Criminology: The Classical School

The Classical School

• Criminals make rational choices.
• Criminals are capable of free will.
• Punishment deters crime.
• Emerged in the 18th century in response to harsh punishments.

The Enlightenment

• The Renaissance brought more rational, scientific, and humanistic thinking.
• By the 18th century, traditional doctrines of absolute obedience to authority were increasingly challenged, as were the prevailing concepts of justice.

Beccaria's Key Ideas

• Potential offenders are deterred if there is certainty of punishment.
• Potential offenders are deterred if there is swiftness of justice.
• Fair penalties should be proportionate to the severity of the social harm.

Enduring Influence

• Jeremy Bentham supported utilitarianism.
• Any law should benefit the greatest number of people.
• Punishment is justified if it prevents more social harm than it produces.
• People seek pleasure and avoid pain as rational beings.
• Felicific calculus is a quasi-mathematical formula for calculating how much pain is needed to dissuade someone from committing an offence.

Evaluation of the Classical School

• Deterrence refers to the belief that the threat of punishment can prevent people from committing a crime (general vs. specific deterrence).
• Behaviour is governed by its consequences.
• Research on deterrence has been inconclusive.

The Positivist School

• The Positivist School advocates for using the scientific method to measure behaviour and rehabilitation over punishment.
• Lombroso, the "father" of modern criminology, and his contemporaries Garofalo & Ferri, embraced the Positivist School.

Lombroso and His Pals

• Biological determinism: decisions are decided by predictable and/or inherited causes.
• Atavism is a biological condition that renders someone incapable of living within the norms of society; evolutionary throwbacks.
• Lombroso theorized that heredity causes atavism.

Evaluation of the Positivist School

• Critiques of deterministic explanations.
• Weakness of methodology.
• Limited application to understanding white-collar, organized, and political crime.
• Concerns that positivist-based policies will be intrusive and lead to totalitarianism and eugenics.
• The failure to distinguish between the roles of environment and heredity.

The Neoclassical School

• The Neoclassical School assumes free will, but some offenders should be exonerated or treated leniently.
• The Neoclassical School endorsed the classical system with 2 fundamental differences.
• Focuses on rejecting the rigidity of the punishment system.
• Allows for discretion, which is the power of an authority to exercise his or her judgment in a particular case instead of having to follow specific rules.

Neoclassical School - Key Terms

• Just deserts: concept that those who commit an offence choose to do so and deserve to be punished accordingly.
• Plea bargain: An agreement for a reduced sentence if accused agrees to plead guilty.

Prison Reform - Alexander Maconochie

• Reward: prisoners must earn their release through industrious labour and good conduct.
• Individual influence: prisons should have no more than 300 vs 100 inmates to offer constructive support
• Gradual release: prisons should provide for gradual release
• Post-release supervision: strict supervision after discharge.

Prison Reform Figures

• John Haviland: design prisons to reform rather than confine inmates.
• John Howard: instrumental in establishing prisoner advocacy groups.
• Charles Lucas: supported maximum vs minimum sentences, a classification system of inmates that separated adults from young offenders based on their moral improvement.

Modern Law Enforcement - Sir Robert Peel

• Police power depends on public approval of their actions and behaviour.
• Maintaining the respect of the public means securing the public's cooperation to respect societal laws.
• Police must demonstrate impartiality, courtesy, and good humour.
• Police must use minimal force when enforcing the law.

Legal Reform

• NCRMD stands for not criminally responsible because of mental disorder
• In Canada, the M'Naghten Rule underpins the NCRMD designation
• Those determined as NCRMD are sentenced to custodial forensic psychiatric facilities where they receive ongoing care.

Crime Prevention

• Crime prevention through environmental design works for property-related crime.

Crime Prevention Contributors

• Clarence Ray Jeffery: argued 3 key elements for crime to occur are motivation, skill, and opportunity.
• Skill and motivation are difficult to combat, focus should be to reduce opportunities.

Pioneers of Criminology in Canada

• Ezzat A. Fattah: in 1974, set up a criminology program that is now the largest English program in Canada and contributed to victimology through Amnesty International.
• Paul and Patricia Brantingham: Developed the field of environmental criminology at Simon Fraser University in 1977.