There are two basic schools of thought in criminology: the classical school and the positivist school. The classical school of thought grew out of a reaction to the barbaric system of law, punishment, and justice that existed in the world prior to the French Revolution of 1789. Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham argued that behavior is the result of a rational choice and, based on this belief, sought to introduce and apply rationality and the rule of law to the criminal justice processes. An opposing school of thought, the positivist school, emerged, positing that human behavior is determined by forces beyond individual control, and that it is possible to measures those forces. Lombroso, Ferri, and Garofalo sought to distinguish criminals from non-criminals by diagnosing physiological differences between the two groups. Discussions of biological, psychological, and sociological determinism follow.
