Criminology and economic ideas in the age of Enlightenment

Fabrizio Simon ()
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Fabrizio Simon: University of Palermo - Department of European Studies DEMS

History of Economic Ideas, 2009, vol. 17, issue 3, 11-39

Abstract: My purpose is to point out that during the age of Enlightenment, and its later nineteenth- century expressions, the most relevant works on law contain examples of economic ideas about criminal phenomena and their legal repression. I will comment the analytic conclusions which the authors of the time got to, with reference to specific questions such as the definition of crime, the determination of punishment, the judicial procedure. I will take into account some of the most representative European writers: Montesquieu, Beccaria and Bentham. The authors I selected share the characteristic of being all exponents of utilitarianism and of presenting elements which forerun neoclassical economics in the method and analysis they employ. Besides, they have all worked out models for criminal repression which are quite similar to the contemporary model conceived by Gary Becker.

Date: 2009
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