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THEORIES OF HUMAN
NATURE
Until the 20th century,
theories about criminality were explicitly derived from more general ideas about
"human nature." For the "classical school"
of criminology (a very broad category for the legal theorists and reformers of the 17th
and 18th centuries) criminal behavior was a natural consequence of people's drive toward hedonism--a drive perceived to be held by all
individuals. A well-ordered state would not attempt to change people's behavior, but
would attempt to construct a social and legal environment in which criminal behavior was
not in people's self-interest. While this view was also held by the "positivist school" of criminology (the Italian criminal
anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries), true criminal
behavior was the product of those people in society who did not possess
"civilized" human nature. The constitution of these "born
criminals" was less than human, "primitive,"
"savage," and "atavistic,"
needing to be altered or separated from society. Thus for the classical school,
criminals are like ourselves, while for the positivist schools, criminals are very
different.
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