The Ideas Of The Classical School

The Ideas Of The Classical SchoolIn order to appropriately address the topic of discussion, its important to librate the criminological perspectives related to the debate and the regulations associated with each perspective. Two schools which go out be drawn upon argon the Classical school, which was established towards the end of the 18th century and the cocksure school which developed towards the end of the 19th century. The Classical school was based on a utilitarian philosophy and demonstrated the idea that, for the sake of consistency, all wrongdoer must be treated equally. The Positivist school, however, opposed Classical principles, using the scientific method to study human demeanour, expressing individuality and stressing the need for the immoral to be treated with appropriate discretion.One contentious area within criminology is the idea that the criminal is normal. Jeremy Bentham, a Classical thinker, argues that this is indeed the case. Criminals are normal in tha t they are rational, calculated decision-makers merely like everybody else. Individuals have free-will and they are guided by a hedonistic calculus the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of perturb (Bentham cited by Walklate 200718). Such idea suggests that before engaging in criminal activity, the criminal calculates whether the reward go forthweighs the risk. i.e., is the potential pleasure worth the potential penalisation? However, what this supposition fails to consider is that criminality depose sometimes be a spontaneous reaction its not always a pre-meditated one. People may act come in of pure desperation giving little thought to the consequences should he/she be caught. An ideal to support this would be the clichd scenario in which an individual steals a arse around of bread to feed his/her starving family. Such action involves no particular thought process they do what they do simply because they wish to survive. However, thats not to plead that ration al choice is not apparent. It does have relevance to certain annoyances, especially crimes such(prenominal) as burglary in which a planning process is infra asleep(p) before fall out to avoid detection and significantly increase the chances of a successful sweep, such as observations of home security and patterns in daily comings and goings.Arguably the main principle of the Classical approach can be said to be reflective of the idea that the criminal is normal this principle being that offenders should receive equal penalizations, providing the offences are of the selfsame(prenominal) or a alike(p) nature. The principle revolves around the idea that everybody is equal and olibanum to treat everybody as equals disregards the conception that theres an freakishness in the behaviour of the criminal (Hopkins Burke 2009 31). Their philosophy expresses that there is no place in the categorisation and labelling of individuals into specific groups based on conditions which they ma y or may not have in order for there to be a truly just justice scheme, everybody must be treated the same. This principle has, unsurprisingly, come under a lot of criticism, a general criticism of which would argue that society is in circumstance unequal (in terms of the divisions in social class) and so for an offender to be punished in the same way as an affluent offender is seen to be ludicrous. Take the example mentioned previously an individual who is forced to claim in the theft of a loaf of bread to feed their starving family should not be punished in the same way as a president of a large corporation, for example, who dips his hand into the wages of his employees to give himself a larger bonus. In one scenario the crime is very much committed out of necessity, whereas the other is a crime of greed and thus it would be unfair, morally, to treat the cases equally as they are brightenly unequal in nature.On the passing game side to the normality of the criminal debate, com es the idea that the criminal is sick. Where in the 18th and early 19th century, we have discussed that crime was believed to be a deliberately chosen behaviour of rational actors the second half of the 19th century proverb the emergence of individual positivism which sought to dispel the Classical approach to explanations of crime and the ways in which criminals should be punished (Sapsford 1981 310). Such perspective doubted the ability of a criminal to choose to engage in crime and that criminality, they argued, is a embodiment of mental illness which removes their capacity to act freely. Therefore, straight away the disparity between Individual Positivism and Classical criminology become visible.Cesare Lombroso (1876) was a key subscriber to Positivist criminology. His research focused on idea that the criminal is born a criminal and they have very little choice in the matter. He studied the physical differences between the criminal and the non-criminal, whilst likewise tak ing into account the similarities and differences of the criminal and the mentally ill. Most notably, he drew the observation that criminals possess similar traits to an atavistic being which of course refers to an earlier stage in human development. Such observations included irregularity in skull size, ear size, irregularities in both efflorescence and weight and many other traits. However, he was also prepared to accept that not all criminals are born into the role and that some in fact do achieve it either through mental disorders or the environments in which they live (Lombroso 1876 cited by Sapsford 1981 310-311).The views regarding the normality or the abnormality of the criminal have a substantial effect on the ways in which the Classicists and the Positivists believe penalization should be distributed. The history of the use of punishment is an interesting one. Michel Foucault (1979) in his book aim and Punish provides a great context into how the problem of crime was t reated pre-enlightenment. The purpose of Foucaults research was to establish how it was that we got to the stage where incarceration became the main kind of punishment. It was 1757 genus Paris in which Foucault researched a man who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by the court. By order of the court, the man was publically bugger offn through the streets of Paris in horse-drawn cart until he arrived at the point of execution. He was stripped to the waist, flesh was torn from him with pincers, sulphur was poured onto his hands and he was then quartered by four horses. quartet hours passed before his torso was pierced onto a spike. The following day, the torso was burned and the execution process was complete (Foucault 1976 3). What Foucault found was that the punishment was very much do into a public spectacle and these public displays were boisterous affairs tidy sum found great pleasure in seeing people condemned for their transgressions. 80 years later, a simil ar thing happened. A man was found guilty of murder, but instead of receiving the same brutal punishment he was incarcerated, isolated from the outside world. extravagantly walls kept the criminal confined on the inside the public were kept on the outside public emotions were taken out of punishment.Although Foucault was not associated with the Classical school, his observations were regarded super by Classicist thinkers, particularly Cesare Beccaria. Beccaria was an enlightened thinker who sought great need in replacing irrational thinking with a rational one. He stated that pre-1750 punishments were barbaric and localised meaning that punishments varied from place to place (Beccaria 1764 cited by McLaughlin et al 2003 11). Punishments were vengeful with public participation permitted through the throwing of projectiles and the hurling of abuse. Beccaria claimed that such a criminal justice system is weak and as a result, he set out to reform the way in which we punish offender s, in which Foucault insisted that his intentions were not to punish less, but to punish better (Foucault 1976 82).For Beccaria, one of the main issues that needed to be addressed was the complex nature of the justice and the written legislature. The law needed to be made clear and simple so that people can understand what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Law should not just be a doctrine which can only be understood by lawyers and other legal experts, but should be understood by the individual when the procedure of those who can understand the sacred code of laws and hold it in their hands increases, the frequency of crimes will be found to decrease (Beccaria 1963 18).Classicist thinking requires that the punishment must be proportionate to the offence (Newburn 2007 116). Proportionality has in itself caused confusion, with some taking it literally to be reflective of the notion eye for an eye. However, what is truly meant by the term is that punishment should not be too excessive as it doesnt have any real impact on preventing crimes from occurring. In order for punishment to be justified, it must have a use and the use that punishment provides is its deterrence effect on the rest of society it must prevent others from committing the same crimes (Newburn 2007 116). The most important aspect of punishment, for Classical criminology, is that the general public are discouraged from committing crimes because of the fear of suffering a similar fate to the offender who has been caught and publicly punished.Also, this punishment must be made certain. That is, that people must be made aware that crime will not be tolerated and punishment will follow. Again, this relates to the general deterrence of punishment. A significantly effective way of deterring the public is through the participation of the media in the reporting of crimes. Rarely, crimes are reported to have gone without punishment. Yet it must be said that the certainty of punishment doe snt necessarily reduce crime in all cases. There are of course instances where people are aware of the consequences of a crime but continue to carry out the crime nonetheless. Ideally, the more promptly the punishment follows the crime the more just a justice system will be a concept which makes a whole lot of sense. The modern day criminal justice system is a rather weak one in terms of how quickly they are able to process trials through a court and decide on whether the accused is guilty or not guilty. Such lack of urgency is deemed a cruel torment of uncertainty as the criminal is forced to appreciation an indeterminate length of time to hear the verdict and the punishments that may follow should the verdict be one of guilt (Beccaria 1963 19). The promptness of punishment would thus clean-cut the criminal of this torment. However, not only does the promptness of punishment serve in the interests of the accused, it also serves in the interests of the criminal justice system. If a system is seen to be unvoiced on crime in that they can swiftly and appropriately punish an offender, people will recognise that the chances of them evading detection are slim.Whilst the Classicist justification for punishment resembles that of a retributivist nature, the Positivist approach looks more to rehabilitate the offender and provide treatment for the sick criminal. Sentences must consider the psychological conditions behind why it is that somebody engages in crime. It would simply unfair to give somebody suffering from some degree of mental deficiency the same punishment as a individual who is of sound mind. The criminal justice system needs therefore to encompass mitigating circumstances which can decrease the culpability of the accused as they are not controllably committing unlawful behaviours. Mitigating circumstances can be seen in the English Criminal Justice System, evident with the offence of manslaughter which is an offence of less culpability than murder. On e partial tone defence for murder, written under s.2(1) of the Homicide Act 1957, is diminished responsibility which states that a person will not be found guilty of murder if they suffered from an abnormality of mind which substantially impaired their mental responsibility for the action (Padfield 2000 153). Such mitigating circumstances are necessary because people are not the same and thus to punish them as equals would be inappropriate and completely unjust. Some people dont act out of their own free-will, they have little to no control everyplace their behaviours and it would be wrong to give them the same punishments as those who are fully in control of their behaviour i.e. the rational, calculated offenders.In drawing a conclusion, its clear to see that theres been a progressive development in theories regarding the debate of the normality or the abnormality of the criminal. Classical thinking preceded Positivist thinking and their principles did not take into consideration that scientific explanations for the behaviour of the criminal could be influential to the formation of a just criminal justice system. The emergence of the scientific approach maxim improvements into how we perceive the criminal. In most cases, the criminal is sick and its thus necessary to at least attempt to try and treat them rather than punish them. This saw a shift from a retributivist approach to a reductionist one which saw to rehabilitate the offender. But although the two perspectives are the contrast of one another, thats not to say that one of them, have had little impact on the criminal justice system that we see today. Todays system encompasses principles from both perspectives from the Classical school, it takes the idea that punishment must fit the crime that the serious offences must be met with a more severe punishment and subsequently, the lesser offences should receive a lesser sentence. We can see that with the sentencing tariffs in which each offence requir es a minimum and a maximum sentence for the offence. From the Positivist school, the system adopts the idea that the punishment must also fit the criminal the culpability of the offender must be considered in order to ensure that the best possible sentence is imposed on the offender. The curve of Positivism has also encouraged a variety of punishments/treatments including community sentences which serves as both a retributitive punishment and a rehabilitative treatment.Beccaria, C. (1963) On offensives and Punishments. 18-19. New York Bobbs-Merrill.Foucault, M. (1976) chasten and Punish. 3, 82. London Penguin.Hopkins Burke, R. (2009) An Introduction to Criminological Theory. 31. Collumpton Willan.McLaughlin, E., Muncie, J. and Hughes, G. (2003) Criminological Perspectives Essential Readings. 11. London Sage.Newburn, T. (2007) Criminology. 116. Collumpton Willan.Padfield, N. (2000) Criminal Law. 153. London Cromwell Press.Sapsford, R.J. (1981) Individual Deviance The Search for t he Criminal Personality in Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. and Pawson, G. (1981) Crime and Society Readings in History and Theory. 310-311. London Routledge.Walklate, S. (2007) Understanding Criminology Current Theoretical Debates. 18. Cardiff Open University Press.