Learning Objectives

  1. Identify the primitive types of “theories” explaining why individuals committed violent and other deviant acts for most of human civilization.
     
  2. Describe how the Age of Enlightenment drastically altered the theories for how and why individuals commit crimes as well as how it changed criminal justice policies.
     
  3. Explain how Cesare Beccaria’s book in 1764 drastically influenced various criminal justice systems throughout the world, and be able to list the concepts and propositions recommended in his book.
     
  4. Summarize what Jeremy Bentham contributed to this movement toward the Classical School of criminological thought.
     
  5. Explain what the Neoclassical School of criminology contributed to the propositions of the Classical School that led most of the Western world (including the United States) to embrace this model as the major paradigm for the criminal justice system.