Summary

Samenvatting/summary Advanced Criminology (book+article+lectures)

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Course
Advanced Criminology

Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)

Book
Essential Criminology

Dit is een samenvatting van het boek 'Essential criminology', en het artikel 'From “We Didn’t Do It” to “We’ve Learned Our Lesson”: Development of a Typology of Neutralizations of Corporate Crime'. In de samenvatting zitten ook mijn aantekeningen van de colleges verwerkt. This is a s...

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Summarized whole book? No
Which chapters are summarized? Chapter 3 t/m 12 (exl. 5 + 11)
Uploaded on January 19, 2024
Number of pages 86
Written in 2023/2024
Type Summary

criminology
criminology
psychology
psychology
law
law

Book Title:Essential Criminology

Author(s):Mark M. Lanier, Stuart Henry

Edition:januari 2015
ISBN:9780813348858
Edition:1

Summary
Summary for Advanced Criminology for Social Science Students
Summary
Engelse Samenvatting Essential Criminology H 1 t/m 11 (H2 niet inbegrepen)
Summary
Literature Chapter 1 t/m 11 (2 not included) of Essential Criminology- Lanier, Henry, Anastasia (2015)

Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Education
Minor Criminology
Course
Advanced Criminology

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Chapter 3: Classical, Neo-classical and Rational choice theories

Classical theory did not strive to explain why people commit crime  it was a strategy for
administering justice according to rational principles

Based on assumptions about how people in the seventeenth century began to reject the idea that
people were born into social types (f.e. nobility, serfs, etc.) with different rights and privileges 
people are individuals possessing equal rights

The Preclassical era

16th century:

- People were born into statuses of wealth and power, positions that they claimed as their
natural right
- The law was the will of the powerful
- Justice was based on exacting pain, humiliation and disgrace
- The middle classes benefited from economic and social advancement, which was at the
expense of farmers, laborers and the poor  many of whom became beggars and thieves
- Growth in street crime
- Corruption in the CJS + the judicial system operated arbitrary and unpredictably
- Rising fear of crime  additional and harsher penalties

Post renaissance Europe/ Middle of the 16 th century  already stirrings of change:

- Had broken from the rigid feudal order and the ancient régime (birth determines his or her
place in life)
- New mercantile system of trade
- Humans were now seen as capable of making a difference in their lives and situations
through acts of will
- The ‘respectable’ or ‘deserving’ poor were seen as the responsibility of the more fortunate 
were given pensions and might be employed in doing certain tasks, or were taught useful
occupations
- The ‘unrespectable’ of ‘undeserving’ poor were described as worthless  were punished
with imprisonment and whipping and were trained for honest work (compulsory labor would
permanently cure begging and thievery where laws had failed)

17th century  major transformation:

- Utilitarian philosophers recognize the gross injustices of the legal and political system of that
time
- Resolution  legal and judicial reform (consistent with ideas about human rights and
individual freedom)
- People were reinvented as rational and reasoning being  the ‘new person’
- Reformers began to recognize that not all who violated society’s norms should be subject to
harsh and arbitrary punishments

,The classical reaction

The philosophical leaders of the classical movement demanded ‘double security’:

- Protection against the threat of the dangerous classes, symbolized by the growing crime rates
- Protection against threats from above, the aristocracy that still held the reins of government
power and legal repression

The primary focus of utilitarian philosophers  transforming the arbitrary criminal justice into a fair,
equal and humanitarian system (by aligning the law with both logical and rational principles, mostly
expressed by Cesare Becceria and Jeremy Bentham)

Cesare Becceria

With his friends, Becceria formed a group called the ‘Academy of Fists’  was dedicated to ‘waging
relentless war against economic disorder, bureaucratic petty tyranny, religious narrow-mindedness
and intellectual pedantry’

Published a small book on penology (‘On crimes and punishments’)  drew together all the main
intellectual ideas of the era, providing a standard for change

 These ideas together, forming a framework, were revolutionary

Ideas:

Becceria challenged the idea that humans are predestined to fill particular social statuses  they are
born as free, equal and rational

People have:

- Natural rights (such as the right to own property)
- Natural qualities (such as the freedom to reason and the ability to choose actions that are in
their best interest)

The government was not the automatic right of the rich  it was created through a ‘social contract’

 Social contract = free, rational individuals sacrificed part of their freedom to the state to
maintain peace and security on behalf of the common good, the government uses this
power to protect individuals against those who would put their interests above others

These assumptions together led to the principle of ‘individual sovereignty’  individual rights have
priority over the interests of society or the state (especially important in the exercise of law,
lawmaking should be the exclusive domain of elected legislators who represent the people)

Becceria also altered the focus of what counts as crime:

- Rather than defining crimes as offences against the powerful, he saw them as wrongdoings
against fellow humans and thus against society itself
- Crimes offended society because they broke the social contract

,The law, the courts and judges have a responsibility to protect the innocent from conviction and to
convict the guilty, but to do so without regard to their status, wealth and power  the only basis for
conviction was the facts of the case

 Led to the principle of ‘the presumption of innocence’ (innocence until proven guilty) 
designed to protect individual rights against excessive state power or corrupt officials

Becceria did not believe that the best way to reduce crime would be to increase laws on the severity
of punishment, because this would only create new crimes cause people to offend  Laws and
punishments should be only as restrictive as necessary to just deter those who would break them by
calculating that it would not be in their interests to do so

 Punishment should be proportionate to the harm caused

General deterrence should be replaced by specific deterrence:

- General deterrence  the punishment of one individual to discourage others from
committing crime
- Specific deterrence  encourages each individual to calculate the costs of committing the
crime
 This is the principle of ‘just deserts’  convicted offenders deserve punishment that is
proportionate to the seriousness of the harm they caused

In order for deterrence to work, three things must occur:

- Certainty  a high chance of apprehension and punishment
- Severity  the level of punishment must be appropriate
- Celerity  the more promptly and the more closely punishment follows upon the
commission of a crime, the more just and useful will it be

Jeremy Bentham

Expanded on Becceria by adding the notion of the ‘hedonistic calculus’ as an explanation of people’s
actions  people act to increase positive results through their pursuit of pleasure and to reduce
negative outcomes though the avoidance of pain

Law’s purpose  increasing the total happiness of the community by excluding mischief and
promoting pleasure and security

Certain crimes should not be subject to criminal law:

- Crimes without victims
- Consensual crimes
- Acts of self-defense
 These crimes produce more good then evil

Laws should set specific punishments for specific crimes in order to motivate people to act one way
rather than another  but because punishments themselves are mischief, they should only be
justified to exclude a greater evil

,  Punishments should be scaled so that an offender rationally calculating whether to
commit a crime would choose the lesser offense

In contrast to Becceria:

- Bentham believed that, in the case of a repeat offender, it might be necessary to increase the
punishment to outweigh the profit from offenses likely to be committed
- Bentham also introduces the notion that different offenses require different types of
punishment

Bentham as well as Becceria rejected the death penalty  because it brought more harm than good

Bentham’s Panopticon:

- The ultimate disciplinary prison
- ‘to control not only the freedom of movement of those confined, but their minds as well’
- Circular structure, so the guard in the center could see into each sell without being seen by
the prisoner  prisoners would believe they were under constant surveillance
- Bentham believed this system should also extend to factories, hospitals and schools

Limitations of classical theory

- Assumption that people are equal
- How could a system designed to allow some people to create more wealth than others, and
therefore to become materially unequal, maintain that in law all persons were formally
equal?
- Why do some people commit more crimes than others, if they are all equally endowed with
reason?

Neoclassical revision

French code of 1791 (following the French revolution of 1789):

- First significant legislation based on classical concepts
- Treated all offenders equally
 But the French soon recognized that pure classicism took no account of individual
differences

The French revised the code in 1819  recognition of age, mental condition and extenuating
circumstances

 Despite these changes, the basic underlying assumptions that humans are rational,
calculating and hedonistic remained the cornerstone of criminal justice policy

Rise of scientific criminology  led to neoclassicism and postclassicism  Contemporary rational-
choice theory

 The notion that scientific laws, the development of rational thought and empirical
research could help society progress to a better world

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