This question for the past three days has been recurrent in my mind, because a very good friend of mine lost his phone to theft in his room when he was sleeping. It is not as though I have not been a victim of theft but it pains more when your property is stolen under your nose.
In a course, criminology, which I offer in school that deals with the study of why people commit crime, various schools of thought have tried to explain this phenomenon stemming from the traditional school, classical school, the positivist school, neoclassical school, biological school, psychological school and the physiological school. These schools have their different philosophy of why people commit crime but none of these schools of thought can totally or wholly accepted because of their shortcomings. Let's see what these schools of thought have to say.
The first school ever that tried to understand why people commit crime is the traditional school. This school has two categories: spiritual and natural school.
In ancient history, people believed that criminals were possessed by evil spirit and that those who were victims thought that the gods punished them because of a wrong they themselves may have done in the past - thus the spiritual aspect of the traditional school. Then, communities tried to prescribe punishments they felt the gods would give to the offenders. These punishments were uncivil, inhumane, arbitrary and gory. Some of them are: trial by ordeal - where an offender may be given a gruesome task to swim across a river filled with crocodiles, if the offender comes out alive then he/she was innocent but if the offender dies is the process then he/she was guilty; trial by battle - where the offender is to fight with the victim, if the former wins he is deemed innocent but if he loses he is deemed guilty; compurgation - where twelve(12) reputable members of a community vouches and swears to the innocence of an offender; and finally the prison system. So you can see how barbaric the punishments were.
The natural school used objects and events to understand why people commit crime. The proponents of this school are: Hippocrates - who explained that the brain is the organ of the mind; Democritus; Socrates; Plato and Aristotle. They believed that there are natural forces that control man and everything in the world. For intance rainfall, sunshine, child birth etc. All these natural phenomenon have their time and season and when it comes it must happen. They understood nature as a cycle which never changes and that in the case of man, it is a must that he/she will commit crime before departure from this world.
Critics from other schools(soon to be discussed) have opined that this school was vague, uncertain, unscientific, barbaric, odious, offensive, inconsistent, as well as unpredictable.
I leave it to you to decide whether:
-my friend may have offended the gods or God?
-the person who stole the phone was possessed by the devil or evil spirit?
-there is any known natural force that causes theft?
-we should visit the gods to find out who committed the theft?
-we should cause all our suspects to swim across a river laced with crocodiles and the people that survive declared innocent?
What is your thought? Drop it in the comment section below.
The next group of people that claimed to know causes of crime where the classics and they arose to counter the traditional system. The classical school would be considered next.