Classical Era Punishment

The Classical era ranges from 17th century to 18th century which is often referred as The Enlightenment era or The Age of Reasoning. The Classical era introduced a belief in the power of human reasoning to solve social, economic and political problems. The classical school teaches us that humans are rational and we make a choice to commit crimes and that punishment should be about preventing future crimes from happening. Before the 17th century, common forms of punishment consisted of torture and death as a way to get even with a criminal or one of the laws of Hammurabi: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. The classical school of criminology came after the enlightenment. This period introduced the basic ideas of how to operate the
Cesare Beccaria was the author of On Crimes and Punishments. His essay was about condemning torture and the capital punishment and reformation. His essay would later be used as a guide for constructing the Bill of Rights and the U.S Constitution. He had a social contract view of society in which everyone agreed that the Lawmaker was the sovereign power who alone represented the will of all the people. He believed an effective punishment should be swift, certain, impartial, universal, and proportionate to the crime. Deterrence depends upon learning on associating cause and effect. The sooner the punishment follows on the crime, the stronger the association in the mind of the criminal. When judges stray from the punishment set
Lombroso believed heredity was a cause of criminal behavior. He came up with the idea of Atavism and Atavistic anomalies. The term atavism means that criminals are not fully evolved. He believed atavism could explain criminal recidivism. An atavist was more animal than human. They did not act by choice, but by instinct and had no moral responsibility. He compared the skulls of criminals to skulls of prehistoric Neanderthals, and some atavistic anomalies include big jaws, Sloping foreheads with prominent ridges over the eyes, and large, strong canine teeth. Lombroso believed criminal behavior could be passed down through the blood of criminal relatives and environmental factors such as drug/alcoholism and lack of education. There are different types of criminals: the born criminal, the occasional criminal, the insane criminal, and the epileptic