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Understanding Criminals Essay

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It is hard for anyone to grasp the concept or be able to understand why people commit heinous crimes or engage in criminal activities. We as human beings are all capable of committing or engaging in delinquent behavior. What stands in the way of a person that makes them decided to engage in deviant behavior or to choose not to commit crimes at all? We may never truly know or understand the real reasons behind why certain people make decisions like these everyday. Early philosophers and scientists looked carefully and dug deep into the Criminal Justice System and the behavior of criminals using theories to explain criminal behavior. With these theories they were able to come up two distinctive schools (Classical and Positive) that explained …show more content…

Using a specific time, measurement of data (crunching numbers), is known as Qualitative. The way that people use these terms depends greatly on how they understand them and how they are using them at a given time, theories can also help us understand our social norms. Having a good theory is to be able to understand all the areas that the theory deals with, it is not only easier on you as the researcher, but it is also easier for you to understand what other theorist was writing about.
One of the oldest conceptions about the Criminal Justice System and crime emerged out of the eighteenth century, best known as the Classical School of criminology. During this period theorist paved a way for some basic ideas about the operation of the Criminal Justice System and the processing of sentencing. The Classical School was not interested in studying criminals but more focused on lawmaking and the legal process. Best known for their works and were the most influential during this time was philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria. The Classical School concept believes that people have the free will in making their own decisions, not based on any prior experiences, and the punishment can be the deterrence part for others. The school saw two forms of deterrence specific and general. Specific is giving an offender the most sever punishment to deter them from repeating. General was applied to show others that a

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