Chapter 4 - The Early Schools of Criminology Flashcards
What was crime seem as before the classical school?
Sin
What were punishments for crime before the classical school?
-trial by ordeal
-exorcism
-heavy use of executions
-public punishment
What is the social contract?
Who is the father of the Classical School of Criminology
Cesare Beccaria
What is Beccaria’s purpose of punishment? What are the different types?
Deterrence;
-Specific deterrence: if you punish a specific person, they’ll never want to commit crime again
-General deterrence: the existence of punishment would discourage others from committing crime
What are the 3 characteristics of punishment? Which is viewed as the most important?
-Certainty - If you commit a crime, you will be caught and punished (most important)
-Celerity (swiftness) - The crime should come soon after the crime was committed
-Severity - The punishment should just be enough pain to deter the criminal from committing a crime again
What are 6 of Beccaria’s principles?
-The only thing that should determine punishment is the crime that was committed, not the characteristics of the offender or any circumstances
-Judges should not interpret the law; they should apply the punishment outlined by the legislature
-Torture should not be used and the death penalty should be abolished
-Laws and their punishments should be known to the public (Takes away certainty if it’s not known)
-Juries, not judge, should determine the facts of the case
-All people should be treated equally
What is Jeremy’s Bentham’s hedonistic calculus?
People seek to max pleasure and minimize pain and will make decisions accordingly
What did Bentham believe reform should center around?
The principle of utilitarianism
What are three-strike laws?
Life in prison without parole if you commit a certain crime 3 times
What are truth in sentencing policies?
Serve a certain amount of time in prison and serve the rest as parole/probations
What are scared straight programs?
Taking children into the prison to deter them from going to jail
What is the key assumption in the Positivist School?
Individuals don’t have free will to control their behavior; biological, psychological, and sociological factors determine behavior
What was Charles Darwin’s main proposition?
Humans evolved from more primitive beings in a process where certain adaptations were favored by natural selection
Who was the first criminologist?
Cesare Lombroso
What does Cesare Lombroso shift criminology from philosophizing to?
Documenting observations and testing proposition
Lombroso’s biological theory
Certain individuals or groups of people are atavistic (when a person/feature of a person is a throwback to an earlier stage of evolutionary development
What was the typology of offenders?
-Born criminals (more worrisome)
-Insane criminals
-Criminaloids (less dangerous criminals)
What did atavistic stigmata include?
-Twisted noses
-Abnormally small/large ears
-Protruding jaws
-Long arms relative to the rest of the body
-Sloped shoulders
-Asymmetrical faces
-Abnormal foreheads
For criminal women, women have more masculine features
What is craniometry?
the size of the brain or skull reflected superiority or inferiority
What is phrenology?
Bumps on the skull revealed human dispositions
What is physiognomy?
the study of facial and bodily aspects to identify developmental problems
What is William Sheldon’s somatotype theory
Based on physical features:
-Endomorph - rounder; tend to be jolly and lazy
-Mesomorph - muscular; tend to be risk-taking and aggressive; most likely to commit crime
-Ectomorph - skinner; tend to be introverted
What are eugenics?
the controlled breeding of controlled groups; removing them from society or stop them from breeding
