Ideas of Classical Criminology, Essay Example

The most compelling idea of classical criminology is establishment of the certain scale to rank committed crimes in order to apply adequate and legitimate punishment. Casare Beccaria, an Italian writer, has discussed this theory in his book “On crimes and Punishments”. “Beccaria argued that the legislatures should establish a fixed legal scale of crimes, ranging from the least serious to the most serious, and a corresponding fixed scale of punishments, proportional to the offenses, ranging from the least severe to the most severe”. (Law Library, 2009) In other words, writer has proposed totally new form of punishment legislation, where crimes were carefully inspected by the judges in order to both determine the guilt of the person and not to violate human rights.

In his work, writer was concerned not with the causes of the crime, but with the way to respond to the crime. According to Beccaria, implementation of such scale would help to judge offenders fairly, limit the number of abuses, and future recidivism. For instance, more severe punishment of murderers will most likely stop them from killing people in future. This idea is now used in criminal justice and in a fundamental principle of judging people.

References

Law Library. (2009). Criminology: Intellectual History – Classical Criminology. Retrieved May 5, 2009 from http://law.jrank.org/pages/908/Criminology-Intellectual-History-Classical-criminology.html