Willem Bonger

Willem Adriaan Bonger (1876 to 1940) was a Dutch criminologist and sociologist, considered one of the first Marxist criminologists. He grew up in an Amsterdam family of ten children, studied law at the University of Amsterdam from 1895 and joined the Social Democratic Workers Party in 1897. His dissertation Criminalite et conditions economiques, completed in 1905 and translated into English in 1916, argued that what counts as crime depends on its relation to the prevailing socio-economic order rather than on moral character, and that capitalism strengthens egoism and so encourages certain kinds of crime among the socially disadvantaged. He worked in an insurance company while continuing his studies, edited the journal De Socialistische Gids from 1916 to 1938, became professor of sociology and criminology at Amsterdam in 1922 and in 1936 helped found the Dutch Sociological Association, serving as its president until 1940. He also wrote on religion, race and crime, criticized Cesare Lombroso and opposed Nazi influence on Dutch criminal law, and he died by suicide in Amsterdam in May 1940 after the German invasion.