adler (1933)
critically evaluated criminology for the government and concluded that criminological theories
are no more than empirical generalizations that do not meet any mathematical criteria of theory
formation. Forty years later a German sociologist discussed the most important criminological
theories of that time and judged them as vague, with unclear concepts and unspecified relations
between them, without any formal structure and low explanatory power (Opp 1974). Wolfgang
and his colleagues drew similar conclusions after evaluating criminology between the years 1945
and 1972 and observing empirical progress but hardly any theoretical improvements (Wolfgang
et al. 1978). Bernard (1990) repeated earlier critics and questioned whether criminological
theories have any explanatory power. He stated, “Despite the enormous volume of quantitative
research, there has been no substantial progress in falsifying the criminology theories that existed
20 years ago” and that “None of these theories has been falsified in the past 20 years” (Bernard
1990, p. 147). Finally he concluded: “Current controversies in criminology indicate that there is
fundamental disagreement on even the most basic facts about crime” and “That being the case,
the failure to accumulate verified knowledge in the context of specific theories should not be
surprising. Even on simple correlations like those between age and crime, social class and crime
there is no agreement” (Bernard 1990, p. 329).

What might be going on with the discipline? Before condemning theoretical criminology, we
must first try to disentangle the existing causal theories whether they are rivals or not to assess
the state of a discipline (Lakatos 1970). However, that is a very difficult task to accomplish for
criminology. First, we have to acknowledge that not all criminological theories can be compared
because they are about different units of analysis. A majority of causal theories have individuals
as subject of analysis, but an increasing number of others are about geographical areas, like street
segments, neighborhoods, or countries, or social and ethnic groups, business corporations, states,
organized groups, institutions like prisons or probation systems, police, or laws. In order to
compare whether theories are rivals, they should at least have the same unit of analysis, or else
one is comparing apples with pears. Second, in case of theories about individuals, the dependent
variables (i.e., the behavior to be explained) differ too much prohibiting comparisons. Most
theories are about criminal behavior in general, others are about a specific kind of crime like
burglary or violence, some are about deviant behavior including mental disturbances or sexual or
psychological abnormalities, some include all aggressive behaviors, and some even do not
mention the kind of behavior that is aimed to be explained! Third, criminology is a product of
intellectual influences of many other disciplines, notably sociology and psychology but also from
medical sciences and law. As a consequence conceptual frameworks of these disciplines are
introduced in criminology, without further reference to other, already existing theoretical
concepts. The complex interdisciplinary discourse must be unraveled to assess whether we have
distinct independent causal factors or not. Fourth, theories of which the propensity to crime is the
object of explanation cannot be compared with theories in which criminal behavior is the
outcome. For instance, in Hirschi’s bonding theory, the outcome of the bonding process is that
the individual is free to deviate, not the frequency or seriousness of the criminal offense. Lastly,
most causal theories explain only little variance in the criminal behavior of humans as Weisburd
and Piquero recently demonstrated (Weisburd and Piquero 2008). They pointed at the
underdeveloped way of theory testing in criminology and the practice to use seldom primary data
for that purpose. But that is only part of the story. Probably the fact that we have to do with only
fragmented and limited explanations anyway is important as well.

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