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Journal for Studies in Management and Planning
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ISSN: 2395-0463
Volume 03 Issue 11
October 2017
Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 371
A Comprehensive Study of the Classical
School of Criminology
CH.ARCHANA1, D.RAJESHWAR RAO2, P.SRINIVASA RAO3
LLM1
, Sr.Advocate1,2
Abstract
The classical school of criminology was developed in the eighteenth century. There were two main
contributors to this theory of criminology and they were Jeremy Bentham and Cesare de Beccaria. They
are seen as the most important enlightenment thinkers in the area of ‘classical' thinking and are
considered the founding fathers of the classical school of criminology. Bentham's contribution to
‘classical' theory is based on the fact that he was a utilitarian, interested in the happiness and well being
of the population and therefore believing that punishment, in the form of the infliction of pain, should
always be justified in terms of a greater good. At the heart of Bentham's writing was the idea that human
behaviour is directed at maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, (the pleasure-pain principle).
Beccaria believed that laws needed to be put into place in order to make punishments consistent and in
line with the crime. He believed that crime prevention in its effectiveness is down to three main ideas,
these being the certainty of the crime and how it is likely to happen, the celerity of the crime and how
quickly the punishment is inflicted and also the severity of the crime, and how much pain is inflicted.
Beccaria thought that the severity of the penalties given should be proportionate to the crime committed
and no more than what is necessary in order to deter the offender and others from committing further
crimes. This is the reason behind the death penalty being viewed by classical thinkers such as Beccaria
and Bentham as pointless, because there would be no deterrent. However when considering
manslaughter, as Bentham also believes, if the severity of the punishment should slightly outweigh the
crime then surely capital punishment should be used, there doesn't seem to be any stronger a deterrent to
other criminals thinking of undertaking the same criminal behaviour, than seeing another eradicated due
to their actions. Classical thinking has had a significant impact on criminological thinking in general and
perhaps a greater impact on criminal justice practise. Since the introduction of the classical school of
criminology and classical thinking, the use of capital punishment, torture and corporal punishment has
declined.
Keywords: beccaria, cesare, bentham, jeremy, classical school of criminology, criminology, deterrence,
deterrence theory, economic model of crime, felicitous calculus, rational choice theory, routine activities
theory (RAT), utilitarianism
Introduction
The term ‘Criminology’ is the amalgamation of
two terms ‘Crime’ and ‘Logy’- ‘Crime’ is
derived from the Latin term ‘Crimen’ which
means an offence or social wrong which is
forbidden by law under the pain of some
punishment. ‘Logy’ is an English suffix which
means scientific study or a branch of a study of
a particular subject. Criminology involves three
different types of problems: [1]
1. The field of criminalistics i.e. The problem
of detecting the law breaker, which is the
work of the detective, the police officer, the
medical specialist, the chemist.
2. Work of the penologist i.e. The problem of
the custody and treatment of the offender
once he is detected and legally judged to be
guilty. Social workers, psychiatrists,
sociologists, psychologists, juvenile court
judges, probation and parole officers, and
others are engaged in correction work in
connection with the prevention and control
of delinquency and crime.
3. The problem of explaining crime and
criminal behavior i.e. the problem of
scientifically accounting for the presence of
crime and criminals in a society. The legal
aspect of crime is of interest to the lawyer
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Volume 03 Issue 11
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and to the sociologist who is studying the
sociology of criminal law.
The explanation of criminal behavior is of
interest to the sociologist, the psychologist,
the psychiatrist, the anthropologist, and the
biologist.
There can be no society without the problem of
crime, so the science of criminology developed
consequently, to restore the social order and for
the realization of the saying ‘Live and Let Live’.
We tend to find explanations of cause of crime
in several things- like sin, spirit, disease and
what not; accordingly there are six schools of
criminology- Pre-Classical School, Classical
School, Neo-Classical School, Positive School,
Sociological School and Multi-Factor School.
Natural explanations of crime make use of
object sand events in the material world to
account for what happens. Among the Greeks,
Hippocrates (460 BC) provided a physiological
explanation of thinking by arguing that the brain
is the organ of the mind. Democritus (420 BC)
proposed the idea of an indestructible unit of
matter called the atom as central to his
explanation of the world around him. With
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the ideas of unity
and continuity came to the fore, but the essential
factors in all explanations remained physical
and material. In Roman law, the Hebrew
doctrine of divine sanction for law and order
merged with Greek naturalism to provide a
justification based on the “nature of things.”
Modern social science continues this natural
emphasis; social scientists seek their
explanations within the physical and material
world [2]. Attempts to explain crime date back
through many centuries of recorded history.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
for example, people who engaged in crime and
other forms of deviant behavior were thought to
be possessed by demons or evil spirits.
Exorcism and banishment were among the
treatments against crime. At the same time,
victims of crime might view their loss as divine
retribution for some wrong that they or a family
member had committed in the past.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
sciences such as philosophy, theology, medicine,
and psychiatry were in vogue. In the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, then criminology
developed consequently. Writers from earlier
schools of criminological thought were not
primarily concerned with developing
generalizations about crime, criminal behavior,
and the relationship between varying crime rates
and social conditions. Instead, most early
scholars who developed theories about crime
causation did so, as the criminologist Donald R.
Cressey has stated, “In an attempt to find a
panacea for criminality [3].” He also indicated
that early writers made few, if any, efforts to
“verify the many theological or moralistic
assertions by actually investigating relevant
situations; writers usually selected a general
‘cause’ of all criminality and then sought to
convince their readers that elimination of that
cause would eradicate crime both by reforming
criminals and by preventing future criminality.”
Even though writers and philosophers for many
centuries have expressed interest in criminal
behavior, criminologists have traditionally
marked the beginning of the discipline of
criminology with the establishment of the
classical school of criminology, which purports
that people rationally choose to commit criminal
acts. The classical school of criminology was
developed by Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy
Bentham in response to the primitive and cruel
European justice system that existed prior to the
French Revolution of 1789.
Leaders of the classical school about two
hundred years ago proposed a number of legal
and judicial reforms premised along these lines
to curb the problem of crime in their day. These
reforms included the imposition of penalties and
deterrents severe enough to outweigh any
pleasure encountered through the commission of
a criminal act. It was thought that people would
willingly refrain from crime once they had
calculated that the penalties attached to it would
exceed the pleasure involved in the act itself.
Because factors far beyond personal calculation
and motivation are involved in the manifestation
of crime, however, proposals such as these had
little effect on the crime problem. Before
examining
Beccaria’s ideas and contributions to
criminology, one should understand that the
classical school has its roots in the idea that
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October 2017
Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 373
people who commit crime choose to do so after
weighing the consequences of their actions.
Classical theory is based on the following three
assumptions:
1. Every person has ‘free will’ to make a
choice between getting what we want
legally or illegally [4]
.
2. The ‘fear of punishment’ can deter a person
from committing a criminal act.
3. ‘Pleasure and Pain’ i.e. the community or
society can control criminal and non- criminal behavior by making the pain of
punishment and penalties more severe than
the pleasure from criminal activities and
their gains.
Classical Theorists
Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794)
Cesare Beccaria, a major contributor to the
classical school of criminology, was born in
Milan, Italy, on March 15, 1738, and died in
1794. Born an aristocrat, he studied in Parma
and graduated from the University of Pavia.3 In
1763, the protector of prisons, Pietro Verri, gave
his friend Beccaria an assignment that would
eventually become, “Dei delitti e delle pene”
(the Essay On Crimes and Punishment) (1963,
originally 1767), a highly influential book which
was translated into 22 languages and had an
enormous impact on European and US legal
thought [5]. It was completed in January, 1764,
and first published anonymously in July of that
year. The article caused a sensation, but not
everybody liked it. The fact that it was first
published anonymously suggested that “its
contents were designed to undermine many if
not all of the cherished beliefs of those in a
position to determine the fate of those accused
and convicted of crime.... [An] attack on the
prevailing systems for the administration of
criminal justice... it aroused the hostility and
resistance of those who stood to gain by the
perpetuation of the barbaric and archaic
penological institutions of the day [6].”
In common with many of his contemporary
intellectuals and inspired by social contract
theories, Beccaria was strongly opposed to the
many inconsistencies that existed in government
and public affairs, and his major text was
essentially the first attempt at presenting a
systematic, consistent and logical penal system.
Beccaria considered that criminals owe a ‘debt’
to society and proposed that punishments should
be fixed strictly in proportion to the seriousness
of the crime. Torture was considered a useless
method of criminal investigation, as well as
being barbaric. Moreover, capital punishment
was considered to be unnecessary with a life
sentence of hard labour preferable, both as a
punishment and deterrent. The use of
imprisonment should thus be greatly extended,
the conditions of prisons improved with better
physical care provided and inmates should be
segregated on the basis of gender, age and
degree of criminality. Beccaria was a very
strong supporter of ‘social contract’ theory with
its emphasis on the notion that individuals can
only be legitimately bound to society if they
have given their consent to the societal
arrangements. It is nevertheless the law that
provides the necessary conditions for the social
contract and punishment exists only to defend
the liberties of individuals against those who
would interfere with them. Beccaria’s theory of
criminal behaviour is based on the concepts of
free will and hedonism where it is proposed that
all human behaviour is essentially purposive and
based on the pleasure-pain principle [7]
.
Beccaria stated that; ‘it is better to prevent
crimes than to punish them [8]
'.
Eighteenth-century criminal law
Cesare Beccaria, a major contributor to the
classical school of criminology, responded to
eighteenth-century criminal law, which was
repressive, uncertain, and barbaric. Eighteenth
century criminal law was repressive, uncertain,
and barbaric. It also permitted, as well as
encouraged, abusive and arbitrary practices. The
law gave public officials unlimited power to
deprive people of their freedom, property, and
life with no regard to principles embodied in the
concept “due process of law”.
Secret accusations were in vogue and persons
were imprisoned on the flimsiest of evidence.
Torture, ingenious and horrible, was employed
to wrench confessions from the recalcitrant.
Judges were permitted to exercise unlimited
