Week 3 Flashcards
(20 cards)
Theory formulation - descriptive theories
- Recognise pattern
- Make prediction
- Observe and collect data
- Compare to know theories
- Describe to similarities and variances
Theory formulation - explanatory theories
- Recognise pattern
- Make prediction
- Observe and collect data
- General explanation
- Compare to other theories
- Revise and return for further review
Theory formulations - paradigms - crime paradigms
- social structure
- choice theories
- trait theories
- cultural theories
- social conflict theories
- life course theories
- interactionist theories
Theory formulation (paradigms) Ritzer’s
*look up image
Theory formulation - Paradigms - Choice theory
Choice theories begin with some very basic propositions
- Crime is not random, but patterned (i.e. step 1)
- Most crimes can be explained by the perceived reward vs. the calculated risk on the part of the offender (i.e. step 2)
Roots in “Classical Criminology”
- A return to the idea that the world can be understood through reason
- A break from the idea that “men” are ruled by passions or supernatural forces
- An emphasis on deductive reasoning, not on empiricism
Perfecting punishment - changes in histories
Population/Demographic Changes
-> Burgeoning Populations
Political Changes
-> Revolution and Democratic Governance
Religious Changes
-> Reformation and Protestantism
Economic Changes
-> Capitalism/Industrialism
Intellectual Changes
-> Social Contract and Rationalism
Perfecting punishment - demography
Increases in population size increased the scope of the kinds of problems that during the Middle Ages had been dealt with swiftly and directly [and often quite brutally] by small communities of people who knew each other as kin or neighbours
Perfecting punishment - political changes
- Transition from absolutism to representative governments
- Rise of modern states and centralised forms of state power
- The rise of “citizens” in lieu of subjects (including the notion of rights)
Social contract
- Product of various Enlightenment thinkers (Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes) who viewed the social world as governed by laws similar to those of the natural world
- Argued in different ways that by voluntarily agreeing to remain a part of society, people implicitly agreed to give up a small amount of freedoms for larger social gains
- Social contract as a “legalistic agreement” between rational consenting individuals and their governors or representatives
Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria Bonesana
- Argued in An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1764), that the most effective response to violations of the social contract was punishment
- To deter people from crime, they must be aware of the punishments, and punishment must be uniform (i.e. determinate)
- Thus, Beccaria was opposed to judicial discretion, and thought that only legislatures should be able to set the severity of punishments
Assumption of Classical Criminology
- People act out of “free will,” not because of supernatural forces
- Bentham (1748-1833) linked this concept of free will to the philosophical doctrine of utilitarianism, which proposed that people always act to obtain pleasure and avoid pain
- “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,painand pleasure. . . . They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think” (Bentham ,1780)
Rational Punishment
Beccaria argued that crime becomes attractive when it requires less work than lawful means of obtaining pleasure
- Deterrence , not pain, is the purpose of punishment
- Beccaria argued, punishment must follow certain “rules”:
Its administration must be essentially public;
- it must be prompt;
- It must be the least possible amount necessary in the given circumstances;
- it must be proportion to the crime.
French penal code 1791
- The view of crime, deviance and social control set forth by Beccaria was perhaps best realised in the French Penal Code of 1791
- Beccaria was instrumental in the creation of the concept that “every citizen should know what punishment he should endure” for any given offence
1. Severe limits on judicial discretion
2. Punishment decided by legislatures
3. Pre-set sanctions
Problems with classical theory
However, almost immediately, this system faced several problems, including:
- Lack of consideration of motive and intent (i.e. should people who committed the same crime under different circumstances be given the same punishments?);
- No exceptions for children, who were becoming seen in an increasingly different manner than adults; and
- No exceptions for people who were clearly not able to think rationally.
Neoclassical modifications
Modifications were made to try and resolve the inflexibility of the French Penal Code, including:
- Premeditation
- Mitigating circumstances
- Insanity
On this matter, the case of Daniel McNaughtan was crucial not only in the modification of (and eventual demise of) classical criminology, but also in the use of the “insanity plea.”
Decline of classical perspective
- Classical theories of crime that utilised concepts of free will and rational calculation in understanding and controlling crime reached their pinnacle around the middle of the 19th century.
- By the end of the 19th century, many social scientists were moving towards a more positivistic or medicalised model of criminal causality
- Crime was thought to originate either in internal pathological deficiencies, or in external social inequalities
Classical criminology legacy
- Depravation of liberty (pain), as one of many possible types of available punishments
- Use of centralised state prisons under classical criminology -> Prison becomes standardised, pain ranked according to time spent (i.e. hedonistic calculus)
Return of calculating offender
In the 1970s a new type of “choice theory” begins to emerge in criminology in relation to:
1) A growing sense that the rehabilitation of criminals was apparently ineffective;
2) A questioning of the attempts to alleviate or mitigate social conditions thought to contribute to criminal behavior;
3) An increase in crime, particularly violent crime;
4) The publication of several well-known works that seriously challenged positivist view of crime causation and treatment.
Social logics of punishment
All societies punish; what differs are the material and ideological conditions under which punishment is enacted
Typologies of punishment
Western legal systems predicated on four basic logics or functions of punishment:
- retribution
- incapacitation
- deterrence
- rehabilitation
