Development of Scientific Thought on Social Reaction to Crime

Although criminal law as a positive branch of law has been established at the early stage of founding the first states, scientific analysis of basic terms and institutes of criminal law began only in the 18th and the 19th century. At the same time more natural and social sciences have been developed looking for the answers to the following questions: (1) what are the causes of crime? (2) what is the baseline of criminal responsibility? and (3) what are the measures that state should implement towards the criminal offences’ perpetrators? In answering these questions series of scientific trends and understandings are developed in order to analyse forms of social reactions to crime in different ways, and this paper elaborates that.