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Classical theory
In 1764, Cessare Beccaria published a book on crime and punishments stating that the death penalty isn't a punishment for crimes and that a punishment should be equally as harsh as the crime to act as a detterant. He also said that punishments should not be determined from social class, everyone is born equal and should be treated equally meaning equal punishments for all criminals with punishments being minimal, fair and applied straight away to the criminal -
Classical Theory
This theory of crime became a solid law through the 17th century to the 18th, thus it brought about a new set of crime control methods which were harsher, and longer sentences and punishments for different crimes to act as a detterent, eg Death penalty, Longer jail sentence, public floggings. This theory influenced the government policy as it now meant, regardless of class, everyone had to adhere to the new control methods in place. -
Impact on the criminal justice system
The classical theory had different impacts on the criminal justice system both good and bad. The good impacts were all people were treadted equally so people of lower social class were happy about this, and also with the harsher punishments in place, people could be deterred away from commiting the crime. The bad impacts were with more jail sentetnces, more people went to prison for longer costing more money, upper class were not pleased about the equality. -
Classical progessing to Voluntarism
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Volunteerism Theory
This theory links with Classical and said that everyone has their own free will to make the criminal decision by themselves and should be punished harshly for it. They stated that instead of prison sentences and death sentences for crimes, that crime should have different punishments based on the severity of the crime, such as public hangings, floggings, burnings and execution. Now that the government had to change their policy on crime, they became far more stricter when dealing with crime -
Impact on the criminal justice system
The harsher punishments and stricter policing could now deter people from committing crimes which was a pro for the CJS as well as having no trials, there would be no court fees to pay, free prison cells and no tax money being used to pay for prisons or trials, however, the cons were innocent people could potentially lose their lives due to having no trials to prove their guilt -
Volutarism progressing to Positivism
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Positivism Theory
Positivists disagreed with classical and voluntarism as they said it is not as simple as just an individual deciding to commit a crime. They wanted to take into account all factors which could cause someone to commit a crime and treat the accordingly to this and support them with rehab to prevent re-offending and test for mental illness's and use mental institutions for mentally unstable criminals. Auguste Comte was a positivist and created sociology, he believed he could solve arising problems -
Positivism Theory
He believed he could solve arising problems in society from social upheaval as social change could develop gradually (taken from Charles Darwin's theory) He came up with two approaches 1. behaviour in society in relation to crime in which factors appeared to be law breaking. 2. Biological features related to a criminal. -
Positivism Theory
The government policy agreed to this theory and opened up more rehabilitation centres and when someone had committed a crime, a full character assessment was conducted on the individual to be able to deal punishment fairly. They believed that people were born good, so enviromental factors must have caused them to become criminal, and that they could be cured. This lead onto biological possitivism -
Impact on the criminal justice system
There were many impacts of this theory, good and bad. The good impacts were that all factors were taken into account when dealing with the criminal which made punishing fair and people could be helped. The bad impacts, it cost the government a lot of money, people could lie and claim mental illness to escape punishment and sometimes rehab didn't work and the criminal would re-offend -
Cesare Lombroso is born
Cesare Lombroso would later come to develop the biological theory from the positivism theory -
Biological Positivism
Biological positivism derives from positivism, and was developed by Cesare Lombroso, his theory was that people were born criminal. That people who were born criminal were a different species, a throw back from a primitive era and that their biological features determined if they were criminal, eg. shape of head/face. He said these people could not adapt to a modern morality. His views were based on the Ativism genetics. -
Biological Positivism Theory
This theory influenced government policy so much so that it travelled over Europe, it was even reported that police in france had taken on this and arrested people based on their physical attributes. This meant that government bodies had a 'good' idea of the criminal they were looking for, however this would mean many innocent people were arrested and punished based on their appearance which they can not help. This is why determinism quickl -
Ativism primitive gene
Ativist (who had primitive genetic form) have the characteristics :- large jaws, high cheek bones, large ears, extra nipples, toes or fingers, and were insensitive to pain Lombroso said these features were criminal features. -
Impact on the criminal justice system
This cost the government more money to open new specialised prisons and mental instittuations however, was welcomed by the public as it was deemed as fair. It did help the mentally ill recieve health care and helped others to not re offend, however the people who had rehab some still went on to re offend. Regardless of all the money spent it was not 100% effective -
Determinism
Determinism expands on Biological/Possitivism by looking at how people are forced to commit crimes through factors beyond their control as it looks at all other factors as to why someone commits a certain crime instead of just their own free will and it would be wrong to punish them for what they can't help. The government policy was effected by this again, and put more rehabilitations in place to stop re offenders and mental institutions for the mentally ill -
Interaction theory
Also known as the labelling theory, people associated specific groups with certain types of crime. This theory was coined 1936 by Herbet Blumer used to show the uniques qualities of interactions between different individuals. For example, if vandalism occured, police would target youths from a poor area or poor education. -
Howard Becker :- Interactionism
Howard said that people were not inherently deviant, but acted deviant since people classed and treated them like one because of their background.
This is a con of this theory as people who wouldn't have been criminals, can commit criminal activity due to people classing them as one regardless -
Interactionism coming to an end
In the early 1970's social scientists tended to stay away from this theory as it was to conservative, however the theory wasn't totally abandoned as the stigma of labelling people for certain crimes still sticks around today. Positivism has never been abolished and social scientists realised they needed to look at what environmental factors were causing certain crimes in areas by certain people instead of labelling someone for their gender, upbringing, race amongst other things -
Right realism theory
This theory takes pointers from voluntarism, but not having as harsh punishments as they did and believed in equality of all classes. This is how right and left realism came about. Government decided that certain crime should have the same very harsh punishments -
Left realism theory
The left realism theory now begins to push positivism out by saying crime has nothing to do with factors but relative deprivation where the expectations of people were not being met by real opportunities. They wanted longer prison sentences with more criminals in prison and more crime control methods in place to deter criminals and to build a more equal society. -
James Q Wilson
James Q Wilson who was US president Ronald Regan's adviser on crime and justice argued crime exists because bad people exist and most crimes occur because the criminal thinks there are more pro's than cons to commiting the crime. As at this point, rehabilitations programmes were in place there wasn't really a punishment (positivism) or anything in place to stop offenders from re offending. There needed to be prison sentences. His idea was widely accepted in UK and US. -
FIRST CCTV
In the late 1970's, the first CCTV camera was put in place to be used as a crime deterrent to criminals as it enhanced the chance of them being caught, however these were expensive on the government so they were only placed in important places, such as banks -
Right wing policy advancing
They argued that crime must be taken seriously and instead of looking after the criminal in rehabilitation, looking after the victim and putting harsh penal sanctions in place for the offender because the offender acts through free will. This argument was to made contrast and abolish positivism. They created sogans such as "prioson works" and "three strikes and you're out!" because prison sentences meant criminals could not re offend. All right work parties in both countries loved this idea. -
Positivism abolished
James Wilson's ideas became very popular in the 1990's in both countires and classed as 'The war on crime' a quote from Michael Howard 'We aim to take the handcuffs off the police and put them back on the criminals where they belong" - indicated the aims of a new criminal justic policy. -
Right realism takes over
Right realism put forward these arguments which led to positivism being abolished and right realism taking over.
-Research in US and UK has shown rehab does not work
- The costs of rehab are not acceptable
- It is infrigement of offender rights to not know when there sentence will end
- There are so many potential factors influencing crime it is not possible to design programmes to cure them all -
Right realism takes over
- Social factors of unemployment and poverty causing crime were wrong as in 1950's unemployment and poverty were at there lowest and crime seen a huge rise
- individuals commit crime through choice -crime is due to declining moral standards
- Needs to reduce opportunity for crime instead of searching for its causes
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Crime control methods of Right Realism
There was a surge in CCTV cameras around neighbourhoods since the 1980's as they said that if a criminal see's the CCTV camera then he would be deterred from commiting the crime. Wilson and kelling argued that it is important to fix vandalism and improve rundown areas to let people know that the community is cared for and important and vandalists would stop vandalising the area further. They also encouraged the community to stick together and secure their own property and lock their cars -
Crime control methods of right realism of crime control
From this, home owners bought CCTV for outside their houses and a 'neighbourhood watch' was organised so oridinary members of the community were looking out for their own community as well as the police. But it was argued, are the government shifting their responsibilities onto the communities victims? -
ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY
Right realists argued that low level crimes if let to get out of hand, will lead to higher level crimes. This brought about the Zero tolerance policy, where even the most low level crime is punished to prevent people from committing small crimes as well as large. -
TONY BLAIR - left realism ideas
Although for 20 years, right realism was the main policy in US and UK, left realists had no explanation to challenge the right realists arguements and no chance to influence the policy. Tony Blair, when elected stated new arguements for the left realists and had very different views on the crime control policy. -
TONY BLAIR - LEFT REALISM
He argued that street crime was being carried out on working class by working classm and in order to understand the impact, he used victim surveys to see if they wanted the causes of crime to be investigated, which they did, and this meant the right realist polices of imprisonment were not working. Thus came about the Left Realist Social Crime Control policy. -
Blairs crime control methods
In 1998, Tony Blair introduced ASBO'S (anti social behaviour orders) which anyone over the age of ten could be sanctioned with targeting crime at a younger age. He encouraged neighbourhood watches as it would be fairer than centrally directed policing, reducing inequalities in society so people wouldn't have to create opportunities to commint crime to help themselves. Also having offenders known in communties. -
CCTV CONTINUES
Even though his policies differed to the Right realists, CCTV continued to increase in the public communties which made them feel safer -
Impact on the government policy
Tony blairs idea of ASBO'S was reformed in 2010 as it was viewed as unsucessful as people were intentially getting ASBO's as a way to boast to their friends. This crime control method ending up resulting in more crime, costing the government money and time -
Continued crime control methods
Today, we still have neighbour hood watch programmes in many communities and CCTV has continued to increase with over 1 million CCTV cameras in the UK alone more developed in technology which allows the a much clearer image of anyone it records being directely fed through to the police. These crime control methods are now relatively cheap for the government, have a high success rate of conviction and deter people from commiting crime. -
Continued crime control methods
However, many people do not like the CCTV camera's as they feel this is an invasion of privacy and constantly feel they are being watched in a 'big brother' kind of community and, it still does not deter everyone from commiting crimes.
