Chapter 5: Classical to Neo-Classical Theories

Beccaria and the 'Classical School 

 

Context for On Crimes and Punishments 

  • Written in 1764 during this time theres issues with capital punishment 

  • Capital punishment was used for everything; you stole something? Capital punishment 

  • The concern was the need for alternatives; the state couldn't simply kill everyone who committed transgressive acts against the law 

  • Some of the alternatives were banishment, sent to the colonies 

  • Prison existed but really as a place for debters to beg fro money to pay off their fines and debts tp get out of prison 

  • Social and economic shifts: Industrial revolution, people are coming in influxes and they're now living beside strangers 

  • New concern of crime; the people who are now the middle class are seeing crimes on streets more 

  • The Rising Middle Class have an anxiety about lower-classes  

  • Banishment was an alternative form of punishment but it stopped being an option after the american revolution 

  • Prison reformist movement (1770s) Prison could maybe be something different; maybe we can make better conditions for people in prison 

Shifting punishment from 'on the body to 'on the soul' 

  • Corporal/capital punishment: The Scaffold, that’s punishing the body it was a public punishment 

  • He was interested in administering cities efficiently; he found punishments like the scaffold to be terrorism; doesn't help in administering efficiently 

  • Punishment should' t be about brutality 

  • Shifts punishment onto the soul  

  • Bentham's Panopticon; in theory there's a whole bunch of cells around a centre point and the prisoners don't know if they're being watched. You're going to internalize to be a good prisoner, and will do certain things because you don’t' know you're being watched by guards 

  • The soul is the prison of the body; not the other way around 

 

On Crimes and Punishments 

  • Enlightenment text on punishment. Up until this point, humans governed their behaviors based upon the Gods  

  • The enlightenment is the shift in  trying to bring reason and rationality to abunch of things 

  • In Beccaria's case how do we make punishment rational? 

  • His book was against cruelty and arbitrariness; not everybody was caught 

  • Hes often grouped with utilitarianism: the greatest happiness for the greatest number 

  • He suggests that this is what punishment and law should do; they should bring the greatest happiness for the greatest number 

  • 'radical equality' not bringing happiness to just a certain group of people (ie elites) 

  • Very secular in his arguments 

  • Trying to bring a calculus to criminal justice 

  • Calls himself a "dispassionate student of human nature" 

  • This is where we start seeing the shift to a first-person perspective in academia 

  • We all seek to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain 

  • Reaction of the state to the rational indivudial: whats the states obligation to the citizens; they don't have the right to kill, maim us hed say 

  • We've all given some liberty to this state so they can't overextend that 

  • The criminal is not a special class to him, we're all potential criminals once we weigh the benefits and consequences 

  • People will still let passions guide them 

  • We're all engaged in the social contract with the state 

  • How can we administer a city/state legitimately?  

 

Limits on Punishment- Beccaria  

  • Only as necessary to defend public well-being; the state should have some restraint and only do what's necessary due to the social contract they can't overstep that 

  • The proportionality of the punishment must be related to the har of the offence (to society) 

  • Punishment must outweigh the 'good' of the crime 

  • Preventing future acts of criminality 

-specific deterrence (the individual) 

-general deterrence (everyone else) 

Classical and Neoclassical

  • Emergence of Positivism (left): if crime was caused by some social or psychological problem, such as poverty, crime rates could be reduced by providing good jobs and economic opportunities

    • Criminal is different  → Lamborso (believes that people can be rehabilitated) 

    • Dominates criminology from 1860s-1960s

    • Emergence from the concern of institutionalization 

  • Critique of rehabilitation (right) 

    • Too lenient (letting guilty people off with little punishment) 

    • Arbitrary – Due Process and Rights

  • Martinson – ‘Nothing Works’ (1974)

    • Encapsulates this change, not the one who created this idea

    • Rehabilitation doesn’t work 

    • Comes back to choice theory

    • Rise of the victim 

      • New experiences of crime (come and go, middle class seeing crimes up close)

      • See young people as needing to be punished

      • Idea of ‘were all potential victims’ 

      • Willie Horton, a black criminal, used by bush for political gain 

      • Zero-sum relationship with offender - concern about the victim is emerging, especially youth

      • Forgiving criminal comes at the cost of victims

      • Emergence of laws being named after victims 


Rational choice theory emergence: crime committed as a result of calculated decisions making – offender with weight costs and benefits before committing a crime

  • Free will getting recentered in theory 

    • Drift theory – Matza (1964) – young people are not committed to deviant lifestyle, they drift in and out if criminality (important to understanding choice theory) – greatest cure to criminality for young people is growing up 

  • Involvement decisions

    • Instrumental – weigh costs and benefits 

    • Begin, continue, or withdraw (young people who become drug dealers get more respect and power instead of working at fast food) – not just employment opportunities, but the upward mobility in those jobs 

  • Event decisions

    • Ease and tactics (cars can just be opened and turned on with buttons)

    • Crime specifics (each crime has a different choice structure (can I/ do I have the skill for that crime? Am I good at convincing people? 

  • Is (all) crime rational?

    • Some drug use is traditional (street involved youth report using ecstasy – keeps them warm in winter and curbs hunger – helps them then stay alive) 

    • Seductions of crime (Katz) 


Is drug use rational?

  • Recreational drug users report that they use for enjoyable experiences 

  • Opioids prescribed as pain relief from doctors, turn into addiction


Can violence be rational?

  • Most violent interactions are motivated by rational thought (pre planned) 

  • People who live in a dangerous area or are involved in illegal activities carry guns as form of protection, not mindless killing 


Policy implications of Choice Theory (pg.193)

  • Creation if justice policies can be summed up into 3 statements

  1. Those who violate others rights deserve to be punished

  2. We should not add to human suffering; punishment makes those punished suffer

  3. However, Punishment may prevent more misery than it inflicts 

Routine Activities Theory (macro): the view that crime is a normal function of routine activities of modern living; offenses occur when a suitable target is not protected by capable guardians 

  1. Suitable targets: encountering an opportunity (laptop) 

  2. Lack of capable guardians (leaving your laptop in library to use bathroom) – 

  • Capable guardians would deter criminals from attempting theft

  1. Motivated criminals (want or need your laptop)

Evidence?

  • Teens and unsupervised socializing (spike in petty crimes during after school period – young boys in groups) 

  • Fredericton – areas have unique crime profiles – having these designated zones mapped enables police to know where enforcement is needed and would be most effective

  • Houses most likely to be robbed (by the highway, parks) 


RCT and RAT – Situational crime prevention (people will commit crimes, you can’t stop it, but you can prevent it) 

  • Embedded in our daily lives 

  1. Increase in Effort

  • Target Hardening (Locks, barb wire fences)

  1. Increasing risks

  • Natural or formal surveillance (guards) 

  1. Reducing rewards

  • conceal/remove targets (coffee shops leaving empty cash register when closed 

  1. Inducing Guilt

  • Roadside speed monitors


Crime Prevention through environmental design (CPTED) 

  •  The proper design and effective use of the built environment can lead to a reduction in the fear of crime and the incidence of crime


Situational crime prevention: a method to reduce or eliminate crime in a narrow setting ex. Security alarms 

  • Pillars and sight saying University of Toronto (people know what this is a campus, students are here, and insills in students so they know who is not a student) 

  • Student learning landscape (open concept and can see everyone, no privacy) 


Ramifications of situational prevention: 

  • Can produce unforeseen and  unwanted consequences – by preventing crime in one area, it might displace it to alternative targets

    • Ex. 2003 drug crackdown by Vncouver police spread drug activity from a concentrated area to a much wider area through the downtown area

    • Enforcement does not address deeper issues such as health, unemployment, and harm reduction, so it is not able to reduce crime overall 


Defensible space: a principle the crime prevention can be achieved through modifying the physical environment to reduce opp for individuals to commit crimes 


What are concerns or limitations with situational crime prevention or crime prevention through environmental design?

  • ‘See something, say something’ – makes people responsible for safety

  • Conflation of criminality with street involved people – hostile architecture (classist undertone) 

  • Concerns of privacy (no privacy on campus, so we can be private at home, but unhoused people don’t have this because there are very few places without CCTV) 

  • Bystander effect – these spaces are used to foster this feeling of community so you rae motivated to stand up for others) 

  • Stereotypes of who belongs because there can be older people who are students and faulty or people who dress differently 

  • Putting police officers in schools makes people think that no crimes go up (evidence shows that locker break-ins happen when police are put in)

  • Smaller class sizes and schools help to prevent crimes (everyone knows every one) downside that LGBTQ students don't feel safe in these spaces and feel safer in larger schools 


Surveillance and CCTV

  • Not useful to think of it as Big Brother (suggests that you lose dignity)

    • Smart tv’s and our phones that we purchase is something we readily purchase and can be used to track

    • Embedded and consensual (Disneyland has a lot of surveillance from CCTV to actors in costumes and cue in lines)

    • This person data used for crime control (we give up these rights all the time when we used our credit card, use netflix etc)

      • Every trace of us and our info exists when we use the internet - data double

    • Function Creep

      • Shopping habits (what we buy, malls being designed in a way where you're not supposed to stop as we walk)

    • Facial recognition software

      • Automatic enterprise, no one is sitting there and watching us use it all the time

    • Automatic license plate reader

      • Automatic, no one is watching 

  • Not used to pummel us into submission – used for safety and convenience 

  • Privacy Rights?

    • What spaces can street-involved exist? 

  • Ex. Scottish govt surveilled two cities and concluded that 21 percent fewer offenses took place in the two years after introducing the cameras