Description
Book SynopsisThe 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
Trade Review
'This is an immensely rich and engaging collection addressing a decisive moment in the development of criminal law and justice. Each of the chapters provides a close and careful account of the limits of criminological positivism – political, social, practical, and institutional as well as intellectual – in a particular context, and the themes evident across the collection are expertly drawn out in Michele Pifferi’s Introduction. This book is a substantial addition to the scholarly field and deserves to be read widely.'- Arlie Loughan, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Law Theory at the University of Sydney Law School
'This book is impressive, in terms of its scholarship, the histories it presents, and in terms of its breath, through time and across geographic boundaries. The book provides an analysis of positivist criminology and uniquely it situates this analysis within a, to draw on the words of one of the contributing author’s, very wide ideological, chronological and geographical context. The chapters variously explore histories of positivist criminology in Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Brazil and America. To have access to all of these histories of criminological positivism in one book is quite extraordinary. To have all of this in book chapters of such quality in terms of scholarship, and in terms of story-telling, even more so. Each chapter stands alone as a critical analysis of some aspect of historical criminological positivism, while at the same time providing an intriguing story situating its history within relevant political, social, juridical and academic as well as individual and personal frameworks. As a collection, it represents a key contribution to historiography. As well as providing us with these detailed histories, the book provides insight into the research and the ongoing challenges in the work of historians and archivists. Above all, the book provides us with fresh insights into as well as a reminder of an important framework, that of criminological positivism, within which to view and critically review the scientific development of criminology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.'-Dr. Christina Quinlan, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Justice and Director of the Institute for Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice
'This is an immensely rich and engaging collection addressing a decisive moment in the development of criminal law and justice. Each of the chapters provides a close and careful account of the limits of criminological positivism – political, social, practical, and institutional as well as intellectual – in a particular context, and the themes evident across the collection are expertly drawn out in Michele Pifferi’s Introduction. This book is a substantial addition to the scholarly field and deserves to be read widely.'- Arlie Loughan, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Law Theory at the University of Sydney Law School
'This book is impressive, in terms of its scholarship, the histories it presents, and in terms of its breadth, through time and across geographic boundaries. The book provides an analysis of positivist criminology and uniquely it situates this analysis within a, to draw on the words of one of the contributing author’s, very wide ideological, chronological and geographical context. The chapters variously explore histories of positivist criminology in Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Brazil and America. To have access to all of these histories of criminological positivism in one book is quite extraordinary. To have all of this in book chapters of such quality in terms of scholarship, and in terms of story-telling, even more so. Each chapter stands alone as a critical analysis of some aspect of historical criminological positivism, while at the same time providing an intriguing story situating its history within relevant political, social, juridical and academic as well as individual and personal frameworks. As a collection, it represents a key contribution to historiography. As well as providing us with these detailed histories, the book provides insight into the research and the ongoing challenges in the work of historians and archivists. Above all, the book provides us with fresh insights into as well as a reminder of an important framework, that of criminological positivism, within which to view and critically review the scientific development of criminology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.'-Dr. Christina Quinlan, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Justice and Director of the Institute for Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice
Table of ContentsIntroduction. An Historiographical Reassessment of Criminological Positivism
Michele Pifferi
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- Scientist Utopia and Reactionary Nostalgia: Criminal Procedure and the Early Positivist School
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Marco Nicola Miletti
- Penal Reform in Imperial Germany: Conflict and Compromise
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Richard F. Wetzell
- The French Judicial and Political Origins of Raymond Saleilles’ Individualization of Punishment
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James M. Donovan
- The Influence of Positivism in Belgium: An Eclectic Compromise Between Adhesion and Resistance
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Yves Cartuyvels
- The Limits of Positivism: Finnish Criminal Law Scholarship and the European Context at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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Heikki Pihlajamäki
- From the Sacred Springtime of Criminal Law to the Limits of Criminological Positivism in Spain
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Enrique Roldán Cañizares
- Fascist Italy’s Juvenile Courts in Their Infancy: First Impressions
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Paul Garfinkel
- Responding to the Problem of Crime: English Criminal Law and the Limits of Positivism, 1870-1940
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Lindsay Farmer
- Positivism’s Humbugs: Criminology and its Cranks in Progressive America
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Susanna Blumenthal
- Limits and displacements in the adoption of criminological positivism in Brazil (1890-1940)
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Ana Lucia Sabadell and Dimitri Dimoulis
- From Responsibility to Dangerousness? The Failed Promise of Penal Positivism
Michele Pifferi
Index
