Benue State University, Makurdi

Deterrence: European Antecedent and Contemporary Perspectives

Olumide Pekun Olayinka*

Abstract

Deterrence is one of the main goals of the criminal justice system or punishment. Some philosophers and scholars had written on Deterrence, even before the articulation of the subject by the Classical School, to which the main protagonists of Deterrence, Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham belonged. Arguably, all these early scholars, including Beccaria and Bentham were from Europe, hence, ‘European Antecedent’. This paper defines Deterrence and examines various theories of this aim of punishment, as presented by scholars and philosophers of different times. It also considers some present-day connotations of Deterrence, deducible from the positions of contemporary scholars, which suggest that, for Deterrence to be more efficacious, it has to be applied differently.

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