Morality

Holding offenders accountable for their behavior is a moral responsibility charged to the criminal justice system. From the earliest history of the United States, religious idealism held individuals personally accountable for criminal and deviant behavior. Even as early as the late 18th century and into the mid-19th century, nonreligious idealism altered the nature of the relationship between God and man and used new methods to hold criminals responsible. By the mid-19th century, positivists viewed the world as having influence over individual behavior in an attempt to explain criminal behavior in terms other than free will.

In the late 19th century, pragmatists and psychologists introduced psychological explanations for behavior. Pragmatists altered the concept of humanity, adding the concept of treatment to the concept of punishment. In the first half of the 20th century, existentialists again changed the concept of humanity. The existentialists claimed that every individual has the ability to make meaning of his or her own life. Each person could also determine the meaning of other people, determine the meaning of the universe, and determine the meaning of God. Accordingly, one is primarily responsible to self, but this freedom also comes with responsibility to others. Formal changes in criminal justice made throughout the history of the United States can be linked to these changing concepts of morality.

Informal changes have been influenced by popular ideas, such as social contract theory and utilitarianism. Idealists came in many forms, but [Page 1134]each believed the world of ideas to be more real than the physical world. Positivists also came in many forms, including social positivists, biological positivists, and legal positivists. Some pragmatists emphasize sociological explanations of behavior while others are more closely associated with psychology and education. A wide variety of existentialists also exists with focuses ranging from religion to nihilism. Postmodernists have not formed a united front other than to be analytical and critical. An examination of these formal theories provides myriad explanations about the meaning of morality.