This paper surveys the principal schools of criminological thought, beginning with the Classical School's emphasis on free will and rational pleasure-pain calculations, through the Positivist School's focus on environmental and social factors, and into the Neoclassical School's preference for proportional punishment over rehabilitation. It also examines Rational Choice Theory and Routine Activities Theory. The paper then applies these frameworks to real institutional contexts, arguing that law enforcement most closely follows Rational Choice Theory while courts align with Neoclassical principles. It concludes by proposing reforms—including restorative justice and community-based corrections—informed by Positivist and rehabilitative thinking.
Criminology has developed several distinct schools of thought to explain why people commit crimes and how society should respond. These frameworks range from philosophical arguments about free will to scientific analyses of social environment and individual psychology. Understanding each school is essential to evaluating how criminological theory shapes real-world institutions such as law enforcement, the courts, and the corrections system.
The Classical School holds that people act primarily in their own self-interest. If a person is penniless and hungry, he will steal food because it is in his self-interest to eat and survive, notwithstanding the criminal nature of the act.
In the 18th century, philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that prevailing theories of crime — which attributed human behavior to God or the devil — were no longer relevant. They proposed instead that because humans possess free will, they choose which behaviors to pursue. Most humans respond to pleasure and pain: if crime brings pleasure, a person will commit it; conversely, hunger brings pain, and a person may commit a crime to relieve that pain. Under this framework, the purpose of punishment is not to give society a chance for revenge but rather to deter future criminal behavior. Laws are not written to strip away freedoms; rather, they are published so that punishments are known in advance of crimes being committed (Vito et al., 2011).
The Positivist School leans toward science and away from pure theory. Beyond free will, this approach holds that there are other factors to consider when studying crime and those who break the law.
A central tenet of the Positivist School is that a person's environment — including upbringing and social circumstances — has a significant bearing on his decision to engage in criminal activity. Low intelligence, poverty, or limited education may all help explain why an individual turns to law-breaking, according to Positivist thinking. This approach was introduced in part because adherence to the Classical School alone had not succeeded in slowing criminal behavior (Tibbetts et al., 2009).
When rehabilitation of criminals did not prove to be an effective strategy, authorities turned to other systems — including punishment rather than the softer approach of trying to understand why criminals behave as they do.
The Neoclassical School holds that different individuals should not necessarily receive identical punishments for the same crime. A court would not sentence a 12-year-old for stealing an apple in the same way it would sentence a 25-year-old shoplifter with three prior arrests. The core premise of the Neoclassical School is that punishment works better than rehabilitation, or at least is expected to.
Rational Choice Theory posits that before committing a crime, an individual makes a conscious and rational assessment of the potential act: Will he be caught? If so, what is the punishment?
The theory assumes the individual is capable of rational decision-making, which is not always the case — some offenders are psychologically or intellectually impaired. Nevertheless, the theory holds that a person weighs the difference between the goals he seeks and the means available to achieve them.
Routine Activities Theory argues that in order to deter crime, society must make it more difficult for an individual to carry out a criminal act. In essence, if the risks are made more severe, potential rewards are reduced, and there are no readily available excuses for the behavior, then crime should theoretically decrease as a result. More information on this framework is available through the Routine Activity Theory Wikipedia entry.
There is no single theory that all law enforcement agencies formally follow, but it is reasonable to conclude, based on the literature on crime and police responses to it, that law enforcement most closely embraces Rational Choice Theory. When an adult sells tobacco products to minors, for example, that individual made a conscious choice to break the law in order to make a profit. Rational Choice Theory is concerned with "how incentives and constraints affect behavior," and for an officer on the street, the assumption is that the offender has made a rational calculation to act as he did (Gul, 2009). Hiring undocumented workers, committing domestic violence, dealing heroin, or profiting from prostitution — all of these criminal acts involve some degree of prior thought and planning by the suspect, which is consistent with the Rational Choice framework.
It seems logical to conclude that the courts operate — at least in many situations — under the Neoclassical School of thought. The crime and the punishment are treated as two distinct components of a judicial finding. When an 18-year-old is arrested for drunk driving for the first time, the judge will impose a sentence that differs substantially from the one handed down to a repeat offender who is an alcoholic and has refused to seek treatment. This calibrated, individualized approach to sentencing reflects the Neoclassical emphasis on proportionality.
"Restorative justice and community-based corrections proposals"
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