CLASSICISM De®nition An approach to the study of crime and criminality which is underpinned by the

notion of rational action and free will. It was developed in the late eighteenth and early 32 THE SAGE
DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY nineteenth centuries by reformers who aimed to create a clear and
legitimate criminal justice system based upon equality. At its core is the idea that punishment should be
proportionate to the criminal act and should be viewed as a deterrent. Further assumptions include the
notion of individual choice within a consensual society based upon a social contract and the common
interest. Distinctive Features One of the central features of the classical perspective within criminology is
the emphasis upon voluntarism and hedonism. Individualism and self-interest are placed at the forefront
of explanations about why some people commit crime and how they should be punished. One of the
®rst proponents of this approach was the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria, with his work on the right
to punish and methods to prevent crime, ®rst published in 1764. He argued that society should create
laws that may infringe upon the personal liberty of a few, but result in the greater happiness of the
majority. His approach to the prevention of crime was that the pain of punishment should be greater
than the potential pleasure resulting from the act. Hence, the punishment should be proportionate to
the harm it causes society. Another early advocate of this utilitarian approach was the philosopher and
penal reformer Jeremy Bentham, who argued that punishment should be calculated to in¯ict pain in
proportion to the damage to the public interest. As this philosophy was developed into criminological
and legal de®nitions of crime, formal equality before the law and the similarity of criminals and non-
criminals was emphasized in penal policy. In contrast to positivist approaches, which were developed in
the late nineteenth century by Lombroso and Ferrero (1895) and Ferri (1901), for example, classicists
maintained that the reasoning individual had simply made an error of judgement in committing a
criminal act ± a violation of the social contract. To prevent this recurring the individual must be sure of
swift, sharp and certain punishment, so that, according to Beccaria, crime and punishment are
associated in the human mind. Evaluation As an alternative to the apparently cruel, harsh system based
on terror, absolute control and paternal benevolence which had preceded Beccaria and Bentham's ideas,
leading to reforms to the legal system, classicism appears to offer a reasonably fair and more transparent
philosophy of punishment. It provides a benchmark by which other theories can be compared and an
important philosophical underpinning for anti-positivistic paradigms that emphasize free will. What it
fails to take into account, however, are the reasons or causes of societal inequality or conditions within
which individuals are said to be propelled to commit certain acts that may violate legal codes. Classical
criminologies assume that there is an agreed collective set of values or goals, ignoring the possibility of
con¯icting groups or aims. Although Beccaria conceded that there are pre-rational individuals (children)
and sub-rational people (the mentally insane), he failed to acknowledge that social conditions may affect
`rational' judgement. Furthermore, unlike later neoclassicists, Beccaria did not view crime as a rational
response to certain social conditions such as poverty, although he did concede that the poor may have to
be deterred more forcefully than other members of society. Critiques offered by positivist criminologists
also suggest that social and individual forces, such as biology, physiology and environment create
situations which may lead individuals to commit certain acts. Early theorists, mentioned above,
proposed that some particular bodily difference, such as skull size, could identify and predict propensity
to crime (see for example Lombroso and Ferrero, 1895). Later, psychologists working within positivist
frameworks argued that there could be an individual explanation in terms of personality characteristics
which might predispose some people to commit crime. In contrast, classicism maintains that although
hedonistic, pleasure-seeking principles may lead some people to make errors of judgement, they are
essentially similar to those who do not commit such acts. Furthermore, in terms of gender this
perspective fails to take into account the disparity between rates of offending between men and women.
One of the questions this type of critique raises is the inability to explain these differences in terms of
offending as an irrational act or individual error. Another dif®culty with the classical school is that it
assumes a rational, legal and `just' system ignoring functionalist arguments regarding the necessary and
bene®cial aspects of crime. It seems unable to account for white collar and corporate crime or the `dark'
®gure CLASSICISM 33 of crime because, if self-report studies are to be believed, `crime' is a regular and
common occurrence. This questions the extent to which the majority of individuals in society can be
argued to be acting in an `irrational' manner, if this is the case. Louise Westmarland Associated Concepts:
free will, functionalism, neo-conservative criminology, positivism, rational choice theory Key Readings
Beccaria, C. (1764) On Crimes and Punishments (reprinted 1963). New York, Bobbs±Merrill. Beirne, P.
(1993) Inventing Criminology: Essays on the Rise of Homo Criminalis. Albany, SUNY Press. Bentham, J.
(1791) Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham (reprinted 1843). London, J. Bowring. Ferri, E. (1901) `Causes
of criminal behavior', reprinted 1968 in S.E. Grupp (ed.), The Positive School of Criminology: Three
Lectures by Enrico Ferri. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press. Lombroso, C. and Ferrero, W. (1895)
The Female Offender. London, Fisher Unwin. Roshier, B. (1989) Controlling Crime: The Classical
Perspective in Criminology. Milton Keynes, Open University Press. COGNITIVE-BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
See Behaviour modi®cation; Social learning theory COHORT STUDIES De®nition Cohort studies involve
the collection of data from the same group of respondents over a period of time. Research employing
the cohort approach can be either qualitative or quantitative. Researchers adopting a qualitative
approach might seek to conduct in-depth interviews with a group of respondents on a longitudinal basis,
whilst researchers employing a more quantitative approach might survey the same sample of
respondents over a period of time. Cohort studies are a form of longitudinal study. Distinctive Features
Cohort studies are employed where there is a desire to explore patterns of behaviour over time or,
where there is an interest in following life events and increasingly they are used in evaluation research,
where there is a desire to observe the impact of rehabilitative programmes upon recipients. The aims of
cohort-based research are to identify what motivates groups of people to behave as they do, to describe
life events and sometimes to explore the impact of programmes or policies. The form that cohort
research takes will be dependent upon the methodological techniques employed within a particular
study. Typically a sample of respondents is selected at the outset of a study on the basis of some de®ning
characteristic. The respondents may, for example, share the same birthday or the same interest or may
have been convicted of a particular offence at a given time. This group of respondents or participants are
asked to participate in the research over a speci®ed time period and are contacted at regular intervals, in
order to participate in interviews or to complete questionnaires. Some cohort studies are based upon
the analysis of secondary data. In the case of criminological research such data may have been collected
by criminal justice agencies in the conduct of their work. As the data already exist the researcher may
select a cohort of individuals and attempt to trace their criminal histories. One such study was conducted
by Peter Marshall (1998), in which he aimed to estimate the number of men in England and Wales who
had received convictions for a variety of sexual offences. The work was based upon data from the Home
Of®ce Offender Index, a database which stores information on all convictions from 1963 to the present.
Marshall calculated estimates on the basis of ®ve cohort samples of men born between 1953 and 1973.
The men's criminal histories were compiled by `sampling one in thirteen records from each year ± based
upon all birthdays in four weeks of each year' (1998, p. 2). Marshall was able to estimate the number of
men convicted of sexual offences in England and Wales, and found that at least 260,000 men aged 20 or
over had been convicted of a sexual offence in the 1993 population, 110,000 of whom had committed a
sexual offence against a child. Of his cohort of men born in 1953, approximately one in 60 had a
conviction by age 40 for some type of sexual offence (this does include less serious forms of sexual
offending). 34 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY Evaluation The value of quantitative cohort
research lies in its ability to provide a great deal of data regarding respondents' lives and motivations,
over a long period of time. As the work is not conducted in a retrospective fashion, problems associated
with respondent recall of past events are also diminished. The advantages are similar in qualitative work,
except that in addition rich, detailed data may be collected on an ongoing basis, providing a fuller picture
of respondents' lives rather than simply a snapshot. Relatively few cohort studies have been conducted
by social researchers given the resources associated with the design and management of such projects.
Another key problem arises in attempting to retain the original sample over time. Some respondents
may be inaccessible as the study progresses or may wish to withdraw from the research. A great deal of
effort is involved in retaining the cooperation of respondents. A further problem arises in that the
production of ®ndings is slow, given the long-term nature of cohort research. Julia Davidson Associated
Concepts: longitudinal study, social survey, time series design Key Readings Marshall, P. (1998) The
Prevalence of Convictions for Sexual Offending. Home Of®ce Research Findings Brie®ng, No. 55, London,
HMSO. Sapsford, R. and Jupp, V.R. (eds) (1996) Data Collection and Analysis. London, Sage.