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Social Contract
Theory
Lecture Outline:
I. Introduction
A. Criminology is focused on the processes of making and breaking laws
B. Criminologists seek to understand the "why" of crime (i.e., why did person
A become a criminal but person B did not?) and the causes of crime
C. We know certain “facts” regarding the causes and nature of crime
D. Criminologists observe the realities of crime and try to piece together
explanations
a) some look to individual-level explanations
b) others look to macro-level explanations
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II. The Origins and Evolution of Criminology
A. Attention to crime can be traced back to ancient Babylonia and the Code
of Hammurabi as well as in the Judeo-Christian perspective depicted in
the Bible
B. The family-revenge model of justice became dominant during the feudal
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era
a) Trial by battle
i. The victim or victim’s family member would fight the
offender or offender’s family member
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b) Trial by ordeal
i. The accused was subject to a test that would determine
his/her innocence (run the gauntlet or dunked in water
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while bound with a robe)
C. Spirituality continued to affect interpretations of crime causation
a) Salem Witch Trials-result from belief that crime could be
attributed to witchcraft and demonic possession
b) Emergence of penitentiaries or correctional institutions in
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Philadelphia by Quakers who believed that isolation, labor, and
Bible reading would rehabilitate the offender (e.g., spiritual
enlightenment can be a crime solution, just today’s faith-based
approaches)
c) Contemporary criminologists trace the roots of criminological
explanations of behavior to the Enlightenment period of the late
18th century with Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke who were early
philosophers who emphasized reason over blind faith and
superstition
D. Introduction of the social contract (Thomas Hobbes) and moving away
from spiritualism and superstition
a) Cesare Beccaria’s and Jeremy Bentham’s writings characterized
what is commonly known as the classical school of criminology
i. Grounded in the principles of deterrence (certainty, severity
and celerity)
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