Criminal Justice - Crime Control

Criminal Justice - Crime Control CRIME CONTROL IMPLICATIONS of CLASSICAL CRIMINOLOGY According to the classical theory of criminology, crime results exclusively from the exercise of free will. Therefore, the primary emphasis of crime control in society must be the protection of the innocent public from criminal behavior through the punishment of those who choose to perpetrate crime. In principle, the classical approach to understanding crime in society relies on apprehension, prosecution, and swift punishment of the criminal.

Generally, penal confinement is the centerpiece of the classical theory of criminology; with a dual purpose: to punish the criminal and to protect the public from crime by removing criminals and isolating them from society through incarceration. Implications for Crime Control: Because the classical theory of crime focuses exclusively on the voluntary aspect of criminal behavior, its main purpose is punishment of the guilty.

Likewise, the classical theory of crime views crime prevention mainly as a function of removal of the criminally inclined from society through imprisonment and deterrence in the form of strict criminal laws and enforcement standards. Under this philosophy, the interests of the law abiding public far outweighs any concern for rehabilitating criminals or preventing crime by understanding the complex social, environmental, and developmental influences to which much criminal activity is, in the more modern view, directly attributable.

One of the most important implications of relying on the classical theory of crime is that large-scale crime prevention is, essentially, impossible to whatever extent criminal behavior (or the choice to engage in crime) is a function of more general social issues or influences on the individual. This approach to addressing crime in society necessarily requires a piecemeal and passive response that merely responds to specific instances of crime after the fact.

To the extent criminal behavior is actually a result of spontaneous choice, it might be perfectly appropriate as a societal response to crime. On the other hand, to the extent criminal behavior is only partially attributable to spontaneous choice, the classical approach to crime control is inherently ineffective and unlikely to achieve the larger objective of reducing crime in society.

Furthermore, the classical approach to crime control is unlikely to reduce the numbers of individuals who eventually engage in criminal behavior, since criminal behavior is relatively constant with respect to the number of individuals in society who become criminals. Because deterrence is only marginally effective (at best), reliance on the classical theory of crime virtually ensures that every criminal taken off the street is quickly replaced by another criminal beginning his or her career in crime. This is perhaps the single most important implication of the classical approach to crime.