The influence of positivism in Belgium. An eclectic compromise between adhesion and resistance

In Belgium, positivism was integrated in the criminal justice system through the influence of the social defense doctrine, as promoted by Adolphe Prins, one of the founding fathers of the International Union of Penal Law. From the end of the nineteenth century, in a context dominated by certain specific figures of dangerousness (habitual and repeat offenders, insane offenders, vagrants and beggars, and juvenile delinquents), the analytical grid of the Italian school appears relevant to fill in the gaps of the neoclassical criminal ideology, considered “too soft”, abstract and lax. At the same... Mehr ...