ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an approach which is termed as 'classical criminology' or 'Enlightenment criminology'. Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments (OC&P) was a product of the Italian Enlightenment – a humanist plea for the reform of criminal law; for the supremacy of the rule of law; and for the right of the individual to be free from abuse by unjust and arbitrary power. OC&P shares with many Enlightenment treatises the fact that its meaning does not always strike with immediate clarity. The author of the other great cornerstone of classical criminology was Jeremy Bentham, Beccaria's greatest disciple. Like Beccaria, Bentham believed that the path to effective government lay in the coupling of deterrence with the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Bentham urged that, for the construction of a well-regulated and orderly society, the principle of panopticism should be extended from prisons to workhouses for the poor, and to factories, madhouses, hospitals and schools.
