Ordinary Criminals and Criminaloids: Bangladesh perspective

Ratan Kumar Roy:

Normally we know that crime is a behavior which is prohibited by criminal law and criminal is a person who has committed any crime and who has been found out as a guilty by a competent court after trial. There are so many types of criminals and there are many methods to identify the criminals and criminal behaviors.
Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist and physician, is called the father of modern criminology. His thoughts have left a deep impact on the history of criminology.

Lombroso brought about a shift in criminology from a legalistic preoccupation with crime to a scientific study of criminals. In finding the causes of crime Lombroso relied on the biological theory which is based on the belief that the criminals behave differently because they are structurally different from ordinary persons.

Cesare Lombroso first defined the term “Criminaloid” in his famous book “The Criminal Man” (L’uomo delinquente) published in 1876. His general theory suggested that criminals are distinguished from non-criminals by multiple physical anomalies which were termed as stigmata. He strongly believed that the criminals could be anatomically identified by their stigmata. However, Lombroso divided criminals into four basic types: Born criminal, criminal by passion, insane criminal, occasional criminal. The criminaloid is one out of four types of occasional criminals. The occasional criminals make the broadest and most inclusive category and it included four types: The Pseudo criminal, Criminaloid, Habitual criminal and Epileptoid criminal.

Now let us discuss about the “Criminaloid”.
Criminaloid came from the word criminal and suffix-oid, meaning criminal-like. The criminaloid is a person who projects himself as a respectable, upright in the society concealing his criminal personality. Cesare Lombroso defined this type of criminal in his book” The Criminal Man”, unlike ordinary criminals, criminaloids enjoy the respect of society and because they often establish good relationship and connections with the government and the law, they are less likely to meet with opposition.

Due to their respectable standing, they generally enjoy greater prosperity and privilege than the average criminal and have an automatic advantage over their more conscientious colleagues. Criminaloid prefers to prey on the anonymous public. He goes beyond this by convincing others to act instead of acting himself, which protects him from liability and being labeled a criminal, and is instead immune to such scrutiny.
The criminaloid practices a protective impersonation of the good. The criminaloid counterfeits the good citizen.

Our society is full of that criminaloids in the disguise of gentlemen. They are the most powerful and well connected with the highest executives.

Taking this advantage, they have been misappropriating the bank money, polluting the environment and ecosystem by hazardous substance and waste of their industries, producing and marketing the genetically modified organism (GMO) violating the bio-safety guidelines, mixing poisonous chemicals with the foods, supplying low quality medical equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE) and creating false corona test report. All the bad things have been done in association with the high officials.

Our expert law enforcing agencies can easily find out the ordinary criminals and they successfully prevented the serious terrorists. But our law enforcing agencies are not satisfactorily successful in finding out and preventing the criminaloids as they are co-existing in the society in the name of businessmen, industrialist, media-personality, celebrity etc. Although, presently our law enforcing agencies successfully identified and prosecuted some criminaloids. In addition to that, some government employees are involved with this malpractice enjoying the prerogatives. They are also treated as criminaloids. The crimes of the criminaloids against the humanity and general people. If the crimes of the criminaloids are not controlled strictly continuity of progress and development of Bangladesh will be seriously hampered and public health, safety, humanity, public interest, and morality will be endangered.

Ratan Kumar Roy: Advocate, Supreme Court of Bangladesh; Ex-President & General Secretary, Chittagong District Bar Association