During the 18th century, many philosophers paced arguments more rationally by employing humanistic approaches to criminal punishments. The main aim of employing humanistic approaches was to do away with public execution and cruelty which was used to scare and deter criminal acts. The philosophical arguments led to the birth of Classical and positive schools of thoughts on criminology. The criminology field started applying the classical school of criminology which passed an assumption that human behavior is rational. The rationality of human means that human beings have the abilities to choose right from wrong thus they choose to commit a crime. The positive school was championed by Cesare Lombroso who stated that criminal activities or behaviors are based on external factors such as the absence of morals and remorse-people are born criminal. The thesis statement of this study was to critically analyze and evaluate how classical school of criminology is effective when applied to dangerous offenders (DO) by the Canadian government.
The classical school of criminology
This school was first built and tested by Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy who was a professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma concentrated on studying human behavior and what motivated them. While studying, he discovered that human behavior can be controlled and directed to the behavioral channels that are desired by society. He provided many criminological issues that many thinkers avoided. Another thinker was Beccaria who was the first person to apply intellectual principles to law. His two main concepts that were improvised by other thinkers included the utilitarian theory that emphasized the theme of ethics. The utilitarian theory states that the wrongness or rightness of human actions is depended on the degree to which the actions result in unhappiness or happiness of an individual (Cullen and Wilcox, 2010, P. 3). The second concept was the Social Contract Political Theory which stated that political authority can be said to be legitimate because society joined together to consent it.
Emphasizing on Bentham's theories and assumptions, ethical principles (utilitarianism) should be used to check human behavior. From the theory's premise, a criminal act is not supposed to be judged using irrational systems of absolutes but it should be judged using verifiable principles. Under the classical school, individuals are believed to satisfy their needs using many ways where some of the means are illegal and some legal. Bentham affirmed that individuals do a rational consideration of every element involved in an action before entering into actual action (Geis, 1955, P. 162). Only the motive's consequence can lead to bad effects on other individuals. According to Geis (1955), Bentham stated that; the motive is generally referred to as "action" and pain, pleasure among other related events adds up to "action.", therefore, it is incontestably and immediately no motive that may be itself "a bad one." The classical school points out that an individual's ethics should be put in valuation which is grounded in motivational language and identifies the predominance of words that are defamatory instead of neutrally-toned and praise-worthy words. Criminal behavior is a learned behavior. Despite all the wise thinking, Bentham did not examine why people pursued a series of criminal patterns while happy. Given the applicability of classical school, a majority of the society must accept and recognize legal suctions before they are considered. The sanctions may be political, moral, religious, and physical. For instance, if an individual experiences a headache because of his drunkenness, the headache will be termed as a physical sanction's punishment. If an individual is imprisoned or fined by a judge, the fine or imprisonment is termed as political sanction's punishment. And if society avoids a person or one member because of unwelcome moral behaviors, that will be moral sanction's punishment.
Application of classical school of criminology
Presently, criminologists and law enforcers should evaluate the conduct of a convicted individual by taking into consideration the conduct's consequence. In fact, the act's consequence is not as vital as an offenders' attitude or personality. Any function of law' objective should be to mitigate or bar the commission of a criminal act and not to seek vengeance for criminal acts.
Based on dangerous offenders in Canada, the classical school of criminology is applied. The provisions of dangerous offenders are found in the Criminal Code part XXI. The code was a subsection of Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1977 that insisted on security and peace in society. The Act was passed due to criticism that was witnessed against the habitual criminal (Shore, 1984, P. 413). Habitual criminals are those offenders who have been convicted of offenses more than three times and whose penalties exceed five years and while persistently live the life of criminals. Concern was raised by legislators and critics saying that the applied legislations were not only used to dangerous offenders (DO) but also to nuisances and menaces. In the case of Mendick versus The Queen, Justice Ritchie in his opinion in the Canadian court held that "being a menace in a community was a reason that was sufficient to give a preventive detention sentence to an offender" (Shore, 1984, P. 413). Since Canada is one of the states that embrace democracy, the Ouimet Committee in its opinion saw that the provisions of the legislation were ineffective measures to be applied in protecting the society (Blanpain and Colucci, 2008, P 18-21). Habitual criminals were no longer a threat to the society's safety but rather a nuisance. Dangerous sexual offenders were those individuals in society who convicted of indecent assault, rape and buggery, and bestiality, and those individuals who fail to control their sexual impulse during a sexual situation or matter. The application of preventive detention was criticized and was seen to be inconsistent and inequitable with the criminal act because the act did not show any sign of physical harm or violence.
In 1976, parliament introduced new legislation in relation to dangerous offenders' designation and the legislation was recorded in criminal Code, section 688. The section stated that before a sentence is passed on an offender, the court must establish the ruling with satisfaction - the consequences must be evaluated according to the classical school of criminology. The repeated behavior’s pattern should be evaluated and if the behavior cannot be restrained, then a relevant sentence should apply. The new legislation was consistent with the premise of the classical school of criminology.
Conclusion
Conclusively, the classical school of criminology is gaining fame in many judicial systems all over the world. Its applicability makes sense because it has been applied and the results were accepted. In the context of the Canadian government, the classical school has been widely applied by courts, especially in dangerous offenders. The government of Canada took a bold step in abolishing its legislation that included the evaluation of criminal acts' consequences before sentencing the offenders. As long as the dangerous offenders still exist, or in some cases retained, the evidentiary processes and procedures, as well as the kind of trial to be chosen, require a thorough evaluation. The evaluation is very important because the risks of inconsistencies, failure, and injustices can be greatly reduced. The classical school perspective is widely accepted than the positive school.
References
Blanpain, R. and Colucci, M. Criminal Law. Kluwer Law International. 2008, P 18-21.
Cullen, F., T. And Wilcox, P. Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory: "Beccaria, Cesare: Classical School." Sage Publications. 2014.
Geis, G. 1955. Pioneers in Criminology VII-Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 46(2). 1955. P. 160-171.
Shore, J. An Evaluation of Canada's Dangerous Offender Legislation. Les Cahiers de Droit, Vol. 25(2), 1984. P. 411–426.
