Classicism And Crime Essay

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The current approaches of dealing with criminal acts is due to the growth of the ancient theory of classical and positivist schools of criminology White & Hanes, (2008). The focal concept of these two schools are to make adequate approaches to stop deviant behaviour which is considered to be dangerous in society. However, both schools present conflicting philosophies to explain deviant behaviour White et al., (2008).
Before the seventeenth century there was no theory of criminal behaviour there is was no real definition of crime so whoever had the power could define the punishment and crime. During the enlightenment era in the eightieth century the classical school of criminology was introduced (White et al., 2008). The basic ideas of classicism
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In the classicism school the punishment of the crime is more about the inevitability than the brutality which is imposed to create a deterrent effect on criminals (Gottfredson et al., 1990). This is supposed to reduce the chances of reoffending by crooks. Some theorists argued that criminals did not need to be killed for serious crime but believed that individual would not commit crime if the punishment was reasonable and swift (Mcshane & Williams, 2008). On the other hand, positivism theory expresses that the criminal is not responsible for their criminal action and it highlighted that because they believed crime was a disease, and the offenders should be treated instead of being disciplined by law and due to born criminal their removal and continuous imprison is a practical resolution (White et al., 2008). (Walters et al., 2005) suggested a and a variety of treatments should be available for offender because all criminals are driven by different factors. Positivism represented a boarder range of crime response and uncertain sentence to create a rehabilitative development unlike the classicism where there is one fixed sentence for deterrent in