Classical Era Punishment

The Classical era ranges from 17th century to 18th century which is often referred as The Enlightenment era or The Age of Reasoning. The Classical era introduced a belief in the power of human reasoning to solve social, economic and political problems. The classical school teaches us that humans are rational and we make a choice to commit crimes and that punishment should be about preventing future crimes from happening. Before the 17th century, common forms of punishment consisted of torture and death as a way to get even with a criminal or one of the laws of Hammurabi: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. The classical school of criminology came after the enlightenment. This period introduced the basic ideas of how to operate the
justice system and how to process criminals. The classical school aims more towards the explanation of the political and legal system as we have seen in the works of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham.
Cesare Beccaria was the author of On Crimes and Punishments. His essay was about condemning torture and the capital punishment and reformation. His essay would later be used as a guide for constructing the Bill of Rights and the U.S Constitution. He had a social contract view of society in which everyone agreed that the Lawmaker was the sovereign power who alone represented the will of all the people. He believed an effective punishment should be swift, certain, impartial, universal, and proportionate to the crime. Deterrence depends upon learning on associating cause and effect. The sooner the punishment follows on the crime, the stronger the association in the mind of the criminal. When judges stray from the punishment set
in the statute, they reduce the certainty of punishment and will increase the risk of a future crime. There are two types of deterrence: General deterrence and Specific deterrence. General deterrence is intended for everyone or the general public. The general public will be deterred from committing crime because they see the consequences that happen to those who break the law. This is used as a crime prevention strategy. Specific deterrence is for a specific individual that has committed a crime. If successfully punished, the offender will have learned not to repeat the crime in the future. Beccaria helped and shaped what we now know as due process. Anyone accused of an offense often faced secret accusations, or torture, or had private trials. Arbitrary and cruel and unusual punishment were given to those that were convicted. During this era, laws were used to suppress anyone that spoke against the aristocracy or the Church. (Williams, p. 16)
Jeremy Bentham believed all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Bentham believed we are rational calculators with Free Will and choose whatever we perceive to be in our own best interests. Like Beccaria, Bentham believed the Criminal Justice System was unfair and needed reformation. He also believed in proportionality, that punishments should be fitting of the crimes. Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation focuses on the principle of utility and how morality intertwines with how laws were made and carried out. We have to consider the impact of the consequences on everyone affected by the issue under consideration. The action that is morally right regarding utilitarianism is the one that produces the greatest overall positive consequences for everyone. Jeremy Bentham influenced the coming of Utilitarianism. He believed we should act in ways to maximize happiness and pleasure and minimize pain, which is now known as hedonistic utilitarianism.

Q: Compare and contrast the Classical School to the Positive School
Unlike the Classical school of criminology, the Positivist school took a scientific approach regarding crime and criminals. Positivists believe human behavior is determined by biology, psychology, and sociology. The theory of evolution shaped the foundation for studying criminal behavior. Criminals were seen as not completely evolved. Leonard Savitz even suggests that this evolutionary perspective contributed to the development of a racist view of criminality and fueled the popularity of the field of eugenics. (Williams, p.29) Charles Darwin, the author of On The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex introduced the concept of evolution and natural selection. Natural selection is the idea that different species evolve over time by adapting to changes in their environments and that those that survive do so because of nature. He believed only the fittest survived and those that could not adapt to changing environments would go extinct.
One of the greatest influencers of the positivist school is Cesare Lombroso.
Lombroso believed heredity was a cause of criminal behavior. He came up with the idea of Atavism and Atavistic anomalies. The term atavism means that criminals are not fully evolved. He believed atavism could explain criminal recidivism. An atavist was more animal than human. They did not act by choice, but by instinct and had no moral responsibility. He compared the skulls of criminals to skulls of prehistoric Neanderthals, and some atavistic anomalies include big jaws, Sloping foreheads with prominent ridges over the eyes, and large, strong canine teeth. Lombroso believed criminal behavior could be passed down through the blood of criminal relatives and environmental factors such as drug/alcoholism and lack of education. There are different types of criminals: the born criminal, the occasional criminal, the insane criminal, and the epileptic
criminal.
Psychology was thought to be a cause of criminal behavior.Psychoanalytic approaches are broken down into four categories: Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Personality Theories, and Cognitive theories. Sigmund Freud was the founder of Psychotherapy. He was well known for his ideas on personality, The Id, Ego and Super Ego and the Unconcious conflict also known as the Freudian slip.