Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham were the founders of the classical theory phenomenon (Piliavin, 1986). The concept was based on several principles, which entailed three main ideologies; free will, where actions are based on one’s own rationality (Burke 2014), more so punishment should apply to the crime as opposed to the criminal, as the theorists believed that a certainty in punishment would deter both the public and criminal (Akers 1999). The perspective adopted throughout will focus on the theories inability to justify the actions of violent homicide offenders, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, and how the high recidivism rates fail to support specific deterrence, even when making the punishment fit the crime.
Free will assumes that all individuals…