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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
Historically, sociological criminology was split between its classical and positivist inclinations. Classical criminologists examined offenders entirely through the lens of legal sanction effects on their behaviors, reflecting a preoccupation with issues of criminal deterrence. In contrast, positivist criminologists considered sanctions only as markers of the offenders they wished to study in their search for nonlegal causes of criminal behavior. So far in this book, we have followed the positivist inclination to focus on background, developmental, and foreground causes of crime that are separate from official, legal responses to these acts. In this chapter, we extend our analysis by incorporating the attention of the classical approach to legal sanctions.
Sociological criminologists recently have begun to bridge the separation between classical and positivist criminologies by investigating links between extralegal causes of criminal behavior and the effects of legal sanctions. This exploration is encouraged by concurrent theoretical developments that spark interest in contexts and sequences of parental and legal sanctions in the life course. Over the course of their lives, street youth often experience both severe parental and legal sanctions. In this chapter, we use recent macro- and microsociological insights into shaming, stigmatization, and sanctioning to construct a dynamic model of criminal behavior that addresses the possibility that legal sanctions may amplify rather than deter trajectories of criminal behavior. This model emphasizes that there can be legal as well as extralegal causes of criminal behavior.
The New Sanction Theories
The deterrence doctrine forms the core of classical criminology. This theory's postulates – that swift, severe, and certain sanctions deter crime-guided criminologists and lawmakers for at least a century after the influential writings of Beccaria (1764/1953) andBentham (1789/1982).
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