punishment according to the seriousness of the offence, it is assuming that the more serious the harm likely to be caused, the more the criminal has to gain. Spiritual explanation of crime Spiritualistic understandings of crime stem from an understanding of life in general, that finds most things in life are destined and cannot be controlled, we are born either male or female, good or bad and all our actions are decided by a higher being. People have held such beliefs for all of recorded history; “primitive people regarded natural disasters such as famines, floods and plagues as punishments for wrongs they had done to the spiritual powers”. These spiritual powers gained strength during the Middle Ages as they bonded with the feudal powers to create the criminal justice system. Under a spiritualistic criminal justice system, crime was a private affair that was conducted between the offender and the victim’s family. However, this method proved to be too vengeful, as the state took control of punishment. Spiritual explanations provided an understanding of crime when there was no other way of explaining crime. The problem with this understanding is that it cannot be proven true, and so it was never accepted. Commentary The idea of man as a calculating animal requires the view of crime as a product of a free choice by offenders. The question for policy makers is therefore how to use the institutions of the state to influence citizens to choose not to offend. This theory emerged at the time of the Enlightenment and it contended that it should focus on rationality. But, because it lacks sophistication, it was the operationalised in a mechanical way, assuming that there is a mathematics of deterrence, i.e. a proportional calculation undertaken first by policy makers and then by potential offenders. This school believed that there are constants of value in pain and gain that can swing a decision to offend or not to offend. Not everyone is the same, however, nor has the same view of what constitutes a price worth paying. It also had a certain utopianism in assuming that the policing system could rapidly grow and deliver a better service of investigation and detection. If certainty of punishment is to be achieved, there must be a major investment in policing. As other Schools of thought developed, Classicism slowly grew less popular. It has seen revival through the Neo-Classical School