Crime and criminality have been and continues to be the scene of ideological tests as philosophers and pragmatic scientists grapple with theories that hope to provide a logical and therefore actionable arguments about crime. The paradox of explaining crime and how, when, and why individuals fall into delinquency is the lack of a standardized line of argument that in the least sense provides an anchor to draft laws and mannerisms of dealing with the vice. This paper analyzes and contextualizes the classical, positivist, and strain schools of thoughts as some of the more compelling arguments of crime and criminology. It summarizes each theory, uses a sampled offence to interprets the theory, analyzes their strengths and weaknesses, and reviews their appropriate crime prevention strategies.
Canals (1960) agrees that the underpinnings of the classical school of criminology in part reflects the desire for society to dissociated from the conservative judicial inclinations of the pre-enlightenment eras before the 18th century, or rather the ages of the privileged versus the unprivileged. The classical school of thought as shaped by such thinkers as Bentham and Beccaria viewed criminology from the perspective of the law, which is the standardized code of conduct. By embarking on Canals’ (1960), Connell’s (1997), and Faqir’s (2015) retrospective view of the judicial system, it is quite apparent that the emphasis on the law reflects the need to chorus the notion of men living within the sphere of reason which implicitly supposes that none is privileged as it had been in the monarchial eras. According to Jeffery (1959), the classicists forwarded the nullum crimen sine lege doctrine or rather, the view of “no crime without a law.”
However, the sociological implications of the doctrine or rather the theoretical coherence of the classical school of thought makes a few assumptions. It assumed that fabric of society holds together in the form of a social contract between all its members, and therefore norms and rules do apply, both of which could be interpreted as laws in the governmental system (Einstadter & Henry, 2006: Xu, 2012; Neumann & Elsenbroich, 2015). In such a case, individuals live by laws and have the right to make choices, choices of which will be sanctioned by law if at all they infringe on others or the integrity of the society. The theory assumes that crime is therefore the infringement of the law caused by a deliberate choice of the offender who is constantly weighing between pleasurable activities and painful activities as they reach for their goals (Moore & Morris, 2011).
The 21-hour siege staged by the slain individual Rick Maddison on a private property within Seventeen Mile, Queensland is one of the few cases that demand a theoretical analysis since it seems to defy the average characteristic of urban crime (Staff, 2017). Maddison shot to death Officer Brett Forte and shot a police chopper and was shot dead after staging a 21-hour siege. The classical school of thought assess (1) the legal or rather the Constitutional profile of crime viz-a-viz an individual’s right and (2) the freedom of choice that either ends in a crime or a deed contributing towards society.
Rick Maddison had the right to own a firearm since it is legal in Queesnland according to the Weapons Act of 1990. He also had the right to take matters into own hands, so long as the right did not infringe upon others or the integrity of the law. However, such rights have limits within the same legal context. His right to owning a firearm resulted in a series of illegal offences that attracted sanctions by the law for instance murder, resisting arrest, sieging an property, shooting at a police property (chopper), and vengeance, just to mention a few. Therefore Maddison’ actions qualified as crimes because they breached the law, a law consented by the People of Queensland, and Australia as a whole, and that he was of sound mind at the time of committing the crimes.
A critical advantages of the classical school of explaining crime include impinging the legality or illegality of an action based on consented laws (logically) agreed upon by the whole population (Connell, 1997). Unless therefore there is a law that prescribes the conditions of a crime and its penal codes, there cannot be crime. Other advantages include individualization of sanctions, the weighing of the severity of crimes through the provisions of the law, and the availability of a certain guide (laws) of what constitutes a crime (Faqir, 2015; Einstadter & Henry, 2006). However, the certainty of the law under the classical theory provides yet a paradoxical disadvantage that of discretion of law enforcement officers, juries, judges, and lawyers in analyzing crime (Canals, 1960). One may clearly have committed a crime, but the arguments of the defense may skillfully untangle them from the law through court proceedings. Or if not so, the judicial system may wield more power over the dignity of a human being that surpasses the wishes of the citizenry regarding the social contract principle (Faqir, 2015).
The reiteration of the centrality of the law and the constitution in the classical school of criminology implied that the need to prevent crime also resonated with the need to popularize and legitimize the law through proactive channels. Therefore the prevention of crime is through the judicial system and the institutionalization of laws. For example it is against company policy as well as the AML/CTF Act of 2006 to launder money (AUSTRAC, 2016). The power of the law rests on its acceptance, acknowledgement by the population, and its enforcement through constitutionally acknowledge channels such as the police, the courts, and the corrections system (Fagan & Meares, 2008: Moore & Morris, 2011). The classical school faces the paradox or laws and their tendency to destabilize the balance between the people and the governing body, or rather the social contract, and their need for autonomy, self-determination, and freedoms. Therefore under the classical school of criminology, balancing the indispensability of laws and the constitution and the freedoms and rights of the citizenry through law enforcement, courts, corrections, and institutional policies is the most appropriate crime prevention strategy (Faqir, 2015; Einstadter & Henry, 2006; Canals, 1960).
While the classical school emerged in the 18th century as its parent thinkers sought ways to draw the lines between oppressive governance, the positivist school pioneered by such controversial thinkers as Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Ferri at the dawn of the 20th century sought a radical approach to explaining crime and criminology. The basic premise of the positivist school of criminology is the analysis of crime and criminals from a scientific determinism principle (Canals, 1960). The school therefore paid more attention to the criminal rather than the crime. Under such radical views positivists supposed that the free-will is but a misconception.
The assumptions made by the positivist school is that delinquency is a characteristic disposition of the delinquent stemming from genetically predisposing factors rather than the ability to make criminal choice based on free will (Einstadter & Henry, 2006; García-Salmones, 2015). By basing on the Pavlov’s theorization of conditioned response, the positivist school assumes that criminals are born so rather than assume a criminal lifestyle along the journey of their lives (Jeffery, 1959). Lambroso’s pioneering arguments about crime and criminology expounded on criminal anthropology as the result of atavistic degeneration (Ellwood, 1912). Therefore within the population, certain individuals are naturally more criminal than others due to their suppressed stimuli response against criminal practices. Ferri would later on contextualize Lambroso’s arguments by categorizing crime based on the behavioral qualities of the criminal (Faqir, 2015).
From the positivist school perspective, the shooting of to death Officer Brett Forte in the 21-hour siege staged by the slain individual Rick Maddison could be interpreted as genetic predispositions that rendered him barbaric and therefore loathsome against law enforcement systems as well as law enforcement officers (Staff, 2017). The positivist argument would therefore assume that Rick Maddison has always been a criminal. His hatred for the policemen and the law enforcement could have been emboldened by his love for dangerous weapons. The love for weapons in a democratic society would be explained as a behavioral disposition towards danger, or rather his love for life-threatening scenarios and therefore his shooting of Officer Brett Forte without regarding the value of life and the necessity of a peaceful coexistence was a tendency of atavistic degeneration. He was already a criminal before the incident and therefore regardless of whether the shooting occurred or not, then chances are that Rick Maddison would have still succumbed to a similar scenario.
Even though the positivist school of criminology deviates from that of the classists and the neo-classists, it presents a few advantages (Nickerson, 1983; Binder et al., 1987). Firstly, it has led to the categorization of crimes rather than generalization, a scenario that has positively impacted conventional penal codes by influencing analysis of severity and consequently, the individualization of sentencing criminals. A second advantage is paving the way for the analysis of crime based on behavioral disposition rather than concentrating on the crime. Concentrating on the criminal positively impacts the creation of laws congruous with the social contract principle (Jeffery, 1959). However, a disturbing disadvantage of the positivist school of thought is the automatic designation of individuals as criminals rather than innocent people subject to jurisprudence to prove them otherwise. The perpetration of crimes would therefore be viewed as genetic predisposition, promoting a preemptive decision by the law enforcement to controversially “sniff” out possible criminals from the population against the principles of social contract, for instance protecting the freedoms and rights of the citizenry.
The demise of the positivist school of thought despite its popularity in the 20th century is its deterministic nature that predicts crime and criminals and therefore would consequently create a more authoritarian regime. According to Canals (1960), the most appropriate crime prevention strategies is the neutralization of the behavioral tendency towards crime through such neutralization processes as reeducation, emancipation, or if to the extreme through segregation of individuals. However, Einstadter and Henry (2006) and Faqir (2015) proposes the need for an all-around ecological approach where the individual has access to several resource options that would encourage them to revise their behavioral inclination.
The strain theory fundamentally deviates from the previous schools (classicist and positivist) of understanding criminology in that it focuses on the variables describing the environment that contains the would-be criminal rather than the crime or the individual in question. The general strain theory as proposed by Robert Agnew aimed at correcting the deficiencies of the earlier versions by Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin which Broidy (2007), and Yilmaz and Koca (2015) argue to have been limited in scope in light of new research findings in the sociology and psychology of crime. According to the arguments of the strain theory, the tendency to delinquency is with response to “straining” effects, or rather stimuli emanating from the environment that impels frustrations which if left unchecked would more likely lead to delinquency.
The assumptions made by the theory is that strain manifesting in the form of failure to achieve desired goals, presentation of noxious stimuli, and the removal of stimuli that individuals view as positive and developmental, compels individuals to become delinquent Tibetts & Hemmens, 2009; Agnew, 2001). At an implicit level, the theory also assumes that the class of individuals within a society either predisposes them to crime due to the relative magnitude, scale, and persistence of strains or renders them less likely to harbor criminals that is if at all the mentioned strains and their characteristics are virtually non-existent (Broidy, 2007; Tibetts & Hemmens, 2009).
Commissioner Steve Golloschewski described Maddison as “a person who was highly motivated and had a grievance against police,” and therefore he was inclined to brush shoulders with the law then or later (Staff, 2017). However, the comments given by the commissioner portray a scenario of strain which if analyzed from the view of Agnew’s general strain theory points to the low coping levels of the Maddison. The functions of law enforcement officers felt more like stifling his freedom of being a Queenslander or in the broader sense, an Australian. Therefore given Maddison’s low tolerant level or the persistence of the police-threat stimulus to his life, or rather the disadvantage of law enforcement on exercising his freedoms and achieving his present goals, he opted for delinquency as a proactive measure to cushion or tackle the strain, hence the offence.
According to Broidy’s (2007) analysis, contemporary research attempts into the factors predisposing individuals to crime report that frustrations, or rather the effect of strain, report the importance of environmental structures in influencing delinquency and complementing individual psychological factors. The strain theory therefore is therefore quite advantageous in understanding weaknesses within society and individuals that would more likely go a long way in influencing policies favorable to coping. However, the downside of the strain theory is that since it assumes that factors within an individual’s environment predispose or restrain people from being criminals, it assumes that more crime would be in congested urban areas where societies are more constrained than in the suburbs (Tibetts & Hemmens, 2009). Additionally, the theory would most likely influence racial, gender, or class-based biases in law enforcement since disadvantaged people within society would be facing more strains than the privileged suburban population.
Since the strain theory views crime as the result of society-wide issues combining with low coping abilities of individuals, Einstadter and Henry (2006) and Faqir (2015) propose the appropriate crime prevention mechanisms to be social ecological model which assumes that striving to create a society that embodies the qualities of an ideal living environment would ultimately solve the issue of crime. That is, removing strains from the society through reforms that over the whole society rather than a single issue would encourage behavioral change since more opportunities will be created for people to reach their goals and few hurdles would be evident, if any.
Conclusion
The understanding of crime and criminals from the perspectives of classical, positivist and strain theory schools of thought presents conflicting findings as each theory represents crime, the criminal, and associative factors in a unique way. The classicist school of thought emphasizes more on the crime as a conscious breach of the laws defining the social contract between a people and its governing body. The positivist schools throws more weight to the criminal as an individual born with peculiar behavioral and even anatomical characteristics predisposing them to crime. The strain on the other hand assumes that constraining factors in the environment may compel an individual to delinquency as a coping countermeasure. Even though the schools or thought may most likely not agree concerning crime, criminals, and criminology as a whole, they provide insightful positions that could positively impact both the penal codes and the laws of Australia.
References
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