Classical School (of Criminology) Research Assignment Paper (Research Paper Sample)

Classical School (of Criminology)
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Classical School (of Criminology)
The Classical School of Criminology alludes to the methodology of assessing crime and criminality, which is predicated on logical thought processes determining rational action and is based on the deliberation of free will. It first emerged in the late eighteenth and saw further development in early nineteenth centuries by the two pioneers of legal reform who sought to establish a clear, legitimate, and intelligible criminal justice system based on equality. The main premise of the classical notion is the equating of punishment for a crime proportionately to the committed criminal act. This measure ensures fairness and in that regard upholds the value of true justice while also acting as a deterrent. In addition, the assumptions herein encompassed the freedom of choice being held to its subsequent consequence in a consensual society ratified by the agreed upon social contract and prevailing common interest. The impetus of the classical school was to abrogate the primitive, cruel, and arbitrary European criminal justice system that was prevalent before the French Revolution in 1789, which functioned under the precedent that criminal actions are motivated by spiritual or supernatural causal factors (Jeffery, 1959).
An Italian Aristocrat called Cesare Beccaria founded the classical school. In 1763, Pietro Verri, the then protector of prisons, commissioned him to formulate a dialectical penological system. This commissioned work became the infamous book known as On Crimes and Punishments first published anonymously a year later in 1764 causing an uproar, which faced resistance from the patrons of the archaic legal paradigms of the day. The classical thought further expounded by Jeremy Bentham who was 19 years old when Cesare Beccaria’s anonymous essay was published into a book in 1767 and went on to become one of his main proponents. Bentham was a British classical theorist who postulated that hedonistic utilitarianism was the underlying governing principle that controlled human behavior. Utilitarianism advocated that the consensual purpose of all actions is to bring out the greatest happiness or best outcome for the majority or greatest number of people. Hedonism applied the principle that human behavior is controlled by the pursuit of self-indulgent desires and the avoidance of the infliction of pain (Burke, 2001).
Beccaria and Bentham’s ideas congruently formed the fundamental rhetoric of the penal system that has been of tremendous influence in the establishment of the modern criminal law. Even though the classical school, later on, came to be challenged by the positive school, it had outlined a precedent of legal concepts and theories rooted in rationale deductions and inferences. The idea of the social contract where the welfare of the majority is held as the sanctity of civility is a central tenet of contemp...