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THE CLASSICAL
SCHOOL
The Classical "School" of Criminology is a broad label for a group of thinkers
of crime and punishment in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Its most prominent
members, Cesare
Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, shared the idea that criminal behavior could be understood and
controlled as an outcome of a "human nature" shared by all of us. Human
beings were believed to be hedonistic, acting in terms of
their own self-interest, but rational, capable of considering
which course of action was really in their self-interest. A well-ordered
state, therefore, would construct laws and punishments in such a way that people would
understand peaceful and non-criminal actions to be in their self-interest--through
strategies of punishment based on deterrence.
Crimetheory Resources for the
Classical School:
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The force which attracts us, like gravity,
to our own good can be controlled only by
equal and opposite
obstacles. . . .
The legislator behaves like the skilled
architect,
whose task is to counteract the destructive forces
of gravity and to exploit those forces that contribute
to the strengthening of the building.
CESARE BECCARIA |
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