crminalogy

Criminal Justice

References in the U.S. Constitution

Along with Hammurabi's Code, the Magna Carta, and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the United States of America and its accompanying Bill of Rights has been lauded as one of the most definitive and influential documents in the history of human rights and democracy. With its authorship growing out of the forefathers' debates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the constitution was influenced by such great philosophers as Montesquieu and John Locke, but traces of the Classical School of Criminology can also be detected in the philosophy of the constitution. Coined by Social Contract philosophers of the 18th and 19th, the Classical School suggested that criminal behavior was a product of criminal nature, a result of humans' tendency to act in their own selfish interest and rational decision making skills. Thus, the Classical School of Criminology contends that criminal justice systems must be set up in order to enable humans to make rational choices that would result in their choosing the non-criminal action, making the law a deterrent through a system of punishments and rewards ("The Classical School"). The Constitution embodies this principal in a variety of ways, but most importantly by establishing rights, especially first ten amendments or the Bill of Rights and proposing a just system to levy punishments, or a courts system.

By offering citizens rights, the Constitution provides incentives for those who obey the law, therefore offering them motivation for choosing non-criminal behavior, the Classical School of Criminal Justice is applied. The constitution guarantees many rights to citizens of the United States of America, including the right to bare arms, the right to secure themselves from "unreasonable searches and seizures," and the right to refrain from testifying against one's self in a court of law (Amendment 2, Amendment 4, and Amendment 5). Although these rights are guaranteed by the constitution, they are not to be applied to those who have been convicted of criminals and are serving time in prison. The constitution implies the conditions on these rights through a variety of means. Most expressively, on multiple occasions conditions are listed alongside the grantees of rights. For example, the fourth amendment protects citizens from searches and seizures if those searches and seizures are unreasonable. This implies that while citizens are given a right while they remain lawful, that right becomes null and void when they or not lawful, or when search and seizure is reasonable.

Similarly, the thirteenth amendment is known as the amendment that abolished slavery, but another important connotation is contained within the wording of the amendment -- that slavery, or rather "involuntary servitude" is allowable if a person has "been duly convicted" of a crime. While this is the amendment that allows prison work camps and work programs, as well as the requirement that criminals participate in the maintaining of their prisons, it serves a much larger purpose, mainly expressing that a right contained in the constitution may be taken away if citizens do not behave lawfully.

The implications of these amendments and the others so similarly worded are indicative of the Classical School of Criminology. Offered as an incentive, the rights encourage rational, but criminally inclined humans to make the rational choice towards the non-criminal action. Because it would be in the humans' self-interest to keep their rights, they are encouraged to choose non-criminal action. Thus, the drafting of the constitution this way suggests that the founders were relying on the Classical School of Criminology when considering human behavior, rational choice, and the desire to keep a lawful society.