Research On Garofalo’s Theory Of Punishment

The famous Italian juris Baron Raffaele Garofalo(1851-1934) was therepresentative figure of the criminal positive school and criminal anthropology. Heput forward the famous theory of "natural crime" based on the empirical study."Natural crime" theory argues that a behavior would be regarded as "a true crime"onlyif it violated the basic moral emotion.In this case,people who carried out this kind ofbehavior can be called "the criminal". His theory of punishment was based on thenatural crime theory and the construction of the criminal theory. Garofalo opposed theassumptions of "free will",which was put forward by the criminal classical school.Hethought that the penalty was justified because it was suitable for criminal personality.For the penalty purposes, he denied the criminal classical theory about "Retributiontheory","Deterrence theory"and "Correction theory".He believed the penalty purposeis only one, that is," disarm the enemy, to keep society from damage". He wasopposed to the principle of suiting punishment to crime,and thought that the severityof punishment should be consistent with the degree of adaptation to society. Based onDarwin’s natural selection, he put forward the penalty methods should choose theelimination and compensation, that the society should put those criminal whoseindividual actions clearly illustrate that they lack of ability to adapt to society expelledfrom the social circle. Finally, Garofalo constructed the penalty system that he believecould develop the greatest benefits of punishment based on the classification of thecriminal.Through a comprehensive and objective analysis to Garofalo’s theory ofpunishment, on the one hand, we found that it has theoretical defects andone-sidedness. These disadvantages might cause few of us would be willing to acceptall of his theory and accept his theory as a final conclusion of criminal law structure,but we can learn useful things form it. If we make good use of it, we can definitelymake it play a important role in our construction of criminal jurisprudence andcriminology in the future. On the other hand, we cannot turn a blind eye to theprofound influence of his theory. He devoted an own strength and effort to whatChinese and western criminal policy and the development of criminology.It should beremembered by history.