Sociological positivism

One of the tenets of sociological positivism is that societal factors (poverty, membership in subcultures, low levels of education) create a predisposition to crime. Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet was one of the first to explore the relationship between crime and societal factors. He reported that poverty and low educational levels were important components in crime. British statistician Rawson W. Rawson linked population density and crime rates with statistics. He theorized that crowded cities create an environment conducive to crime and violence. French sociologist Emile Durkheim viewed crime as an inevitable consequence of the uneven distribution of wealth among the social classes. 

In 1830, Auguste Comte, a French philosopher who is generally recognized as the founder of sociology and positivism, wrote the following 1... 

The view that individualism is "the disease of the Western world was first proposed by August Comte (1791-1857), founder of Positivism and father of modem sociology. (Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, p. 273.)... 

Positivist School. Formed in the late nineteenth century, the Positivist School maintained that criminal behavior stemmed from factors beyond a person s control, both internal (biological and psychological) and external (sociological). Positivists believed that crime and criminals could be best understood through the application of scientific techniques, and that biological, personal, and environmental factors determine criminal behaviors in a cause-and-effect relationship. Biological positivism was first proposed... 

Neurath, Otto. 1959. Sociology and physicahsm. In Logical positivism, ed. Alfred J. Ayer, 282-317. New York Free Press. 

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