1. Assuming that our legal system is neo-classical, it sees behavior as chose activity yet it also excuses some behavior under some circumstances such as justification defenses and excuse defenses.
Please give your view on this question: "Have we struck a good balance between what we hold persons responsible for and what we excuse?"
2. How should history judge the work of Lombroso? Is it fair to use standards from 2012 to judge the work he did in 1876?
3. This is a difficult question to answer. And it's very hard to define what answer is "right". However I do not believe that we have struck a good balance between what we hold persons responsible and what we excuse. I am one that believe that there should be an eye for an eye or that the punishment should fit the crime. Some states have gotten rid of the death penalty and I for one believe that if someone has murdered another that the punishment should be death. However other crimes we obviously cannot do this. However I do believe that for more violent crimes that someone should be incarcerated longer while property crimes and misdemeanors should not have as harsh of punishments. With property crimes though they should have to somehow repay the victims of their crimes whether it be through restitution or through community service, whatever the victims decides best fits the situation. I don't believe that our criminal justice system has struck a good balance between this.
4. I agree with you when you state that "eye for an eye" should be how our criminal justice system runs things. I like how you're a firm believer that the system should work more in the favor for the victim than the offender. I completly agree with you when you say that if someone murders another person then they themselves should be put to death. However, I do feel that it is fitting that these murders spend the rest of their lives in prison rather than get the easy way out by being humanely killed. Overall, I agree with this post because you have good backing on why the system is good and you also show how the system is lacking in many ways.
5. We all know that when Lombroso came out with his theories that it was about answering why do people commit crime. Theories are not fact it's an idea that might answer the question being posed. Lobroso's theories were a beginning point for us today. As far as history judging the work as I said before history should look at his work as a a beginning point. Lobroso's fourth category of criminals of passion he might have had a good idea about an aspect of why people commit crime because today society has evidence of those type of people existing. When a wife has experienced physical or emotional abuse she might become so outraged and commit a crime of passion where she was angry with her husband and we want to know why she did it? The answer is she did it because she hit her breaking point and was so angry and so she killed him. Now we know that Lombroso's theory on a criminal physical type as Sutherland (1939) said "is no more justified than was the Lombrosian theory that criminals constitute a distinct physical type." Maybe Lombroso might not have been correct about a physical type but could he have been on the right track with criminals of passion?
6. According to Akers and Sellers, Lombroso believed that people who committed crimes had physical traits that would allow a person to know they are criminals. Lombroso thought that guys would have at least five physical "deformities" and females would have at least three of these traits. I don't think it is fair to use the standards from 2012 to judge Lombroso's work from 1876. Obviously, times have changed and we no longer think the same way we did back then. In 1876, thinking that criminals portrayed physical traits seemed very plausible, however, we know that is not the case today. Today we know that anyone can be a criminal and we can never tell this just by looking at them.
7. Background
While the biological school of thought argued that criminal behavior was a result of an individual's proclivity toward crime, the twentieth century ushered in a new perspective based on the ability of one's social environment to increase the likelihood of criminal behavior. Together, the Chicago school and Robert K. Merton's theory of strain developed a sound rebuttal to the previous biological stronghold on the causes of criminal behavior.
The Chicago school of sociology proposed that there were certain criminogenic proclivities that were inherent within the structure of the industrialized city. The key to understanding and reducing criminal behavior was in intensive, close-at-hand involvement in the specific locations and scenes in which variant activities were undertaken. The methods employed were very much akin to the fieldwork protocols of the cultural anthropologists or ethnologists studying tribal groups. The research was presented in a literary mode by sociological reporters, who provided dense descriptions documenting in rich and intriguing detail particular events and processes from their experience of being immersed with actual participants and getting to know their situated life patterns and belief systems.
This school and its successors support a law enforcement strategy that can facilitate the creation of more effective levels of crime control and security by encouraging working closely with the at-risk population, learning how they behave in their own setting, understanding their point of view, and seeing how they create their paths in life. A message from this school is that in order to provide for public safety, law enforcement must really know the law violators from the inside.
A QUESTION
Locate the Nebraska state statute for criminal conspiracy. Write a 500 to 900 word paper explaining the statute and the relevant theories we have discussed or you have read about and how they apply to this state statute.