Criminology-Chapter 7

Cesare Beccaria

•Advocated for principles of fairness, rights, due process

•Utilitarian – weight pros and cons of behavior

•People voluntarily enter into social contract – people gave up certain freedoms for protection from the state

•People are rational thinkers with free will

Ideas of the positivist school by Lombroso

Behaviour determined by inherited genetic makeup.

Crime is caused by disease (medical model).

Solution to crime is treatment.

The somatotypes

A research technique that links behavioral characteristics to body types, such as:

Ectomorph-Skinny, frail, and prone to nervous disorders and anxiety

Endomorph-Overweight, sociable, loves to eat

Mesomorph-Muscular, triangular torso and prone to violence. Also competitive, and aggressive 

Conflict theory

Says that society and its laws + legal system are rooted in social, political, and economic conflict. The rich control the poor

Quinney’s 6 propositions

1.Crime is a definition of human conduct that is created by authorized agents in a politically organized society.

2.The state is organized to serve the interests of the dominant economic class.

3.Criminal definitions are applied by segments of society that have power to shape the enforcement and administration of criminal law

•4. Criminal law is an instrument of the state and ruling class for maintaining and perpetuating the existing social and economic order.  As such, certain groups have higher probabilities of being defined as criminal.

•5. Conceptions of crime are constructed and diffused in the segments of society by various means of communication (mass media).

•6. The social reality of crime is constructed by the formulation and application of criminal definitions.

Jeremy Bentham

•Hedonistic calculus (individual measures pleasure of crime vs pain when caught)

•Argued for carceral punishment (imprisonment or confinement in correctional facilities)

•Panopticon design of prisons (circular)