Ideas of Positive School

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Positive school is one of the two major schools of criminology. As each criminology school,
Positive school tries to explain the behavior of delinquents. The development of this school began with the philosophical approach of the founder of positivism – Auguste Comte. Positive school was developed in Italy in the late 1900-s by Cesare Lombroso (pic. 1). Lombroso’s student – Enrico Ferri, who provided social implications of criminological positivism, defines Positive school as… “The positive school consists of the following: study first the natural origin of a crime and then it’s social and legal consequences in order to provide, by social and legal means, the various remedies, which will have the greatest effect on the various causes that produce it. This is our assumption, the innovation we have made, not so much in our particular conclusion as in our research method.” In modern humanistic society a lot of people, who are related to the justice system, support the ideas of Positive school of criminology. This school has own principles & divided into three basic categories: Biological, Psychological, and
Sociological.

Principles of Positive school begins with the idea, that criminal behavior is caused by material forces (cars, jewelry, houses, electronics, drugs, etc.) beyond the control of the individual (also called determinism). Determinism can be divided into two categories: hard determinism (was used as an explanation only in capitalist society, stated that poverty drives people to commit a crime) and soft determinism (poverty is one of a lot of factors, which drives people to commit a crime). Positive school prefers to use natural definitions of crime. As a main research method this school use...

... middle of paper ...

...ile Durkheim shows the positive aspects of crime: crime is normal and functional in primitive societies (crime is useful in some way), but crime in advanced societies is pathological, crime bonds people together, and crime acts as a catalyst for progress and change. Also
“Anomie Theory” expresses the thought that greed is good for society, but if rapid social change takes place, greed becomes uncontrollable.

Accordingly, Positive school includes three directions, and each of them includes a lot of theories. All of them express different opinions and views. A lot of theories are actual now days, but some of them are not useful anymore because of specification on particular place and time.
Few of this theories are very helpful not only in criminology, but in psychology, economy, etc.
A lot of people support ideas of positive school in modern society.

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