Criminology Theories PDF

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SUMMARY OF ONE CHAPTER OF THE MODULE BASED OF CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORIES...

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Strain Theory - the vary nature of US society generates crime and deviance - Conformity to conventional culture values produced high rates of cultural deviances -Social Structure limits access to the goal of success through legitimate means. The more the goal of material success is emphasied the more the power of instituionalised norms to regulate behaviour is diminished - The disjunction between what a culture promotes and what the social structure makes possible places sections of the population in a strain engendering position where they desire a goal that they cannot reach through contriversal means. Thereby producing intense pressure for deviation. (Merton PZYQ) The Crisis within Positivist Criminology - Mainstream or positivist criminologies were challenged in the late PZeMʼs and early PZXMʼs by a range of radical disclousures, which focued on crime, deviance and social order

DURKHEIM AND CRIME

-Securlarism

- Crime is a normal and enduring feature of the social order, it occurs in all societies, but its volume tends to increase as societies evolve from mechanical to more complex forms of organic social organisation

- Social contract

- Crimes are acts contary to mortality (which itself has no absolute character)

- The ‘theatre of public tortureʼ (punishment as ceremonial of sovereignty + Reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable, unevenly distrubted nature of the violence which the soverign would focus on the body of the convict.

- Punishment as deterrent - Deontological liberal approaches and utilitarianism

From the Gallowes to the Penitentiary

SOCIOLOGICAL POSITIVISM AND CRIME Tenents of Positivist Criminology

- Atavism (biological)

- The doctrine of determinism

- Physical Stigmata (Biological)

- Focus on the criminal not the crime

- Importance of hereditary factors in the determination of crime (biological)

- Focus on individual deficiencies and pathology - Prediction of future behaviour

- Era of modernisation - Expansion of socience and its technologies

LIMITATIONS OF LIBERAL (CLASSICAL) THEORIES OF CRIME

- Considered crime ‘injurious to society - IDEALISTIC (universal aspects of criminal law hides particular difference and the political nature of law)

- Cesare Lombroso - Science of criminology - answer to the problems of criminal behaviour lay in biology - Concluded that the criminal existed, in the natural orer of things, as a lower form of human evolution than the average man, with very distinct physical and mental characteristics

-LIMITATION OF DETTEREANCE THEORY ( difficult to account for re-offending) -OVERLY RATIONAL VISION OF HUMAN NATURE ( circumstantial factors influence rationality)

A tecnhique for the coercion of individuals (the training of the body)

Punishment or Reformation?? (HALE ET AL LMMN) In the penal debates which were to appear in europe from the later PQth centurt, the dominant themes were improvment and refromation (through physcial conditions and education and religious strategies). Key features amongst the enlightenment penal reformers were Cesare Beccaria in Italy and Jeremy Bentham in England

Liberal Theories of Crime: Classicism

Cesare Beccaria (PXYQ-PXZ[)

-FREE WILL (autonomous legal subject) - Early ninteenth century

THE EMERGENCE OF POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY

CRIMINOLOGICAL POSITIVISM

-Criminal ‘typesʼ

_Pathology and Deficiency

- Consensus vs Conflict

CRIMINOLOGY THEORIES

INDIVIDUAL POSITIVISM

- unity of scientific method

Production of jurdidical subjects

+ The public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body, qulaified as non-economical PUNISHMENT, POLITICS AND LIBERALISM

- Differentiating criminals from non criminals

- Freud (PQNZ-PZYZ)

-Proportionality

- Acts defined by law as crimes are to be punished - and there in lies their function (It (crime) serves only when reproved and repressed

- Emphasis on social defence and treatment as opposed to punishment

- Young (PZQe) referred to this as a period of etiological crisis with positvist criminology

-Free Will

Modern Criminal Law developed out of the philosophy of the enlightenment Late PQth Century - Born of a combination of fear and optimism - Belief that they would help create greater social stability

Creation of a system of criminal justice based around equality and proportionally

Labelling

- Becker (PZeY) Outsiders argued that criminology examine ‘how people come to be defined as deviant and what implications these labelling priocesses have for future offending? - When certain behaviours are termed criminal or deviant there are two important pricesses at play + A group or

- The task was to find ways of controlling and directing behaviour by affecting

The Emergence of radical/Critical Criminologies - Radical or critical criminologies of the late PZeMʼs and PZXMʼs were positioned within the broader realm of political activism (Muncie) - Radical criminologies rejected concepts of individual and social pathology in preference to a framework that examined crime and deviance in terms of the

THE PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICISM (LEGAL INDIVIDUALISM) -Social Contract- individuals had a contractual relation with society and had to surrender some of their liberty in return for security -LIMITATION OF THE SCOPE OF PUNISHMENT - as criminal law places restrictions on the freedom of individuals, these restrictions should be limited - PERSUMPTION OF INNOCENCE- in the administartion of justice the presumption of innocencxe should be the guiding principle in order to safeguard the rights of all parites involved in the justice process - CRIMINAL LAW SHOULD NOT BE RETROSPECTIVE - the criminal code should be written and all the punishments and offences should be defined in advance - RETRIBUTIVE REASONING punishment should be based on retributive reasoning as anothers rights would have been denied in the execution of crime. - THE SEVERITY OF THE PUNISHMENT SHOULD BE LIMITED - although punishment should be based on retributive reasoning it should not go beyond what is neceassry for detterence and the prevention of crime - THE CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENT punihsment must be a certainty and distributed speedily -INDIVIDUAL DETTERANCE punishment should not be used to set an example, neither should it be used for reforming the guilty party - FREE WILL - the offender should be viewed as having reason and who was capable of weighing the consequences of crime - CRIME PREVENTION- the purpose of criminal law is to prevent crimes...