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Sarah Colegrove 2/13/2012 Reading Response 3 Many people over time have tried to explain the criminal justice

system and have theorized why people have individuals have committed crimes. The three main schools of thought on the criminal justice system are classical, positivist, and a critical perspective. Those in the classical school of thought saw humans being as having free will and crime is a choice. Punishment in the criminal justice system needed to be on a sliding scale in terms of degree of punishment. They saw that criminal justice system should be in place for deterrence. The cost or punishment should be so high that potential criminals will not commit crime. The positivist school of thought looks much more at the biology and genes of a person than anything else - they do not see human beings as having free will. Some within this thought that there are some who are born to be criminals and others who are born to not be criminals. They see the cure to crime being addressing the biology, sociology, psychological factors of the person. The critical perspective of the criminal justice system looks at the social circumstances and structures in society, the legal institution, and the inequalities in the system. They then look at the state, who and what crime is, and the who is considered a criminal. The critical perspective looks much more what is happening in society to explain crime and the criminal justice system and what and who crime and criminals are. The school of thought I think my perspective lines up the most with the critical perspective of the criminal justice system. I think that society and the structures within it are very important to explaining criminal justice. There are a multitude of different theories as to why crimes occur. The biological theorist

see the criminal as being biologically inferior than those who are not criminals and that is why they commit crimes. The rational choice theory says that crime occurs because while people are rational most of the time, they are not rational all of the time and crime results. There are couple different theories that fall under the psychological theory. One is that criminals are those that display feeblemindedness and have low intelligence and IQ scores. Another theory is the psychoanalytic theory which sees that crime occurs because of mental illness or problems. A third theory is the personality trait theory. This assumed that criminals were able to be sorted from the population based on their personality and how they answered questions on a personality test. Sociology theory also has a couple different theories that fall under it. In the social disorganization/social ecology theory, it focuses on geography. There are areas where crime perpetuates because of the place rather than the people. Strain theory focuses on that while people might have goals and do not aspire to commit crime, because of their socioeconomic status, they commit crimes. Anomie says that crime occurs because society is breaking down and the norms of society no longer hold much sway. Cultural-Deviance theory states that crime occurs because people are trying to fit into cultural norms, which can conflict with traditional society. Control/Social bond theory is when there is a breakdown or lack of social control which allows crimes to be committed people are being improperly socialized. Social learning theory proposes that people learn to be criminal such as spending time with people who are criminals and learn their behavior. Labeling theory states that certain activities are labeled as crimes in the criminal justice system and does not focus on what causes criminal behavior. The critical/Marxist perspective says that the capitalist system can be responsible for some of the crime that we have (struggle between the haves and have-nots). Crime can also come about through such things as oppression.

There are a multitude of theories about crime, however I think that the critical/Marxist perspective theory is the best. It addresses not only the pressures that people face (eg. Oppression) but also how the system contributes to crime. It sees more of the whole picture rather than just pieces (and hasn't been proven wrong like some of them).

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