CriminologyChapter 5The Classical Thinkers

Introduction• The Canadian Criminal Justice system plays a balancing act between upholding and

protecting the rights of each individual Canadian and upholding and protecting the collective rights of Canadian society as a whole

Major Principles of the Classical School• Most classical theories of crime causation make the following basic assumption:

• Human beings are fundamentally rational, and most human behaviour is the result of free will coupled with rational choice

• Pain and pleasure are the two central determinants of human behaviour• Punishment, a necessary evil, is sometimes required to deter law violators and

to serve as an example to others who would also violate the law• Root principles of right and wrong are inherent in the nature of things and

cannot be denied• Society exists to provide benefits to individuals that they would not receive in

isolation• When men and women band together for the protection offered by society,

they forfeit some of the benefits that accrue from living in isolation• Certain key rights of individuals are inherent in the nature of things, and

governments that contravene those rights should be disbanded• Crime disparages the quality of the bond that exists between individuals and

society and is therefore an immoral form of behaviour

Forerunners of Classical Thought• All human societies from the simplest to the most advanced, evidence their own

widely held notions of right and wrong• Sociologists term such fundamental concepts of morality and propriety as ‘mores’

and ‘folkways’• They describe the three basic forms of behavioural strictures imposed by social

groups upon their members• Mores and folkways govern behaviour in relatively small primitive societies,

whereas in large, complex societies, they are reinforced and formalized through written laws

• Mores consist of proscriptions covering potentially serious violations of a groups values

• Folkways, on the other hand, are simply time-honoured customs, and although they carry the force of tradition, their violation is less likely to threaten the survival of the social group

• Mores and folkways, although they may be powerful determinants of behaviour, are nonetheless informal, because only laws have been codified into formal strictures wielded by institutions and created specifically for enforcement purposes

• Acts that are ‘mala in se’ are said to be fundamentally wrong, regardless of the time or place in which they occur

• Those who argue for the existence of mala in se offences as a useful heuristic category usually point to some fundamental rule, such as religious teachings to support their belief that some acts are inherently wrong

• ‘Mala prohibita’ offences are those acts that are said to be wrong for the simple reason that they are prohibited

• The status of such behaviours as mala prohibita is further supported by the fact that they are not necessarily crimes in every jurisdiction

The Demonic Era• The very presence of evil in the world has begged for interpretation, and sage

minds throughout human history have advanced many explanations for the evil conditions that individuals and social groups have at times been forced to endure

• Some forms of evil, such as the Holocaust, appear cosmically based, whereas others – including personal victimization, criminality and singular instances of deviance – are the undeniable result of individual behaviour

Early Sources of the Criminal LawThe Code of Hammurabi

• The Code of Hammurabi is one of the first known bodies of law to survive• King Hammurabi ruled the ancient city of Babylon from 1792 to 1750BC and

created a legal code consisting of a set of strictures engraved on stone tablets• The Hammurabi laws were originally intended to establish property and other rights

and were crucial to the continued growth of Babylon as a significant commercial centre

• Hammurabi’s laws spoke to issues of theft, property ownership, sexual relationships, and interpersonal violence

• Prior to the code, captured offenders often faced the most barbarous of punishments, frequently at the hands of revenge-seeking victims, no matter how minor their transgressions had been

Early Roman Law• Roman customs, law, and language were forced upon the English population during

the succeeding thee centuries under the Pax Romana – a peace imposed by the military might of Rome

• Early Roman law derived from the Twelve Tables, which were written circa 450BC • The tables were a collection of basic rules regulating family, religious and

economic life• They appear to have been based on common and fair practices generally accepted

among early tribes which existed prior to the establishment of the Roman Republic • The best known legal period in Roman history occurred during the reign of

Emperor Justinian I (AD 527-565)• Justinian undertook the laborious process of distilling Roman laws into a set of

writings

• The Justinian Code, as these writings came to be known, actually consisted of three lengthy legal documents: the Institutes, the Digest and the Code itself

• Justinian’s code distinguished between two major legal categories: public and private laws

• It contained elements of our modern civil and criminal law and influenced Western legal thought through the Middle Ages

Common Law• Common law forms the basis for much of our modern statutory and case law• Common law refers to a traditional body of unwritten legal precedents created

through everyday practice in English society and supported by court decisions during the Middle Ages

• Common law is so called because it was based on shared traditions and standards rather than on those that varied from one locale to another

• Eventually, court decisions were recorded and made available to barristers (the British word for trial lawyers) and judges

• Today, common law forms the basis of many of the law books in English-speaking countries around the world

The Magna Carta• The Magna Carta was signed on June 15, 1215 by King John of England under

pressure from British barons• The barons demanded a pledge from the king to respect their traditional rights and

forced him to agree to be bound by law• At the time of its signing, the Magna Carta was little more than a feudal document

listing specific royal concessions• Its original purpose was to ensure feudal rights and to guarantee that the king could

not encroach on the privileges of landowning barons• The Magna Carta guaranteed basic liberties for all British citizens• A specific provision of the Magna Carta, designed originally to prohibit the king

from prosecuting the barons without a just cause, was expanded into the concept of ‘due process of law,’ a fundamental cornerstone of modern legal procedure

• The Magna Carta has been called ‘the foundation stone of our present liberties’

The Enlightenment• The Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, was a highly significant social

movement that occurred during the late 17th and 18th centuriesThomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• Hobbes descried the natural state of men and women as one that is nasty, brutish and short

• Fear of violent death, he said, forces human beings into a social contract with one another to create a state

• The state, according to Hobbes, demands the surrender of certain natural rights and submission to the absolute authority of a sovereign, while offering protection and succour to its citizens in return

• Much of his writing was condemned for assuming an overly pessimistic view of both human nature and existing governments

John Locke• The natural human condition at birth is akin to that of a blank slate (or tabula rosa),

upon which interpersonal encounters and other experiences indelibly inscribe the traits of personality

• Locke ascribed the bulk of adult human qualities to life experiences• Locke contended that human beings, through a social contract, abandon their

natural state of individual freedom and lack of interpersonal responsibility to join together and form society

• According to Locke, and other writers, governments should be required to guarantee certain inalienable rights to their citizens, including the right to life, health, liberty and possessions

• Locke stressed the duties that governments have toward their citizens, while paying very little attention to the inverse – the responsibilities of individuals to the societies of which they are a part

• Locke argued that political revolutions, under some circumstances, might become an obligation incumbent upon citizens

• Locke also developed the notion of checks and balances between divisions of government

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)• According to Rousseau, human beings are basically good and fair in their natural

state, but historically were corrupted by the introduction of shared concepts and joint activities such as property, agriculture, science, and commerce

• Rousseau also contributed to the notion of natural law• To provide an intuitive basis for the defence of ethical principles and morality• Any human-made law that contradicts natural law is corrupt in the eyes of God• Religious practice, which strongly reflected natural law conceptions, was central to

the life of early British society• Natural law, as it was understood at the time, was incorporated into English

common law throughout the Middle Ages• Rousseau agreed with earlier writers that certain immutable laws are fundamental

to human nature and can be readily ascertained through reason• Human made law, in contrast, he claimed, derives from human experience and

history – both of which are subject to continual change• Hence, human-made law, also termed positive law, changes from time to time and

from epoch to epoch• Rousseau expanded the concept of natural law to support emerging democratic

principles and claimed that certain fundamental human and personal rights were inalienable because they were based on the natural order of things

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)• He defended the French Revolution, arguing that only democratic institutions could

guarantee the natural rights of individuals• Although the concept of natural law has waned somewhat in influence over the past

half century, many people today still maintain that the basis for various existing criminal laws can be found in immutable moral principles, or in some other identifiable aspect of the natural order outside the social group

The Classical School• The Enlightenment fuelled the fires of social change, leading eventually to the

French and American revolutions• The Enlightenment – one of the most powerful intellectual initiatives of the last

millennium – also inspired other social movements and freed innovative thinkers from the chains of convention

• As a direct consequence of Enlightenment thinking, superstitious beliefs were discarded and men and women began to be perceived, for the first time, as self-determining entities possessing freedom of choice

• Free will and rational thought came to be recognized as the linchpins of all significant human activity

• The Enlightenment inspired the re-examination of existing doctrines of human behaviour from the point of view of rationalism

• The Enlightenment led to the development of the Classical School of criminological thought

• Once people were seen as having control over their lives, crime came to be explained as a particularly individualized form of evil, or moral wrongdoing fed by personal choice

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)• Beccaria’s purpose was not to set forth a theory of crime but to communicate his

observation on the laws and justice system of his time• In his Essay, Beccaria distilled the notion of the social contract into the idea that

‘laws are the conditions under which independent and isolated men united to form a society’

• His writings consisted of a philosophy of punishment• Although most criminals are punished based on an assessment of their criminal

intent, they should be punished instead based on the degree of injury they cause• The purpose of punishment, he said, should be deterrence rather than retribution,

and punishment should be imposed to prevent offenders from committing additional crimes

• Beccaria saw punishment as a tool to an end and not an end in itself, and crime prevention was more important to him than revenge

• Once punishment is decreed, it should be certain• Punishment that is imposed immediately following crime commission, claimed

Beccaria, is connected with the wrongfulness of the offence, both in the mind of the offender and in the minds of others who might see the punishment imposed and thereby learn of the consequences of involvement in criminal activity

• Beccaria concluded that punishment should be only severe enough to outweigh the personal benefits to be derived from commission

• Beccaria distinguished between three types of crimes – those that threatened the security of the state, those that injured citizens or their property, and those that ran contrary to the social order

• Punishment should fit the crime, Beccaria argued, and theft should be punished through fines, personal injury through corporal punishment, and serious crimes against the state (such as inciting revolution) through the death penalty

• Beccaria, however, was opposed to the death penalty in most other circumstances, seeing it as a kind of warfare waged by society against its citizen

• He distinguished, for between two types of proof – that which he called ‘perfect proof,’ in which there was no possibility of innocence, and ‘imperfect proof,’ where some possibility of innocence remained

• He recommended that half of any jury panel should consist of acquaintances of the victim, whereas the other half should be made up of those who know the accused

• Beccaria wrote that oaths were useless in a court of law, because accused individuals will naturally deny their guilt even if they know themselves to be fully culpable

• Beccaria’s ideas were widely recognized as progressive by his contemporaries • His principles were incorporated into the French penal code of 1791• Beccaria is responsible for the contemporary belief that criminals have control over

their behaviour, that they choose to commit crimes, and that they can be deterred by the threat of punishment

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)• To reduce crime or, as Bentham put it, ‘to prevent the happening of mischief,’ the

pain of crime commission must outweigh the pleasure to be derived from criminal activity

• Bentham’s claim rested upon his belief, spawned by Enlightenment thought, that human beings are fundamentally rational and that criminals will weigh in their minds the pain of punishment against any pleasures thought likely to be derived from crime commission

• Bentham advocated neither extreme nor cruel punishment – only punishment sufficiently distasteful to the offender that the discomfort experienced would outweigh the pleasure to be derived from criminal activity

• Generally, Bentham argued, the more serious the offence the more serious the offence the more reward it holds for its perpetrator and, therefore, the more weighty the official response must be

• ‘Pain and pleasure,’ said Bentham, ‘are the instruments the legislator has to work with’ in controlling anti-social and criminal behaviour

• Bentham’s approach has been termed hedonistic calculus or utilitarianism because of its emphasis on the worth any action holds for an individual undertaking it

• Bentham believed that individuals could be expected to weigh, at least intuitively, the consequences of their behaviour before acting, so as to maximize their own pleasure and minimize pain

• The value of any pleasure, or the inhibitory tendency of any pain, according to Bentham, could be calculated by its intensity, duration, certainty and immediacy

• Bentham’s ideas were not new, but their application to criminology was• Like Beccaria, Bentham focused on the potential held by punishment to prevent

crime and to act as a deterrent for those considering criminal activity

• Utilitarianism is a practical philosophy, and Bentham was quite practical in his suggestions about crime prevention

• All citizens, he said, should have their first and last names tattooed on their wrists for the purpose of facilitating police identification

• He also recommended creation of a centralized police force focused on crime prevention and control

• Bentham’s other major contribution to criminology was his suggestion that prisons be designed along the lines of what he called a Panopticon House

• The Panopticon, as Bentham envisioned it, was to be a circular building with cells along the circumference, each clearly visible from a central location staffed by guards

• Bentham recommended that Panopticons should be constructed near or within cities so that they might serve as examples to others of what would happen to them should they commit crimes

• Three prisons modelled after the Panopticon concept were constructed in the United States

Heritage of the Classical School• The Classical School was to influence criminological thinking for a long time• The heritage left by the classical school is still operative today in the following five

principles, each of which is a fundamental constituent of modern-day perspectives on crime and human behaviour

• Rationality: human beings have free will and the actions they undertake are the result of choice

• Hedonism: pleasure and pain, or reward and punishment, are the major determinates of choice

• Punishment: criminal punishment is a deterrent to unlawful behaviour, and deterrence is the best justification for punishment

• Human rights: society is made possible by individuals cooperating together. Hence, society owes to its citizens respect for their rights in the face of government action, and for their autonomy insofar as such autonomy can be secured without endangering others or menacing the greater good

• Due process: an accused should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, and an accused should not be subject to punishment prior to guilt being lawfully established

Neo-Classical Criminology• Classical criminology, with its emphasis on free will and individual choice as the

root causes of crime, gave way to another approach known as positivism• Positivism, in its original formulation, was based upon the belief that crime results

from forces that are beyond the control of the individual• Acceptance of the notion of determinism implied that offenders were not entirely (if

at all) responsible for their crimes and suggested that crime could be prevented by changing the conditions that produced criminality

• The resulting resurgence of classical ideals, referred to as neo-classical criminology, focused on the importance of character, the dynamics of character development, and the rational choices that people make as they are faced with opportunities for crime

Rational Choice Theory• Rational choice theory mirrors many of the principles found in classical

criminology • The theory rests upon the belief that individuals make a conscious, rational, and at

least partially informed choice to commit crime • Rational choice theory is noteworthy for its emphasis on the rational and adaptive

aspects of criminal offending• It ‘predicts that individuals choose to commit crime when the benefits outweigh the

costs of disobeying the law• Two varieties of rational choice theory can be identified• One, which builds on an emerging emphasis on victimization, is called routine

activity theory• A second, which is largely an extension of the rational choice perspective, is called

situational choice theory• Routine activity theory (lifestyle theory): a brand of rational choice theory that

suggests that lifestyle contribute significantly to both the volume and the type of crime found in any society

• Central to the routine activity approach is the claim that crime is likely to occur when a motivated offender and a suitable victim come together in the absence of a ‘capable guardian’

• A capable guardian, simply put, is one who effectively discourages crime• Although non-criminal lifestyles at a given point in the life course are partly the

result of unavoidable social roles and assigned social positions, those who participate in a given lifestyle generally make rational decisions about specific behaviours

• Criminality might flow from temptation, bad company, idleness or provocation• Situational choice theory suggests that the probability of criminal activity can be

reduced by changing the features of a given social situation or of the surrounding environment

• Although rational choice theory is similar to classical deterrence theory, earlier approaches focused largely on the balance between pleasure and pain as the primary determinant or preventive of criminal behaviour

• Rational choice theory tends to place less emphasis on pleasure and emotionality and more upon rationality and cognition

• One type of choice, known as ‘involvement decisions’ has been described as ‘multi-stage’ and is said to ‘include the initial decision to engage in criminal activity as well as subsequent decisions to continue ones involvement or to desist’

• Another type of choice, ‘event decisions,’ relates to particular instances of criminal opportunity such as the decision to rob a particular person or to let the prospective victim pass

Situational Crime Control Policy• Situational crime prevention – a social policy approach that looks to develop

greater understanding of crime and more effective crime prevention strategies through concern with the physical, organizational, and social environments that make crime possible

• The situational approach does not ignore offenders; it merely places them as one part of a broader crime-prevention equation that is centred on the context of crime

• It demands a shift in the approach to crime prevention, from one that is concerned primarily with why people commit crime to one that looks primarily at why crime occurs in specific settings

• It moves the context of crime into central focus and sees the offender as but one of a number of factors that affect it

• At the core of situational prevention is the concept of opportunity• In contrast to offender-based approaches to crime prevention that usually focus on

the dispositions of criminals, situational crime prevention begins with the opportunity structure of the crime situation

• Target hardening – the reduction in criminal opportunity for a particular location, generally through the use of physical barriers, architectural design, and improved security measures

• The value of a situational approach lies in the fact that criminologists have found it difficult to identify who is likely to become a serious offender or to predict the timing and types of future offences that repeat offenders are likely to commit

• Situational prevention advocates argue that the context of crime provides a promising alternative to traditional offender-based crime prevention policies

• They assume that situations provide a more stable and predictable focus for crime prevention efforts than do persons

• High-crime places, in contrast to high-crime people, cannot flee to avoid criminal-justice intervention; and crime that develops from the specific characteristics of certain places cannot be easily transferred to other contexts

Critique of Rational Choice Theory • Rational and situational choice and routine activity theories have been criticized for

their overemphasis on individual choice and their relative disregard for the role of social factors in crime causation such as social and economic inequality of persons and groups, poor home environment, and inadequate socialization

• Although one could argue that the kinds of routine activities supportive of criminal activity are more likely to occur in socially disorganized areas, it is also true that the presence (or absence) of certain ecological characteristics (the level of social disorganization) may either increase (or reduce) the likelihood of criminal victimization

• Rational choice theory seems to assume that everyone is equally capable of making rational decisions when, in fact, such is probably not the case

• Some individuals are more logical by virtue of temperament, personality, or socialization, whereas others are emotional, hotheaded and unthinking

• Rational and situational choice theories seem to disregard individual psychology and morality by their emphasis on external situations

• The emphasis of rational and situational choice theories upon changing aspects of the immediate situation to reduce crime has been criticized for resulting in the displacement of crime from one area to another

• Target hardening has sometimes caused criminals to find new targets of opportunity in other areas

Punishment and Neo-Classical Thought• Punishment is a central feature of both classical and neo-classical thought • Its role in neo-classical thinking has been expanded to support the ancient concept

of retribution• If a person is attracted to crime and chooses to violate the law, modern neo-

classical thinkers argue, then she deserves to be punished because the consequences of the crime were known to the offender before the crime was committed

• The criminal must be punished, such thinkers propose, so that future criminal behaviour can be curtailed

• Notions of revenge and retribution are morally based • They build on a sense of indignation at criminal behaviour and on the sense of

righteousness inherent in notions of morality and propriety• Wider issues, including general deterrence, become irrelevant when a person

focuses narrowly on the emotions that crime and victimization engender in a given instance

Just Deserts• Just Deserts, a concept inherent in the justice model, refers to the concept that

criminal offenders deserve the punishment they receive at the hands of the law and that any punishment that is imposed should be appropriate to the type and severity of crime committed

• Doing justice ultimately comes down to an official meting out of what is deserved • Justice for an individual is nothing more or less than what that individual deserves

when all the circumstances surrounding that person’s situation and behaviour are taken into account

Deterrence• Deterrence is a hallmark of modern neo-classical thought• Today’s neo-classical writers distinguish between deterrence that is specific and

that which is general• Specific deterrence is a goal of criminal sentencing that seeks to prevent a

particular offender from engaging in repeat criminality• General deterrence, in contrast, works by way of example and seeks to prevent

others from committing crimes similar to the one for which a particular offender is being sentenced

• Modern-day advocates of general deterrence frequently stress that, for punishment to be an effective impediment to crime, it must be swift, certain, and severe enough to outweigh the rewards flowing from criminal activity

• Those who advocate punishment as a deterrent are often frustrated by the complexity of today’s criminal justice system as the slow and circuitous manner in which cases are handled and punishments are meted out

• The wheels of modern criminal justice are relatively slow to grind to a conclusion, given the many delays inherent in judicial proceedings

• Certainty of punishment is anything but a reality• Determinant sentencing is a strategy that attempts to address the issue of sentencing

certainty • Determinant sentencing is a strategy that mandates a specified and fixed amount of

time to be served for every category of offence• Determinant sentencing schemes build upon the two notions of classical thought

that the pleasure of a given crime can be accurately assessed and a fixed amount of punishment necessary for deterrence can be calculated and specified

• Determinant sentences may also reduce sentencing bias since disparity based on race or social status would be eliminated

• Recidivism in its simplest definition means the repetition of criminal behaviour by those already involved in crime

• Recidivism can also be used to measure the success of a given approach to the problems of crime

• Recidivism rate is the percentage of convicted offenders who have been released from prison and who are later rearrested for a new crime

The Death Penalty• Capital punishment has not been legal in Canada since 1976• The death penalty has, at times been imposed on innocent people• Human life is sacred, and state-imposed death lowers society to the same moral (or

amoral) level as the individual murderer• The death penalty has been (and may still be) imposed in haphazard and

discriminatory fashion• The death penalty is imposed disproportionately upon ethnic minorities• Some people deserve to die for what they have done. Such arguments evolve from a

natural law perspective and are based on the notion of just deserts• Each execution results in, on average, three fewer murders and deters murders

previously believed to be undeterrable, such as crimes of passion and murders by intimates

Public Humiliation• The practice of ‘shaming’ or public humiliation, is also a reflection of the notion

that offenders must pay• Used widely in the U.S., convicted offenders can be ordered by the courts to

participate in a number of humiliating activities

• Some feel the merits of these sentences of public humiliation in deterring the offender from further crime are doubtful, since the result is more likely degradation than rehabilitation

• Reintigrative shaming, through which offenders begin to understand and recognize their misdeeds and shame themselves

• The actual shaming must be brief and controlled and followed by forgiveness, apology and repentance

Policy Implications of the Classical School• Much of the practice of criminal justice in North America today is built around a

conceptual basis provided by the classical school theorists• The school of today’s neo-classical thinkers known as individual-rights advocates

emphasizes individual rights rather than punishment• Law and order advocates see punishment as the foundation of criminal justice

policy making• Individual rights advocates defend the prerogatives of individuals against potential

government excesses inherent in the social contract• Individual-rights advocates point out that an increasing emphasis on imprisonment

has done little to reduce the amount of crime• They call for a renewed recognition of constitutional and personal rights in the face

of criminal prosecution and for reduction in the use of imprisonment as a criminal sanction, suggesting that it be employed as a last resort to deal with only the most dangerous offenders

• Individual-rights advocates argue that dangerousness, or the likelihood that a given individual will later harm society or others, should be the major determining criterion for government action against the freedom of its citizens

• Dangerousness should form the standard against which any need for incapacitation might be judged

• Incapacitation is the use of imprisonment or other means to reduce the likelihood that an offender will be capable of committing future offences

• Proponents of modern-day incapacitation often distinguish between selective incapacitation, in which crime is controlled via the imprisonment of specific individuals, and collective incapacitation, whereby changes in legislation and/or sentencing patterns lead to the removal from society of entire groups of individuals judged to be dangerous

• The majority of crimes are perpetrated by a small number of hardcore repeat offenders

• Proponents of collective incapacitation advocate the reformation of sentencing policies to include, for example, the creation of innovative forms of incapacitation that do not require imprisonment – such as home confinement, the use of halfway houses or career training centres for convicted offenders, and psychological and/or chemical treatments designed to reduce the likelihood of future crime commissions

• Standing in sharp contrast to today’s individual-rights advocates are those modern-day heirs of the classical school who see punishment as the central tenet of criminal

justice policy and believe it to be a natural and deserved consequence of criminal activity

• They argue that although punishment theoretically prevents crime, in today’s society few criminals are ever effectively punished

• These proponents of neo-classical theory, often called law-and-ordered advocates, frequently seek stiffer criminal laws and increased penalties for criminal activity

• They insist on the importance of individual responsibility and claim that law violators should be held unfailingly responsible for their actions

• Law-and-order advocates generally want to ensure that sentences imposed by criminal courts are the sentences served by offenders, and they argue against reduced prison time

• Many of today’s neo-classical thinkers rally around the death penalty because they believe it is either justified as a natural consequence of specific forms of abhorrent behaviour or because they believe that it will deter others from committing similar crimes in the future

• Advocates of law and order are gaining a foothold in today’s political arena• The Conditional Sentencing Reform Act of 2008 ended the use of conditional

sentences for serious offences• The serious crimes ineligible for conditional sentences under the act are indictable

offences punishable by a maximum term of ten years or more, meaning that more individuals will serve sentences of incarceration

• Traditionally in Canada there have been very few offences carrying a minimum sanction

• Included among them are first- and second-degree murder, the use of firearm during the commission of an offence, a second conviction for impaired driving, and bookmaking and placing bets on behalf of others

• Those convicted of three serious sexual or violent offences must prove why they should not be jailed indefinitely

• Canadian outcries against perceived increases in the amount of violent crimes committed by youth have resulted in changes in the legislation used to deal with this group of offenders

• The Youth Criminal Justice Act also specifies that sentences should reflect the seriousness of the offence

• Other policies that clearly reflect the neo-classical approach of just deserts include the suspension of various inmate privileges in correctional institutions, such as limiting access to television, video players, sports activities, weight rooms, and smoking

• Pressure is being placed on the federal government to mandate the use of consecutive sentences for more than one murder or violent sexual offences