Crime as Pathology

The meaning of the word pathology is “disease” and connotes both abnormality and dysfunction in an organ or system. The Greek root of the word, pathos, means “great suffering.” Pathology is a diagnostic term, suggesting that certain trademark criteria for a particular syndrome have been met. It is also an etiological term, indicating that a particular disorder has either organic or psychological roots. Finally, the notion that something is, by nature, pathological implies that an efficacious treatment exists or will someday exist.

Those applying this medical model to the understanding of crime assume that repetitive criminality indicates the presence of a diagnosable disorder or comprises, in and of itself, a disease. As such, a pathological model of criminality makes a number of assumptions. First, crime is seen as residing in the individual, rather than being symptomatic of a “sick” society. Second, criminal actions are considered largely determined by forces beyond the criminal's conscious knowledge and/or control. Third, criminal behavior can presumably be managed, or possibly cured, with pharmacological or dynamic interventions. Finally, in this model, extralegal deviance—because it equates with disease—is a quantifiable entity, not merely a subjective label affixed by those in power. As such, repetitive [Page 366]criminality transcends time and context, much like a case of syphilis or a brain tumor.

The pathologizing of criminality is a relatively modern concept. Although the pathological model has roots in both sixteenth-century English common law and nineteenth-century criminal anthropology, the true ascendancy of the medical model of criminality can be traced to the 1980 publication of the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. DSM-III' description of antisocial personality disorder listed the “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest” as a major diagnostic criterion for mental disorder, intensifying an already heated debate about the origins, and the persistence, of criminal behavior.