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Cesare Beccaria Research Paper

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Cesare Beccaria was an Italian philosopher and was known as the founder of the classical theory. He believed that crime is committed by an individual’s freewill; they know exactly what they are doing and they also know the consequences. He believes that people who commit crime choose to do it (own freewill) and get satisfaction from it; it has nothing to do with their mental state and therefore should be punished according to their actions so they don’t do it again. Another famous theory was Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory which suggested that an individual’s childhood behaviour determines there future and how they are going to be like as an adult. He believed that everyone has a criminal nature however it’s all to do with their mind and behaviour. …show more content…
Freud believed that conflicts take place between the ‘id’ and the ‘superego’ which causes anxiety and the ego tries to reduce this anxiety through defence mechanisms such as displacement, denial and repression. Therefore, if the ego fails to keep a balance between the other two components then this can lead to psychological disorders which then lead them to commit a crime thus become a criminal. Additionally, Cesare Lombroso’s positive theory was another famous one; he believed that people do not become criminals and that they are actually born as criminals (nature not nurture). He tried to prove that criminality was due to facial and that people who had certain features that Lombroso stated such as high cheekbones and enormous jaws were in fact

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