Criminology
The backdrop for the creation of the classical school of criminology wasthe movement in Europe, traditionally referred to as the Enlightenment.Generally, the Italian thinker Cesare Beccaria is credited with thecreation of classical criminology, but it is important to remember that increating his ideas, he did not so much generate original concepts as linktogether and systematize the ideas that were already circulating in theEnlightenment in to a cohesive theory of criminology. His influences werethinkers, such as Locke, Bacon, Rousseau, and Diderot. At the heart of hisconception was the belief, taken from Locke, that the was an underlyingsystem of natural laws, which one could use as the basis of human law: A law of nature is a law prescribing conduct which is separate from and independent of the conventions of mankind: independent, that is, of the positive laws of states, and of established social conventions or customs . . . positive law or social convention may or may not correspond in fact to what is required by nature. (Locke 15)In this spirit then, Beccaria and his followers sought to examine
in terms of its underpinnings and how it was to be treated. Ferriin particular is of more interest today, as he felt that other elementsbeyond the physical, including social, economic, and political factors wereextremely important in determining anyone's propensity towards criminalaction. This was the sort of climate out of which the idea generated. They proceeded on this route by defining several characteristics of humans,including the Cartesian notion that man is fundamentally a rational animalimbued with free will. The only cognitive claims to which a legal positivist needbe committed are claims about what the law is. The classical view waspredicated on the idea that crimes were a violation of the social contractand that the law should only be concerned with correcting those violations,not with enforcing morality. Similarly,the idea that crimes are committed for rational reasons relating to theissues of pain and pleasure is wide generalization at best; crimes may becommitted for a variety of other reasons. His ideas consisted of the conception that it was the pleasureprincipal and the avoidance of pain, or rather a primary sort of hedonismthat was the main functioning element by which humans lived. He felt thisurge so primary that he even began his major work on criminology, ThePrinciples of Morals and Legislation, with this very assertion: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. Hopefully, newerapproaches will be able to take the best elements of both the positivistand classical approach in constructing an updated criminology. Indeed, the classical view doeslittle to explain why crimes occur, and therefore it offers reasonablylittle predictive power in determining when and why crimes might occur. (White and Patterson 43)Not unsurprisingly, then, the early positivist accounts of the law werebased not in metaphysical ideas but physical realities, initiallyDarwinism. This focus ondeterrence is one that is often still discussed today, typically inconnection with debates regarding the death penalty.
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