The Limits of Criminological Positivism

The Movement for Criminal Law Reform in the West, 1870-1940

Michele Pifferi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000476347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The Limits of Criminological Positivism: The Movement for Criminal Law Reform in the West, 1870-1940 presents the first major study of the limits of criminological positivism in the West and establishes the subject as a field of interest.

The volume will explore those limits and bring to life the resulting doctrinal, procedural, and institutional compromises of the early twentieth century that might be said to have defined modern criminal justice administration. The book examines the topic not only in North America and western Europe, with essays on Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Finland but also the reception and implementation of positivist ideas in Brazil. In doing so, it explores three comparative elements: (1) the differing national experiences within the civil law world; (2) differences and similarities between civil law and common law regimes; and (3) some differences between the two leading common-law countries. It interrogates many key aspects of current penal systems, such as the impact of extra-legal scientific knowledge on criminal law, preventive detention, the 'dual-track' system with both traditional punishment and novel measures of security, the assessment of offenders' dangerousness, juvenile justice, and the indeterminate sentence. As a result, this study contributes to a critical understanding of some inherent contradictions characterizing criminal justice in contemporary western societies.

Written in a straight-forward and direct manner, this volume will be of great interest to academics and students researching historical criminology, philosophy, political science, and legal history.

Chapter 2 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of photographs
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: An historiographical reassessment of criminological positivism
• 1 Scientist utopia and reactionary nostalgia: Criminal procedure and the early positivist school
• 2 Penal reform in Imperial Germany: Conflict and compromise
• 3 The French judicial and political origins of Raymond Saleilles’ individualization of punishment
• 4 The influence of positivism in Belgium: An eclectic compromise between adhesion and resistance
• 5 The limits of positivism: Finnish criminal law scholarship and the European context at the turn of the twentieth century
• 6 From the sacred springtime of criminal law to the limits of criminological positivism in Spain
• 7 Fascist Italy’s juvenile courts in their infancy: First impressions
• 8 Responding to the problem of crime: English criminal law and the limits of positivism, 1870–1940
• 9 Positivism’s humbugs: Criminology and its cranks in progressive America
• 10 Limits and displacements in the adoption of criminological positivism in Brazil (1890–1940)
• 11 From responsibility to dangerousness? The failed promise of penal positivism
• Index