Schools of criminology

Dr.Seema Surendran
Schools of criminology

► The formal study of criminology began with Cesare Beccaria, an Italian jurist
who in the late 18th century took a systematic approach to crime and
criminals. He was the first person to study crime scientifically.
► The plea made in his treatise, “On Crimes and Punishments,” helped
eliminate corrupt and inhumane practices of criminal law administration at
the time.
► One of the biggest questions in criminology, or the study of crime and
punishment, asks why people commit crimes. Many criminology theories are
rooted in certain schools of thought, which help explain criminal behavior and
enable the criminal justice system to appropriate punishment. 
Classical School

► The classical school developed during the Enlightenment in response to excessive and
cruel punishments to crime. Beccaria argued for more humanitarian forms of
punishment and against physical punishment and the death penalty. He believed that
punishment should fit the crime and not be excessive.
► A primary premise of the classical school was the fundamental equality of all people,
which meant that every person should be treated equally under the law. Criminal
behavior would be subject to similar punishment, and people had to know what
categories of conduct were punishable. Punishable conduct would only be that which
encroached on someone else’s freedom in violation of the social contract. No longer
would status be a factor to receiving favorable treatment or more favorable punishment.
► Central to the classical school was the presence of free will. All
people act within reason; conduct results from the conscious
operation of a person’s will after reflection and choosing among
alternatives of action. People know the difference between right and
wrong.
► Awareness of right and wrong combined with crime as a choice played
into how the classical school thought of punishment. Because crimes
are chosen through free will, they should be punished swiftly and
proportionally to the crime. This is the most effective deterrent to
crime.
Positivist School

► The positivist school opposed the classical school’s understanding of

crime. All people are different, and thus vary in their understanding
of right and wrong; this needed to be a barometer for punishment.
The person and not the crime should be punished.
► “Positivism saw its role as the systematic elimination of the free will
‘metaphysics’ of the classical school—and its replacement by a
science of society, taking on for itself the task of the eradication of
crime,” Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young wrote in “The New
Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance.” This new,
deterministic movement was consolidated by Enrico Ferri, who
championed the approach then being employed by an Italian military
physician, Cesare Lombroso.
► The “positive” method consisted of carefully observing the
characteristics of criminals to gain insight into the causes of antisocial
conduct or behavior.
► Ferri did not endorse all of Lombroso’s conclusions, such as that some
people are born criminals and that some physical features, like the
shape of a person’s head or the placement of one’s cheekbones, can
predict criminal behavior. However, Ferri adopted the inductive
method and set out to create a science that would explain the causes
of crime within society and the individual offender.
► Positivism’s focus on the individual may have been the greatest
contribution to criminology and the criminal justice system. It led to
classifications of offenders, such as habitual criminals, as well as
categories between insanity and sanity. It also led to the use of
psychology in studying offenders, opening the way for different kinds
of sentences and treatments that fit the criminal and not the crime.
Neo-Classicist School

► The neo-classicist school emerged, in large part, to remedy some of

the problems created by the classical school.
► According to Taylor, Walton and Young, contradictions in classicism
presented themselves in universal penal measures and in day-to-day
practice. “It was impossible in practice to ignore the determinants of
human action and proceed as if punishment and incarceration could
be easily measured on some kind of universal calculus: apart from
throwing the working of the law itself into doubt (e.g. in punishing
property crime by deprivation of property) classicism appeared to
contradict widely-held commonsensical notions of human behavior.”
► Classicism concentrated on the criminal act and ignored individual
differences between criminals. Neo-classicism still held that free will
is important, but that it can be constrained by physical and
environmental factors. Thus, neo-classicists introduced revisions to
account for problems presented in classicism:
❖ Allowing for mitigating circumstance by looking at the situation
(physical and social environment) in which the individual had been
placed.
❖ Some allowance was given for an offender’s past record. A court
needs to take into account an offender’s criminal history and life
circumstances when making a decision about someone’s sentence.
❖ Consideration should be given for factors like incompetence,
pathology, insanity and impulsive behavior.
❖ Also, certain individuals, such as children and the mentally ill, are
generally less capable of exercising their reason.