Willem bonger biography sample

What most clearly marked out SDC from later right-wing law and order crime control discourse was its highlighting of aetiology as a central question.

The commission of acts that were labelled as criminal was caused by a complex mix of social and individual processes. The overall level of crime at different times and places was a function of political economy and culture, as explained by ‘root causes’ theories such as Robert Merton’s (1938) influential anomie theory, for example.

But individual offenders had a degree of autonomy, and hence responsibility, that to most criminologists justified the imposition of punishment, although the primary purpose of this was to rehabilitate. Whilst penal policy was important in relation to the conduct of identified offenders and the achievement of justice in specific cases, the overall control of crime was primarily a function of social, economic, and cultural processes.

This perspective can be illustrated by m