ABSTRACT
From Adam and Eve eating the apple to the modern day, rule violation has been a central focus of civilization. This chapter will introduce you to some of the earliest scientific thoughts on rule violation and criminal behavior. Beginning with Beccaria and Bentham, readers will be exposed to the idea of law as a deterrent – or using punishment to control human behavior. Readers will note that neither Beccaria nor Bentham were trained sociologists or criminologists, but they still made a huge impact on the field and study of deviance. In fact, their contributions are commonly referred to as the “Classical School”. Next, readers will note Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician, who was also interested in the study of crime, but viewed rule violation as a sign of evolutionary relapse. He argued that crime was due to inborn abnormalities and that the causes of crime could be traced back to the individual. Lombroso is credited with the forming of a “Positivist School” that shifts the focus of crime causation from society to innate differences within the individual offenders. While Beccaria and Bentham are typically grouped with other crime prevention and deterrence theorists, and Lombroso is grouped with other biological/biosocial theorists, we are more interested in the social climate and intellectual impact of the theorists. Therefore, we grouped these seemingly disparate theorists together, as they are founders of different schools of thought in the study of crime and deviant behavior.
