Neo-Classical School
Definition
A nineteenth-century correction to classical criminology that retained free will as its starting premise but recognised that age, mental incapacity, and circumstance could diminish an offender's responsibility.
Related terms
- Demonology
- The belief that crime and other deviant conduct results from possession by evil spirits or divine punishment for sin, rather than from...
- Individualisation of Punishment
- The sentencing principle that the penalty should fit the particular offender and the particular circumstances of the offence, not only the category...
- Mitigating Circumstances
- Facts about an offence or an offender, such as youth, provocation, or lack of premeditation, that a court may weigh to reduce...
- Spiritualistic Explanation
- A broad label for pre-scientific accounts of crime that locate its cause outside the natural, observable world, of which demonology is the...
- Trial by Ordeal
- A medieval procedure for establishing guilt through a physical trial, such as carrying heated iron or submersion in water, on the premise...
- Garofalo (Jurist)
- Raffaele Garofalo, a jurist associated with the later positivist school, not the neo-classical school. Papers sometimes test this distinction directly.
- Rossi
- Pellegrino Rossi, the Italian-born jurist who taught criminal law in France and is the theorist most cited for the neo-classical argument that...
Explained in these topics
- Demonology and the Neo-Classical School
- Demonology and the Neo-Classical School (Unit III)A nineteenth-century correction to classical criminology that kept free will as its premise but recognised that age, mental capacity, and circumstance could di...