Introduction To Criminology: Definition, Key Tasks, And Questions

What is criminology? what are its keys task and question, and how does it challenge a "common sense" understanding of crime, and what is the role of criminology?

Definition of Criminology

Criminology is derived from the ancient Greek word krino and logia which means accusation and Logos or logia which means reason, plan. Criminology in lexemic definition is the scientific study of the nature, extent, management, causes, control, consequences and necessary prevention of criminal behavior. The criminal behavior is managed both on individual and social levels. The drawings of criminology come from studies of behavioral and social science . The term was coined by the Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo. The word however has several definitions relating to different scholars  

According to Tim New Burn criminology is a science that studies crime. It major concerns revolve around individuals whose conduct are prohibited by the society and the law. He specifies that, it is a social-legal scientific study whose main role is to discover the causes of criminality and goes further to define appropriate remedies for the criminal behavior.

Edwin Sutherland defines criminology with the perspective of crime as a social phenomenon.  He insists that criminology is not a science but rather an art of sociology. For him criminology operates within the scope of making laws, breaking the made laws and applying appropriate reactions to the laws that are broken. From his definition, the emphasis is that the law is a combination of how the society deals with deviations and deals with crime within the social and legal contexts.

A scholar Donald Taft divides criminology in two branches, general and specific criminology. The general criminology according to Taft focuses on criminology as a scientific study of criminal and causes of criminal behavior in the society. Its focus is the crime and criminal. In specificity, criminology focuses on behavior change. Specificity focuses on how to reform criminal behavior or conduct of the individual that the society now views as a bad influence.

Garland defines the modern criminology as a product of two works which are: “government project” and “lombrosian project”, the government project deals with studying the state of justice or criminal systems, how the prisons operate and how crime is measured in any region. Lambrosian project” deals with examination of the criminals in trying to understand their behavior and understanding the root or cause of crime (Houston et al. 2004).

Webster’s definition of criminology gives a new perspective and sense. In his definition, criminology is a social phenomenon and a scientific phenomenon. Scientifically, the focus is on the methods involved in the study of crimes. Scientific research methods are employed while solving criminal behavior dilemmas. Scientific study is also applied while determining the reason for existence of crime. The social phenomenon of crime responds to criminals, their behaviors, their family conditions and how the criminal justice systems respond in time for various criminal activities accomplished by people in the society. Webster also concludes that social phenomenon includes punishment. With the introduction of punishment, and how a criminal is dealt with, criminology therefore has the penology aspect embedded in it.

With the introduction of Webster’s relations of criminology to other disciplines. Criminology almost borrows from the rest of the disciplines. Just to mention a few, criminology borrows from psychology in order to understand the way of thinking of a criminal. In the field of medicine and psychiatry, criminology derives how mental stability of a criminal inclines to the kind of crime that they perform. Philosophy helps people understand the logical reasons why people behave in absent of the law. In biology it is important to understand the genetic make-up of a criminal in order to derive intentions.

Different Definitions of Criminology by Various Scholars

From this definitions, it is accurate to acknowledge that criminology deals with six important elements of the society. They include: the criminal, the law, criminal acts, the victims of the crime, the cause of the crime and the related theory, crime prevention and detection of potential offenders and the efficacy of the criminal justice system (Macdonald 2012).

Criminology serves an important role and task in the current society. The current society is surrounded with crime and criminals. The Lombroso theory explains that no one is born a criminal. In this theory it is a rejection of the belief that crime is human in nature. He therefore included that criminality is an individual human behavior (Fisch 1999). The human who are criminals are therefore that way due to a reason. It is this assumption and such theory that criminology employs to determine reformation processes and methods for those who perform crime. The first task of criminology is therefore reformation of criminal individuals .

 In addition to that, criminology is tasked with understanding the mind set of an individual. The individuals in this case include; the criminal and the victim. Other professional like lawyers and police officers therefore find it easy to use criminology to deduce logical line defense of the criminal and the victim. Judicial officers normally asses’ criminology findings before they give a verdict concerning the case or not. Criminology is in this case tasked with the perception of convincing the professional groups in taking the various decisions that they do take during criminal cases.

Moreover, criminology is tasked with the responsibility to research and find out trends in crime. Types of crimes that are prevalent than others and are liked by a certain group or class of people. The research by criminology goes further to determine crime prevalent areas which registers high number of different types of crimes. This kind of data for people and localities is important for crime detection and control units. The various policy makers especially the government are therefore able to plan in relation to allocation of security resources aimed at fighting different types of crime .

From the derivations, it is in order to reason that the main objective of criminology is to render a crimeless society having acknowledged that we are living in a society full of criminal activities. The argument of most people is that it is impossible to achieve such a society with increase in population and technology daily. At times people reason so that very illegitimate behavior can be subverted and becomes legitimate, for example, drugs like marijuana are currently being legalized in some countries likely to increase crime rates in such places. The reasoning that crime will not get over soon is therefore justified .

Tim New Burn in his text criminology develops questions that criminology asks. He establishes that crime has been pushed high to the high public policy agenda. He therefore initiates that criminology seeks to ask questions that include;

How can we measure crimes in the society?

Key Task of Criminology and Questions

This question Tim develops as a way of understanding how crimes and their effects vary from location to the other. It is also a development of how crimes affect the society and the effects it creates.

How can we evaluate the effectiveness of preventive measures?

This question is a sole search on the policies developed by different stakeholders or policy makers on policies that are effective in regulating crimes. These policies he claims should work across the globe for all kinds of crimes.

Does the threat experienced in prisons today help in reducing the likelihood of criminal activity by an individual of just increases it?

With this question criminology is supposed to evaluate the role of punitive facilities in relation to rehabilitation facilities. The emphasis in this question revolves around how preventive policies can be integrated with criminal justice institution as a way of ensuring the criminal individuals change for the better.

In general, the criminology questions developed by New Burn are a reflection of the general study and understanding of crimes in relations to observed trends and historical periods. Criminology is therefore an anticipation of plausible measures that crime can be controlled and limited within a given society.

Some other common questions asked in criminology include:

• What is criminology?
• Why is criminology a science?
• What are examples of crimes?
• Why do people commit crime?
• What is the role of crime in the society?
• How is the society responsible for the ongoing crime?
• What theories are there in criminology?

Criminology as a scientific study and its application continue to get into the world rapidly, terms like murder, crime rates, policies, punishments, practices and crime policies continued to be heard daily on the social media and telecommunication devices.

Criminology challenges the common sense in the event that a person is called a criminal or deviant. To begin with some criminologists view crime as a social construct, which means that due to certain cultural and social boundaries something that might be viewed as a crime in one place is not a crime in another. Scholars like Edwin Schur say that criminal law itself varies depending on the regions that are in question.

By using labelling theory, criminology establishes that, an action may be tagged as being wrong in a region since the members in that communities have labelled it so. The same crime might not be criminal in another area. It is with this thought that there is introduction to the view that there are absolute and relative criminal offences.

Criminology establishes that a criminal offence may not be illegal. The justification to such assumption is that it refers to the criminal law that is universal. It is most likely to find other activities that are not illegal in the criminal law, but they are illegal in the society that is in question .

One of the ways where criminology challenges understanding is on the constitutes of crime. While it can easily be pointed among the society criminal acts, some criminologists argue that there is no clear definition of the constitutes of a crime. It is through such argument that theirs is existence and establishment of international law. However,  they still argument  that constitutes of crime and international law are mainly the process of superimposing the laws of super power countries to other inferior countries.

Important Questions That Criminology Asks

Criminology has challenged common sense in the understanding of crimes. In the aspects of analyzing the acts of criminals most people will look at the criminal act committed and blame the criminal. Criminology goes ahead to carry out investigations and instead of blaming the criminal they end up blaming the society. An example of such ideas emanate from using Emile Durkheim’s theory.

A criminologist is a person who has expert skills in studying crimes and criminals, it is the scientific study of the possible causes and consequences of crime and criminals. A criminologist has several roles as will be discussed with references to various scholars.

Regardless of the field of criminology that on focuses on, criminologists are very critical to the general society and the justice system due to the roles that they play. Some of these roles include:

In the first place a criminologist identifies the source of crime. As a discipline, criminology includes research on the source or origins of crime in the society, it also identifies the form of crime in the society. By engaging in such research criminologist delve ahead to try explaining the behavior of this deviant individuals in the society and the reason why they drift from the socially accepted norms. In most explanations criminologists prefer to use behavioral theories by different scholars. This research into possible sources and behavior of criminals have helped law enforcement officers in determining how to apprehend these criminals (Morgan and Newburn 1997). Criminologists are equipped with excellent skills in carrying out research, evaluation and analysis. For these reasons several bodies in the society wait for their statistics to apply them in other areas .

Crime measurement can be a very hectic task considering that most criminal behaviors are done by humans. Criminologists have been very helpful in measuring the local, global and national crime index, this is due to their close involvement with the law enforcement bodies. The criminologist uses this data to come-up with this statistics, these statistics helps in establishing where more attention is needed in terms of law enforcement. It is such derivations that enable law enforcement authority to discover the areas where they need to put on more security for societies safety.

Additionally, criminologist take part in prevention of criminal behavior. As mentioned earlier criminology deals with a lot of research on crimes and criminal behaviors, in inclusion, they have also try to find possible solutions to criminal activities in the society. Some of the solutions they provide may include: provision of education, creating employment and enforcing laws and policies help that generally discourage engagement of people in criminal activities.

The existence of criminology and criminologist has helped in controlling crime in the society. We have to acknowledge that crimes exist but the occurrence of crimes in the society has reduced with the introduction of procedures of preventing and catching criminals. It is the criminologist that ensure the implementation of such policies. This has helped to control the number of criminal activities in areas that were experiencing high crime rates.

 Not all law enforcing bodies follow the law to the latter. Some individuals from within are part of crimes and criminal activities. It is for such reason that criminologist also analyze and criticize law enforcement bodies.

In the attempt to discover the responsiveness of law enforcement bodies in dealing with crimes in the society, criminologist also looks into these bodies keenly analyzing their professional ethics. Criminologists not only research into these bodies in determining if they execute their functions correctly but they also look into important areas in the law where the criminal judicial systems are required to make improvements. They further develop areas that they have not looked into completely (Jones 1996).

 As an oversight role, criminologist in the society are critics to issues that are misjudged or mishandled by the justice system. In certain noted occasions criminologists come out to correct government decision that are not as per the law of the judiciary systems. Criminologist often advise the government on the areas that they should be focusing on. Perfect examples are in white collar crimes that are mostly ignored or assumed by most governments.

Criminologist not only deals with the law enforcers in the society, but it moves ahead to investigate how to help the those that have broken the law. They do this through determining terms of how to rehabilitate criminals.  Criminologist investigates the condition, importance and state of rehabilitation centers that have been built for particular criminals with emphasis placed on the kind of crimes and the age of the criminal. In situation where there is need for psychological or medical help, criminologist investigates the nature of the medicine or psychiatric sessions administered and their usefulness.

Criminologists criticize the correctional systems in the areas where they have failed to put in proper methods of carrying out criminal correction. Criminologist tries to determine the level of crime and the best correctional method of dealing with the antisocial behavior. Some of these programs that are intended to correct these criminals include jails, paroles, community services and other prison facilities.

We have to accept that cracking crimes is not an easy task. Crimes at times are twisted and lack any traces of leads. It is within such situations that the expertise of a criminologist comes in. By using several theories criminology attempts to find out the role, purpose or function of criminals in the society (Newburn and Jones 2007). Criminologists look into how the criminals in the society are used for different purpose such as power scrambles or scape goats and how the society treats these group of individuals. Without the expertise of a criminologists it would be difficult for the society to understand the different perspective towards those criminals who commit street crimes versus those who commit white collar crimes. It is such confusion that criminologists try to explain. It is for this reason that criminologist is also referred to as the teachers of the society. They educate the society on crime detections techniques that can prevent further crimes from happening. They also help the society by making the people even more vigilant.

Conclusion

In conclusion criminology is an important scientific field tasked with the responsibility of understanding why people break laws, while developing effective ways of eliminating crime.  Criminologist mostly find ways of the association that exists between crime, the criminal and how the societal law identifies and defines the crime .

References

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 Journals

Houston, R.J., Stanford, M.S., Villemarette Pittman, N.R., Conklin, S.M. and Helfritz, L.E., 2004. Neurobiological correlates and clinical implications of aggressive subtypes. Journal of Forensic Neuropsychology, 3(4), pp.67-87.

Macdonald, S.J., 2012. “Journey's end”: statistical pathways into offending for adults with specific learning difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities and Offending Behaviour, 3(2), pp.85-97.