SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY

To understand criminology, a person must first know what crime is. A violation of criminal law, for example
breaking the code of conduct set forth by a state, is how Thorsten Sellin defines crime.
Thorsten also goes on to say that deviant behavior that is injurious to society, but is not governed by the
law is inaccurately described as crime. Crime is also defined as an illegal act that is considered punishable
by the government.
In the late nineteenth century, some of the principles on which the classical school was based began to be
challenged by the emergent positivist school in criminology, led primarily by three Italian thinkers: Cesare
Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, and Raffaele Garofalo. It is at this point that the term criminology first emerged,
both in the work of Italian Raffaele Garofalo (criminologia) in 1885 and in the work of French
anthropologist Paul Topinard (criminologie) around the same time.
Positivist criminology assumes that criminal behaviour has its own distinct set of characteristics. As a result,
most criminological research conducted within a positivist paradigm has sought to identify key differences
between criminals and non-criminals. Some theorists have focused on biological and psychological factors,
locating the source of crime primarily within the individual and bringing to the fore questions of individual
pathology. This approach is termed individual positivism. Other theorists – who regard crime as a
consequence of social rather than individual pathology – have, by contrast, argued that more insights can
be gained by studying the social context external to individuals.
This approach is termed sociological positivism.
Criminological Theories are an important part of criminology. Theory is a term used to describe an idea or
set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events. Therefore, a theory is suggested or presented as
possibly true, but that is not known or proven to be true, as well as, the general principles or ideas that relate
to a particular subject. Criminological Theories examine why people commit crimes and is very important
in the ongoing debate of how crime should be handled and prevented. Many theories have been developed
and researched throughout the years. These theories continue to be explored, separately and in
amalgamation, because criminologists pursue the paramount elucidations in eventually reducing types and
intensities of crime.

Classical School of Criminology

Classical School is Born. The Classical School of Criminology was brought to light in the late 1700s and
early 1800s. The classical school developed during the Enlightenment in response to excessive and cruel
punishments to crime. Beccaria argued for more humanitarian forms of punishment and against physical
punishment and the death penalty. He believed that punishment should fit the crime and not be excessive.
Central to the classical school was the presence of free[1]will.
All people act within reason; conduct results from the conscious operation of a person’s will after reflection
and choosing among alternatives of action. People know the difference between right and wrong.
Awareness of right and wrong combined with crime as a choice played into how the classical school thought
of punishment. Because crimes are chosen through free will, they should be punished swiftly and
proportionally to the crime. This is the most effective deterrent to crime.
A primary premise of the classical school was the fundamental equality of all people, which meant
that every person should be treated equally under the law. Criminal behavior would be subject to similar
punishment, and people had to know what categories of conduct were punishable. Punishable conduct
would only be that which encroached on someone else’s freedom in violation of the social contract. No
longer would status be a factor to receiving favorable treatment or more favorable punishment.

Positivist School of criminology

The positivist school opposed the classical school’s understanding of crime. All people are different, and
thus vary in their understanding of right and wrong; this needed to be a barometer for punishment. The
person and not the crime should be punished.
Positivism saw its role as the systematic elimination of the free will metaphysics of the classical school—
and its replacement by a science of society, taking on for itself the task of the eradication of crime, Ian
Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young wrote in The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance.
This new, deterministic movement was consolidated by Enrico Ferri, who championed the approach then
being employed by an Italian military physician, Cesare Lombroso.

The positive method consisted of carefully observing the characteristics of criminals to gain insight into the
causes of antisocial conduct or behavior. Ferri did not endorse all of Lombroso’s conclusions, such as that
some people are born criminals and that some physical features, like the shape of a person’s head or the
placement of one’s cheekbones, can predict criminal behavior. However, Ferri adopted the inductive
method and set out to create a science that would explain the causes of crime within society and the
individual offender.
The school started by considering crime a product of heredity and environment. Instead of criminal conduct,
criminal behavior became the focus. Environmental factors such as societal conditions and pressures
interact with hereditary factors in a person to cause that individual to be predisposed to criminal acts. The
deterministic school was more concerned with the actual or would-be criminal rather than criminal conduct.
Positivism’s focus on the individual may have been the greatest contribution to criminology and the
criminal justice system. It led to classifications of offenders, such as habitual criminals, as well as categories
between insanity and sanity. It also led to the use of psychology in studying offenders, opening the way for
different kinds of sentences and treatments that fit the criminal and not the crime.

Neo-Classicist School
The neo-classicist school emerged, in large part, to remedy some of the problems created by the classical
school.
According to Taylor, Walton and Young, contradictions in classicism presented themselves in universal
penal measures and in day-to-day practice. It was impossible in practice to ignore the determinants of
human action and proceed as if punishment and incarceration could be easily measured on some kind of
universal calculus: apart from throwing the working of the law itself into doubt (e.g. in punishing property
crime by deprivation of property) classicism appeared to contradict widely-held commonsensical notions
of human behavior.
Classicism concentrated on the criminal act and ignored individual differences between criminals. Neo-
classicism still held that free will is important, but that it can be constrained by physical and environmental
factors.
Thus, neo-classicists introduced revisions to account for problems presented in classicism:
Allowing for mitigating circumstance by looking at the situation (physical and social environment) in which
the individual had been placed.
Some allowance was given for an offender’s past record. A court needs to take into account an offender’s
criminal history and life circumstances when making a decision about someone’s sentence.
Consideration should be given for factors like incompetence, pathology, insanity and impulsive behavior.
Also, certain individuals, such as children and the mentally ill, are generally less capable of exercising their
reason.
Neo-classicism heavily emphasizes free will and human rationality; it simply refined these ideas slightly so
that they would work in the world and in day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system. This model
provided a look at possible influences that could undermine volition. Agencies of social control in all
advanced industrial societies have adopted this model of human behavior.[2]

Conclusion
The concept of social harm can be used to open up the possibilities of new narratives in critical criminology,
such areas as Green Criminology and eco crime, human rights and human security. It creates the opportunity
for new considerations of how to govern global social relations and alternative ways of conceiving justice.
Within a social harm and supranational framework, a variety of social and criminological concerns can be
thought about differently.
Critical criminological perspectives all broadly refer to a strain of criminology that views crime as the
product of social conflict; unequal power and social relations; and processes of labelling and meaning-
making. As a result, critical criminologies have invited a radical reconfiguring of our focus from criminal
justice to social justice.
Critical criminological approaches departed from the positivist origins of mainstream criminology that had
focused primarily on the search for the causes of crime, rather than questioning the basic category of crime.
These critical approaches began to focus instead on the processes by which the law is made, and by which,
therefore, individuals and groups become criminalised.
The emergence of critical criminology represented a stark shift in criminological thinking. In this course
you have been introduced to a number of key ideas and clusters of theories that rejected concepts of
individual and social pathology in preference to frameworks that examine crime and deviance through
processes by which certain behaviours are defined, labelled and policed by the state.