Prompt 4: Questions
- Outline the main tenets of classical criminological theory
Classical criminology theory emerged during the Enlightenment in Western Europe in the 1700s. This period of time revolutionized how society viewed how nature and the universe worked by replacing religious doctrine with scientific and reasoning methods. Classical criminology theory includes :
Humanitarian legal reform: Cesare Beccaria’s “no crime without law” theory, where a person should only be determined guilty by a code of laws, as opposed to an interpretative judgment by a sovereign or church.
Criminal law is enacted to protect society from harm. There is no need to create laws to control specific human behaviors, as long as they do not hurt others.
Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism: Crime takes away from society’s happiness, so it must be prevented.
Preventing crimes is optimal to punishing people for committing crimes. Prevention involves deterrence, whether it is general deterrence or specific deterrence. However, this method assumes that all humans are rational, and can weigh out pros and cons of their actions.
Punishment should be used to prevent crimes, not for retribution. People should not be punished based on political, financial, or biased reasons, but only to act as deterrence.
2. What role does rational choice play in criminal behavior for classical theorists?
Rational choice involves the belief that people have the reasoning to weigh out the punishments of committing a crime over the pleasures. People also have the free will to choose. That means that criminals that commit crimes and are caught for them chose pleasure over the pain of punishment.
3. Why is the concept of deterrence so important to classical theory?
Classical theory moves away from the gruesome, inhumane punishments used for crime from the pre-classical period. As mentioned previously, in the classical school of thought, prevention of crime is the preferred course of action, not punishing someone after a crime has been committed. For classical theory, punishment should only be used as a deterrence for society. Deterrence allows observers to see how the criminal is punished, which deters them from committing the same act in the future. Specific deterrence is a punishment for the criminal, which should deter them from committing future acts.
4. Outline the importance of certainty, severity, and speed to the deterring effects of punishment
Certainty, or the certainty of being caught in the act of committing a crime, is an important deterrent. If people didn’t think that they would get caught for a crime, they would be committing crimes on a regular basis. Severity, or does the punishment of the crime outweigh the pleasure of getting away with it, also is an important factor, as it makes people really analyze what the consequences might be over committing a crime. In most cases, the punishment outweighs the pleasure, acting as a powerful deterrence. The speed of the punishment also plays a factor, because the criminal would know that they would be held accountable for the crime quickly, and not be punished five years from being arrested.
5. How rational is choice?
Normally when we think about people making choices, we think about them weighing pros and cons logically, then making a decision and acting upon it with free will. However, sometimes our logical thinking can be impaired by emotion, alcohol, illegal substances, or mental illness. In those cases, people’s decision making does not function properly. Should these people be held to the same accountability as others that commit crimes willingly and unhindered? That is a societal debate.
6. Does deterrence work?
I think that in general, deterrence works for a society, otherwise we would be seeing anarchy in more countries around the world. However, there are some societal and biological pressures that people face that overcome deterrence. For example, take voluntary manslaughter in a domestic abuse case, where the killing was provoked and occurs in the heat of passion. Or perhaps a thief steals from a store because they feel like they have no choice due to their socioeconomic situation.
References:
Brown, S. E., and G Geis. (2013). Criminology (8th Edition). Waltham, MA; Elsevier.
Prompt 5: Questions
Make sure to have watched The Minority Report and reviewed the Zoom lectures for Part 2 before responding to these questions.
1. Rational choice and determinist theorists have very different ideas about what causes people to engage in criminal and deviant behaviors. Describe the main differences between the two.
In the classical school of criminology, rational choice theorists believe that people are rational and have the ability to measure out the positives and negatives to commit a crime. If the pleasure (or profit) of committing a crime outweighs the punishment (consequences for getting caught), usually humans would revert to committing the crime, and vice versa. However, people have the free will to make the decisions and act upon them. Determinists believe that people that commit crimes are destined to commit them. In the positivist school of criminology, determinists believe that something other than free will leads people to committing crime, such as biological or psychological factors. Soft determinism maintains that internal and external pressures lead to reducing a person’s options.
2. What is the goal of the pre-crime unit in Minority Report?
The ultimate goal of the pre-crime unit was to end crime in the D.C. area, however, in the short term, the unit worked to prevent crime from happening before it started.
3. What assumption does the unit make concerning the cause of criminality? Consider how this might relate to deterministic theories of crime.
The unit assumed that they were only preventing crimes of passion, because having a pre-crime unit that prevented all pre-meditated crime from happening would apprehend criminals before they could do anything. In this way, the assumption was that the existence of the pre-crime unit also acted as a deterrence. Deterrence relates back to the classical school of criminology, where the emphasis was on preventing crimes versus punishing a committed crime. General deterrence was used as the public sees how the system can quickly apprehend and punish criminals, which was illustrated in the movie through the quick media stance on the “murderer” Jon Anderton, as well as the swift measures taken to find him.
4. Does ‘free will’ play any part in the behaviors and actions of the characters in the film?
Absolutely! John Anderton was shocked when he viewed future images of himself committing what appeared to be a murder, especially since he was in charge of the pre-crime unit. Instead of just turning himself in, he sought to clear his name and learn how he could possibly commit the murder. Anderton looked to Agatha, one of the pre-cogs for an alternate collection of images of the murder, which was referred to as the “minority report”. Agatha did not have a “minority report” for Anderton, however, she said that since he saw these future images, that he was one of the few suspects that could make a choice when faced with the scenario. In the end, Anderton made the moral choice and arrested the suspect instead of murdering him, although the choice was extremely difficult.
5. Consider the ethical implications of determinism as illustrated in Minority Report. For example, should people be arrested and convicted of crimes they have not committed, but who are genetically or psychologically disposed to do so?
It is ethically wrong to arrest people and convicting them prior to them committing a crime. In the movie, there was so much confidence in a system that presented a fatal flaw. Once enough of the pre-cog generated visions appeared, a judge was summoned to view the “future” actions of the suspect. There was no trial or due process. The worst thing is that the “evidence”, the futuristic visions generated from the precogs, did not always match to form a consensus of guilt for the suspect. Once Anderton realizes this, he is further disillusioned with the pre-crime unit, as well as dismayed to learn that he may have put many innocent people away in prison. Although this flaw in the system was known by the creators of the pre-crime unit, they continued to use the process in order to deter the majority of society from committing crimes. Think of it as “one for many”, by sacrificing some innocents, one can preserve society. In our society, many groups of people have been “punished” for imagined crimes that they have not committed, such as Japanese Americans, the Jews in Nazi Germany, and Muslims in the post 9/11 era. These groups are usually stripped of their human rights and discriminated against by society, but for the “greater good” or “security” of society. If society is fearful of a certain group based on biological, religious, or cultural reasons, that group can serve as a scapegoat for political leaders and perhaps draw the eyes of the people away from other corrupt actions of people in power.
6. In what ways can “pre-crime” prediction be useful/beneficial to society? In what ways can it be harmful? Use examples from the film to explain.
In Minority Report, pre-crime predictions benefitted the DC area as a deterrent, resulting in a very small crime rate. The pre-crime unit prevented murders, so those victims had a chance to live out their life. As a detriment to society, the pre-crime unit didn’t allow suspects free will; the suspects were arrested prior to committing a crime. The suspects were also denied a Constitutional right, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed” (U.S. Const. amend. XI). Due to cracks in the system, innocent people were jailed. Other innocents sacrificed were the pre-cogs, who were the main tools of the system, but they were living people, trapped for their uncanny premonitions. When the pre-crime unit disbanded, they actually got to live a normal life.
References:
Brown, S. E., and G Geis. (2013). Criminology (8th Edition). Waltham, MA; Elsevier.
Spielberg, Stephen (Director). (2002) Minority Report [film]. DreamWorks Pictures.
U.S. Const. amend. XI.
