BORN'2'CRIME

Eel · February 1

The classical school usually refers to the 18th-century work during the Enlightenment by the utilitarian and social-contract philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria. Their interests lay in the system of criminal justice and penology and indirectly through the proposition that "man is a calculating animal," in the causes of criminal behavior. The classical school of thought was premised on the idea that people have free will in making decisions, and that punishment can be a deterrent for crime, so long as the punishment is proportional, fits the crime, and is carried out promptly

Beccaria wrote Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (On Crimes and Punishments) arguing for the need to reform the criminal justice system by referring not to the harm caused to the victim, but to the harm caused to society. This is based on the belief that to avoid social chaos, members of society are compelled to sacrifice their liberty to the nation state in order to prevent some members to infringe on the liberty of others. In the book, he explains that the greatest deterrent was the certainty of detection: the more swift and certain the punishment, the more effective it would be. It would also allow a less serious punishment to be effective if shame and an acknowledgement of wrongdoing was a guaranteed response to society's judgment. Thus, the prevention of crime was achieved through a proportional system that was clear and simple to understand, and if the entire nation united in their own defense. His approach influenced the codification movement which set sentencing tariffs to ensure equality of treatment among offenders. Later, it was acknowledged that not all offenders are alike and greater sentencing discretion was allowed to judges.

As for the reasoning behind why criminals commit crime, Beccaria was of the opinion that crime was a result of bad laws, economic stature, and poverty, and that too harsh a punishment on one aspect of crime leads to another being seen as a preferable alternative.He believed the reason behind crime was that individuals could not find a good enough reason to not commit transgressions aside from punishment. He describes the reasoning of a thief as follows:

"What are these laws that I am supposed to respect, that place such a great distance between me and the rich man? He refuses me the penny I ask of him and, as an excuse, tells me to sweat at work he knows nothing about. Who made these laws? Rich and powerful men who have never deigned to visit the squalid huts of the poor, who have never had to share a crust of mouldy bread amid the innocent cries of hungry children and the tears of a wife. Let us break these bonds, fatal to the majority and only useful to a few indolent tyrants; let us attack the injustice at its source. I will return to my natural state of independence; I shall at least for a little time live free and happy with the fruits of my courage and industry. The day will perhaps come for my sorrow and repentance, but it will be brief, and for a single day of suffering I shall have many years of liberty and of pleasures. As King over a few, I will correct the mistakes of fortune and will see these tyrants grow pale and tremble in the presence of one whom with an insulting flourish of pride they used to dismiss to a lower level than their horses and dogs."

Bentham's ideas strengthened the principles behind the prison system. Prisons were uncommon in pre-modern times and mostly used to hold those awaiting trial or transport. In Bentham's introduction of the Panopticon in 1791, he outlined prisons as a place to not only punish criminals, but to be a reminder of the repercussions in crime, in line with the classical emphasis on prevention through deterrence.

Bentham's concept has some flaws due to its reliance on two critical assumptions:

if deterrence is going to work, the potential offender must always act rationally whereas much crime is a spontaneous reaction to a situation or opportunity; and
if the system graduates a scale of punishment according to the seriousness of the offence, it is assuming that the more serious the harm likely to be caused, the more the criminal has to gain.

The Neo-classical school (criminology) of the 19th century contributed modifications to pure Classical thought, led by French thinkers such as Henri Joly and René Garraud. It recognized the limits of people in terms of their rationality, separating sane adults from the mentally ill adults, children, the elderly. These revisions bring doubt to the certainty of deterrence preventing crime due to 'rationality' by taking into consideration that the idea of rationality is subjective to the experiences, opinions, and totality of a human being. However, the Neo-classical school retained its emphasis on the rational actor theory save for the identified exceptions. Burke suggests that most of the modern legal system is still caught on the 'awkward theoretical compromise of the rational actor model.'