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Introduction to Criminoloaical Theory Assessment - Week 7. Classicist & Positivist Criminology

There are two different and distinct types of Criminology. These were both thought up of by different people who all had different ideas about the root cause of crime. In this piece of work I will explain the differences and my understanding of both Classicism and Positiyism.

The Classical School, also known as Classicism, is mainly attributed to the writings and thoughts of both Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham who lived from 1738-1794 and 1748-1832 respectively (Hughes 2017). Classical thinkers believe that everyone has the potential to become a criminal and that people who commit crimes do so because everyone has free will and because we are all rational thinkers who always way up the good and bad of situations before making a decision (Law Teacher 2013).

Although Beccaria and Bentham had similar thoughts they also both had thinkings that were attributed to them personally. For example, Cesare Beccaria believed that the seriousness of the crime should only ever be judged, based on how much harm it causes to others and that the punishment should always be delivered soon after the crime has been committed so that the criminars mind associates the punishment with that particular crime (Newburn 2017). Beccaria also believed that the law existed in the first place to keep the social contract intact and to keep the society safe as a whole, not just to benefit the privileged few (Biography 2016).

Bentham believed, differently to Beccaria, that continuous repeat-offenders should face increased penalties and punishments when they re-offend because there is a chance that the offences that they shall commit could be grow in seriousness and therefore we should attempt to prevent them re-offending (Newburn 2017). Jeremy Bentham is also believed to be the father of Utilitarianism, which is the belief that the laws of society should be in place to benefit the largest proportion of people in society. Bentham also believed that the best form of punishment for people who committed crimes was imprisonment and he even thought up a design for a prison, whereby the prisoners could never be 100% surę if a guard was watching them or not, although this prison never came into fruition (Crime Museum 2017). But Bentham believed that the punishment for crimes should be in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and that they should be limited so that they only result in the desired outcome and nothing else (Newburn 2017).

So oyerall, Classical thinkers tend to look at the offence itself and belieye that there is never an excuse for crime because we are all rational free will thinkers (Oddy 2017).

However, in contrast to Classical thinkers, believers of Positivist Criminology, which the emergence of is often associated with Cesare Lombroso, who lived from 1835 to 1909