Classicism Vs Capital Punishment

Classicism was formed during the late 18th and 19th centuries during a conflicting and aggressive time. At this time society was firmly split into two classes; proletariat (the poor seen as criminals) and bourgeoisie (the rich seen as trust worthy). Classicism stated that humans had rational behaviours however these behaviours were self-interested. It also indicated that humans function by maximising pleasure and minimising pain. It inspired many changes in the criminal laws. Torture was now being seen as useless and barbaric, as well as capital punishment being viewed as unnecessary. The use of imprisonment was being increased and the prisons were improved. The focus of the classical school was to change the criminal laws so that they followed

He stated that “crime is obviously a continuous trait of the same kind, as intelligence, height or weight”. Eysenck looks past all the behaviourist views of beliefs, values and purpose and focusses in isolating and identifying why a certain offender has criminal behaviour. Eysenck’s work was similar to medicalisation. Labelling became a prominent part of positivism.
In 1997 Adrian Raine took part in a series of murder trails. A sample of 41 murders were taken, they were all claiming to be not guilty for reasons of insanity. At this time there were no assumptions that criminals had deficiencies in their brains. However the research Raine did never went anywhere because there was no proof to support it.
Today positivism is not used as much of the theories do not work and criminology has advanced a lot since then. It is now known that people are not born as criminals and that there are no criminal features, however at the time positivism made a huge impact on society as it changed the way they thought about and viewed criminals. Positivism is also known as nothing works as even though they were using science, they weren’t using it properly which lead to wrong conclusions. There was also prison overcrowding, no rehabilitation and no education. The soma types of positivism also made it

It also stated that the certainty of apprehension should be greater than the severity of the punishment it questioned the death penalty and talked about crime displacement.
Margret Thatcher, in 1933, said that “there is no such thing as society. There is individual men and women, and there are families”. She stated that people were selfish and that society needed to help reform them. She emphasised the importance of family values and community and the certainty of detection. She introduced proactive policing and the social control theory. The social control theory states that there should be direct punishment, indirect fear of status in communities and internal conscience and guilt.
Right realism believed in the nuclear family. It was believed that the nuclear family would have many effects on society. It was thought it would decrease welfare, illness, deprivation and crime and make society stronger. The nuclear family would create more socialisation; act as role models and increase