the emergence of positivist crim

• positivism: method of analysis based on the collection of observable scientific facts

• positivist criminology: search for uniformities in the area of crime / criminal justice

• movement away from French feudal society

  • aim: moral reformation through deprivation of liberty and the prevention of crime through deterrence

  • prisons had failed to regulate the conduct of “dangerous crimes”

    • working class, unemployed, and unemployable (posed a threat to law and order)

• Adolphe Quetelet

  • social mechanics

  • young males, the poor, and those with bad / no jobs were more likely to commit and be convicted of crimes

  • crime has three chief causes

    • accidental: wars, famines, natural disaster

    • variable: free will, personality

    • constant: age, gender, occupation

  • society itself causes crime

  • unhealthy morality was a biological thing and people with bad morals had high criminal propensities

criminal anthropology

• Cesare Lombroso

  • born criminal

  • scientific criminology had to be based on an analysis of the individual criminal

  • examined skulls of delinquent corpses

    • similar to the insane, American blacks, Mongolian races, and prehistoric man

• Charles Goring

  • social action is inherited and those with a genealogically deviant inheritance would be unable to adapt to social life

  • eugenics

    • positive: middle and upper classes should be provided with incentive to reproduce

    • negative: social undesirables should be isolated, sterilized, and castrated

  • adverse environmental conditions and mental defectiveness caused recidivism

    • sociological facts and mental capacities were independent of each other

    • defective qualities of individuals in a given species weren’t influenced by social environment

neoclassical criminology

• decreased (?) classical (gabriel tarde)

  • individuals should be accountable for their actions whether or not they have free will

  • many classical legal reforms were impractical

    • individuals are unique and shouldn’t be subjected to uniformity of treatment

• decreased positivism (gabriel tarde)

  • based in determinism, so if crimes were truly out of their control, rehabilitation wouldn’t work

    • resulted from leniency from prosecutors

• neoclassical compromises

  • an offender’s character is open to analysis

  • punishment should fit the crime - imprisonment should be mainform

  • treatment of criminal should be individualized

  • punishment should also include deterrents

  • death penalty should be abolished