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Criminology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the academic journal, see Criminology (journal). For the Raekwon song, see Criminology (song).
Criminology (from Latin crimen, “accusation”, and Ancient Greek -λογία, -logia, from λόγος logos meaning: “word, reason”) is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, as well as scholars of law.
Criminologists are the people working and researching the study of crime and society’s response to crime. Some criminologists examine behavioral patterns of possible criminals. Generally, criminologists conduct research and investigations, developing theories and analyzing empirical patterns.
The interests of criminologists include the study of nature of crime and criminals, origins of criminal law, etiology of crime, social reaction to crime, and the functioning of law enforcement agencies and the penal institutions. It can be broadly said that criminology directs its inquiries along three lines: first, it investigates the nature of criminal law and its administration and conditions under which it develops; second, it analyzes the causation of crime and the personality of criminals; and third, it studies the control of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders. Thus, criminology includes within its scope the activities of legislative bodies, law-enforcement agencies, judicial institutions, correctional institutions and educational, private and public social agencies.
History of academic criminology
In the mid-18th century, criminology arose as social philosophers gave thought to crime and concepts of law. The term criminology was coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as Criminologia Later, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous French term Criminologie Paul Topinard’s major work appeared in 1879.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scholars of crime focused on reform of criminal law and not on the causes of crime. Scholars such as Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham were more concerned with the humanitarian aspects of dealing with criminals and reforming criminal laws. Criminology grew substantially as a discipline in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The first American textbook on criminology was written in 1920 by sociologist Maurice Parmalee under the title Criminology. Academic programs were developed for the specific purpose of training students to be criminologists, but the development was rather slow.
From 1900 through to 2000 this field of research underwent three significant phases in the United States: (1) Golden Age of Research (1900–1930) which has been described as a multiple-factor approach, (2) Golden Age of Theory (1930–1960) which endeavored to show the limits of systematically connecting criminological research to theory, and (3) a 1960–2000 period, which was seen as a significant turning point for criminology.
