Schmall crim today8e_ppt_ch3

Criminology Today
An Integrated Introduction
CHAPTER
Criminology Today: An Integrated Introduction, 8e
Frank Schmalleger
Copyright © 2017 by Pearson Education, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Classical and
Neoclassical
Thought
3

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Frank Schmalleger
Introduction
• Majority of crimes are likely to be
planned, at least to some degree.
• This chapter looks at perspectives
based on the believe that at least some
crime is the result of rational choices by
offenders.

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Frank Schmalleger
Figure 3-1 Key Principles of Classical and Neoclassical Criminology
Source: Schmalleger, Frank, Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

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Frank Schmalleger
Forerunners of Classical Thought
• All human societies had notions of right
and wrong.
• William Graham Sumner
 Behavior is governed by:
• Mores
• Proscriptions covering potentially serious
violations of a group's values
• Folkways
• Customs whose violation is less likely to
threaten group survival
continued on next slide

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• William Graham Sumner
 Behavior is governed by:
• Laws
• Codified into formal structures for
enforcement purposes

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• Mala in se
 Acts said to be fundamentally or
inherently wrong regardless of time or
place
• Mala prohibita
 Acts said to be wrong only because they
are prohibited

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Frank Schmalleger
The Demonic Era
• Humans always preoccupied with good
vs. evil
• Some forms of evil appear cosmically-
based (plague, Holocaust).
 Explanations include divine punishment,
karma, fate, vengeful activities of
offended gods.

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The Demonic Era
• Some evil is due to individual behavior
(crime, deviance).
 Explanations include demonic
possession, spiritual influences,
temptation by fallen angels.

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Early Sources of Criminal Law
• Code of Hammurabi
 Emphasis on retribution
• Early Roman Law
 Twelve Tables
 Justinian Code

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Early Sources of Criminal Law
• Common Law
 Based on shared traditions supported by
court decisions
 Major source of modern criminal law
• Magna Carta
 Individual rights
 Due process

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The Enlightenment
• Thomas Hobbes
 Social contract
• John Locke
 Humans born as blank slates
 Expanded social contract concept
 Checks and balances

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The Enlightenment
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
 Humans intrinsically good
 Natural law
• Natural law and natural rights
 Thomas Paine
• Only democracy can guarantee natural
rights.
 U.S. Constitution built around
understanding of natural law

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The Classical School
• Enlightenment led to view of humans
as self-determining entities with
freedom of choice.
• Led to Classical School of criminological
thought
 Explained crime as resulting from the
exercise of free will
 Moral wrongdoing fed by personal
choice

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Cesare Beccaria
• Essay on Crimes and Punishments
(1764)
• Philosophy of punishment
 Purpose of punishment
• Deterrence, prevention
 Swift, certain
 Only severe enough to outweigh personal
benefits derived from crime
• Opposed to capital punishment, torture

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Jeremy Bentham
• Introduction to the Principles of Moral
Legislation (1789)
• Hedonistic calculus/utilitarianism
 People act to maximize pleasure,
minimize pain.
 Therefore, pain from punishment must
exceed pleasure from crime.
• Panopticon
 Model prison

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Neoclassical Criminology
• Positivism began to dominate in 20th
century.
 Use of scientific method to study crime
 Based on hard determinism
• Belief that crime results from forces
beyond individual's control

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Figure 3-2 Classical Criminology versus Positivism—The Role of Free Will

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• Assumptions undermined in 1970s
 Studies suggesting failure of
rehabilitation
 Fear of crime
• "Get tough on crime" policies
 Reaffirmation of belief in rationality

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• Resurgence of classical ideals in 1970s
 Middle ground between total free will
and hard determinism
• Key influences
 Robert Martinson
• "Nothing-works doctrine"

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• Key influences
 James Q. Wilson
• Crime not result of social conditions, not
affected by social programs
 David Fogel's justice model
• Criminals deserve punishment because of
their choices.

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Rational Choice Theory (RCT)
• Criminals make a conscious, rational
choice to commit crime.
• Cost-benefit analysis
 Behavior result of personal choices
made after weighing costs and benefits
 Crime will decrease when opportunities,
limited, benefits reduced, costs
increased.

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Figure 3-3 Rational Choice and Crime

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Situational Choice Theory
• Ronald V. Clarke and Derek Cornish
• Soft determinism
 Crime is a function of choices and
decisions made within a context of
situational constraints and opportunities
 Crime requires motivation and
opportunity.

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Situational Choice Theory
• Reduce crime by changing the
environment.

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Situational Crime Control
Objectives
• Increase the effort involved in crime.
• Increase the risks associated with
crime.
• Reduce the rewards of crime.
• Reduce the provocations for crime.
• Remove the excuses that facilitate
crime.

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The Seductions of Crime
• Jack Katz explains crime as the result
of positive attractions of the experience
of criminality.
 Crime is often pleasurable for offenders,
which is a major motivation behind
crime.
 Crime is sensually compelling.

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The Seductions of Crime
• Redirect criminology to situational
factors that directly precipitate crime
and reflect crimes' sensuality.

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Situational Crime-Control Policy
• Situational crime prevention shifts the
focus away from the offender and onto
the context in which crime occurs.
• Begins with opportunity structure of
crime
 Reduce opportunities to reduce crime.
• Focus on context of crime as alternative
to traditional offender-based crime
prevention policies

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Critique of Rational Choice Theory
• Overemphasis on individual choice,
relative disregard for the role of social
factors in crime causation
• Assumes everyone is equally capable of
making rational decisions
• Displacement may occur as a result of
situational crime prevention strategies.

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Punishment and Neoclassical
Thought
• Classical School emphasizes deterrence
as purpose of punishment.
• Neoclassical view adds retribution.
 Someone who chooses to violate the law
deserves to be punished.
 Criminals must be punished to curtail
future crime.

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Just Deserts
• Just deserts model of sentencing
 Offenders deserve the punishment they
receive and punishments should be
appropriate to type/severity of crime.
• Justice is what the individual deserves
when all circumstances are considered.

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Deterrence
• Types of deterrence
 Specific
• Seeks to prevent offender from engaging
in repeat criminality
 General
• Seeks to prevent others from committing
similar crimes

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Deterrence
• For punishment to deter, it must be
swift, certain, and sufficiently severe.
• High recidivism rates suggest specific
deterrence does not prevent repeat
crime.

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Capital Punishment
• Brings together notions of deterrence,
retribution and just deserts
 Considerable disagreement over the
efficacy of death as a criminal sanction
 Much research into efficacy, fairness of
capital punishment

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Capital Punishment
• Capital punishment and race
 Opponents cite research suggesting it
has been imposed disproportionately on
racial minorities.
 Advocates more concerned with whether
penalty is fairly imposed

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Policy Implications of Classical
and Neoclassical Thought
• Determinate sentencing
 Mandates a specific and fixed amount of
time to be served for each offense
category
• Truth in sentencing
 Requires judges to assess and make
public the actual time an offender is
likely to serve

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Policy Implications of Classical
and Neoclassical Thought
• Incapacitation
 The use of imprisonment to reduce the
likelihood that an offender will be able
to commit future crimes

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A Critique of Classical Theories
• Represents more a philosophy of justice
than a theory of crime causation
• Lacks explanatory power over criminal
motivation
 Does not really explain how choices
for/against crime are made
• Little empirical scientific basis for
claims of Classical School

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