criminology

criminology,

the study of crime, society's response to it, and its prevention, including examination of the environmental, hereditary, or psychological causes of crime, modes of criminal investigation and conviction, and the efficacy of punishment or correction (see prisonprison,
place of confinement for the punishment and rehabilitation of criminals. By the end of the 18th cent. imprisonment was the chief mode of punishment for all but capital crimes.
..... Click the link for more information. ) as compared with forms of treatment or rehabilitation. Although it is generally considered a subdivision of sociologysociology,
scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities—economic, social, political, and religious.
..... Click the link for more information. , criminology also draws on the findings of psychology, economics, and other disciplines that investigate humans and their environment.

In examining the evolution and definition of crime, criminology often aims to remove from this category acts that no longer conflict with society's norms and acts that violate the norms without imperiling society, although decriminalization of certain acts may be accompanied by attempts to enforce codes of morality (as, for example, in the response to pornography). Criminologists are nearly unanimous in advocating that acts involving the consumption of narcotics or alcohol, as well as nonstandard but consensual sexual acts (known among criminologists as crimes without victims) be removed from the category of crime. In dealing with crime in general, the emphasis has gradually shifted from punishment to rehabilitation. Criminologists have worked to increase the use of probationprobation,
method by which the punishment of a convicted offender is conditionally suspended. The offender must remain in the community and under the supervision of a probation officer, who is usually a court-appointed official.
..... Click the link for more information. and paroleparole
, in criminal law, release from prison of a convict before the expiration of his term on condition that his activities be restricted and that he report regularly to an officer.
..... Click the link for more information. , psychiatric treatment, education in prison, and betterment of social conditions.

The Nature and Causes of Crime

Many criminologists regard crime as one among several forms of deviance, about which there are conflicting theories. Some consider crime a type of anomic behavior; others characterize it as a more conscious response to social conditions, to stress, to the breakdown in law enforcement or social order, and to the labeling of certain behavior as deviant. Since cultures vary in organization and values, what is considered criminal may also vary, although most societies have restrictive laws or customs.

Hereditary physical and psychological traits are today generally ruled out as independent causes of crime, but psychological states are believed to determine an individual's reaction to potent environmental influences. Some criminologists assert that certain offenders are born into environments (such as extreme poverty or discriminated-against minority groups) that tend to generate criminal behavior. Others argue that since only some persons succumb to these influences, additional stimuli must be at work. One widely accepted theory is Edwin Sutherland's concept of differential association, which argues that criminal behavior is learned in small groups. Psychiatry generally considers crime to result from emotional disorders, often stemming from childhood experience. The criminal symbolically enacts a repressed wish, or desire, and crimes such as arson or theft that result from pyromania or kleptomania are specific expressions of personality disorders; therefore, crime prevention and the cure of offenders are matters of treatment rather than coercion.

Prevalence of Crime

Crime rates, although often blurred by the political or social agenda of those recording and reporting them, tend to fluctuate with social trends, rising in times of depression, after wars, and in other periods of disorganization. Particular types of crime may be prevalent in response to specific conditions. In the United States organized crimeorganized crime,
criminal activities organized and coordinated on a national scale, often with international connections. The American tradition of daring desperadoes like Jesse James and John Dillinger, has been superseded by the corporate criminal organization.
..... Click the link for more information. became significant during prohibitionprohibition,
legal prevention of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages, the extreme of the regulatory liquor laws. The modern movement for prohibition had its main growth in the United States and developed largely as a result of the agitation of
..... Click the link for more information. . Within cities, poverty areas have the highest rates of reported crime, especially among young people (see juvenile delinquencyjuvenile delinquency,
legal term for behavior of children and adolescents that in adults would be judged criminal under law. In the United States, definitions and age limits of juveniles vary, the maximum age being set at 14 years in some states and as high as 21 years in others.
..... Click the link for more information. ).

One major category that was relatively ignored until recent decades is that of white-collar crime, i.e., property crimes committed by people of relatively high social status in the course of their professional or business careers. The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice in 1967 concluded that about three times as much property is stolen by white-collar criminals as by other criminals outside organized crime.

Bibliography

See S. Glueck and E. Glueck, Criminal Careers in Retrospect (1943, repr. 1966); H. Mannheim, ed., Pioneers in Criminology (2d ed. 1960, repr. 1972) and Comparative Criminology (2 vol., 1965); R. Hood, Key Issues in Criminology (1970); E. Sutherland and D. Cressey, Criminology (8th ed. 1970); S. Schafer and W. Knudten, Reader in Criminology (1973); E. Sutherland, White Collar Crime (1983); L. Ohlin, Human Development and Criminal Behavior (1991).

criminology

A branch of study which has traditionally focused on a number of aspects of the nature and causes of CRIME and the criminal element in society. It is debatable whether this area of study may be called a discipline in its own right as it has tended rather to focus only on one problem andits ramifications from a variety of disciplinary and epistemological perspectives.

Interest in crime and the infraction of rules is found throughout written history. Morality tales about the effect of lawbreaking are found in ancient Greece and, before that, in pre-Hellenic Babylon in legal codes established around 2000 BC. In modern times, a systematic interest in crime grew with the massive social changes associated with the take-off of capitalism in the 18th century. The break-up of traditional societies, the dislocation of forms of social control effective in small-scale and rural societies, and the emergence of new property and class relations, reflected in the political revolutions of the time, all led to a growth of interest in the conditions of social order, and its obverse. Interest in crime was a corollary of this.

In the 18th-century, the ‘classical’ school in law assumed the existence of human rationality and free will, and therefore the rational calculation of the costs and benefits of any action. The implication for criminal policy was to make the cost of infraction greater than the potential benefits. (This model has much in common with more recent deterrent theories.)

Positivist criminology may be seen, in part, as a reaction to the ‘classical’ tradition, but also as part of the general growth of positivist explanation in the 19th century. Its best-known exponent was Cesare LOMBROSO, an Italian physician. Lombroso and his followers espoused a biological determinism opposed to the notion of free will. On the basis of measurements of prison inmates and the postmortem examination of some convicts, he argued that criminality was associated with ‘atavism’ – by which he meant the survival of traits characteristic of a more primitive stage of human evolution. These genetic ‘throwbacks’ were associated with ‘the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals’. By the early years of this century Lombroso's work was thoroughly discredited. However, genetic/biological explanations have recurred from time to time, for example, in psychologists’ contributions to criminology.

There is a variety of sociological approaches to crime and criminality, most of which are opposed to individualistic and biologistic accounts.

One tendency, incorporating a number of theoretical traditions, is ‘social pathology’. The basic theme here is that, rather than problems with individuals, it is social problems which cause criminal behaviour.

Classical Marxist accounts (e.g. by Engels and Bonger) relate crime to inherent features of CAPITALISM, including poverty and the degradation of the working class, and the effects of greed and exploitation in creating a ‘criminogenic’ culture. This emphasis re-emerged in sociology in the 1970s with the growing influence of Marxism on the discipline. In the US, there has been a long-standing interest in the sociological explanation of crime, much of it influenced by the CHICAGO SCHOOL. Early Chicago school authors developed the notion of ‘cultural transmission’. Studying high-crime areas in Chicago between 1900 and 1925, they argued that in such areas delinquency was a tradition. Delinquent values were transmitted by PEER GROUPS and gangs. Individuals were effectively socialized into delinquency. There is also a well-established interest in the broader explanation of DEVIANCE, e.g. in ANOMIE theory and in LABELLING THEORY.

These arguments were expanded in DELINQUENT SUBCULTURE and in DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION theories. Attempts have also been made to synthesize these different theoretical tendencies by Cloward and Ohlin (1960) in particular, who brought together cultural transmission and anomie theories. They showed how ‘structures of opportunity’ for legitimate or illegitimate use of resources vary Cloward and Ohlin identify one section of the ‘lower class’ as particularly likely to take up the chances available for delinquency: those ‘seeking higher status within their own cultural milieu’ and an alternative to a middle-class lifestyle, an illegal route to affluence within ‘lower-class’ culture (compare MERTON's use of ANOMIE).

Approaches such as these have been criticized on a number of grounds. For example, that they generally accept the legitimacy of‘legitimate’ means and ends and assume that everyone else does likewise. Also the focus has been exclusively on lower-working-class males, with little examination of female criminality, WHITE-COLLAR CRIME, or ‘crimes of the powerful’.

In the 1970s, in the UK and the USA, sociologists returned to a blend of labelling theory and Marxism, and issues of crime, social class and capitalism. In the UK, work in this style is exemplified by the ‘critical criminology’ of Taylor, Walton and Young (1973). Radical criminologists were united by a common ethos rather than an agreed theory. They were critical of positivist, functionalist, and labelling approaches, and offered instead a criminology which located the analysis of crime and law in the wider understanding of the CAPITALIST STATE and social class relations. Thus criminal law, policing and the prison system were portrayed as aspects of class domination. There is a clear legacy of labelling theory in this approach, but with an emphasis on the labelling of particular acts as ‘deviant’, as grounded in the logic and needs of capitalism. The radical perspective has been important in reviving sociological interest in the detailed analysis of aspects of the CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM – policing, courts and sentencing, and prisons.

Further development since the 1970s has been in the growth of feminist contributions to the study of crime and deviance. Apart from the resurgence of the Women's Movement, this interest has owed much to the development of radical criminology, but with an increasing recognition that gender issues cannot be simply incorporated within a class-based perspective. Work on criminal statistics, SUBCULTURES, violence against women, female criminality, sentencing, PRISONS and other issues all demonstrated the importance of gender as a specific issue and in informing general theoretical and empirical debates in criminology. A further development in recent years has been a shift in emphasis from a concern only with offenders, to a concern with the victims of crime (see VICTIMOLOGY).

Beyond the more conventional, predominantly empirical, grounded theoretic or critical Anglo-American approaches to the study of crime, the influence of the work of FOUCAULT has also had a major influence.

Criminology

the science that studies crime, its causes, and the personality of the criminal and works out methods of preventing crime. Soviet criminology is an independent field within the legal sciences, closely related to criminal law, criminal procedure, corrective-labor and administrative law, and criminalistics. Criminology studies the processes and phenomena associated with crime in a socialist society and works out measures for crime prevention applicable both to society as a whole and in special instances. It also outlines methods of eliminating crimes and studies the prevention of various types of crime and of crimes in a particular area or environment. Soviet scientists devote much attention to studying crime in capitalist society and to a critical analysis of the antiscientific conceptions of bourgeois criminology. Using such concepts as “crime,” “the criminal,” “guilt,” and “motive,” which have become established in criminal law, Soviet criminology employs specific sociological research methods: analysis of statistical data and establishment of correlations between crime and various social processes; study of criminal cases and materials; conducting surveys interviews, and inquiries in order to comprehensively study the criminal personality, the conditions of its formation, and the situations in which crimes are committed; and comprehensive criminological studies of particular objects, areas, or groups. Data from demography, economics, psychology, and other sciences are also used in criminological research. Crime and its causes are studied in their development, taking into account the historical conditions of the particular period.

Soviet criminology rejects bourgeois conceptions of innate criminality, of biological predisposition to crime, and of the decisive influence of various psychological anomalies and temperament on criminal behavior, which distort the social nature of crime as a historically transitional social phenomenon that arose in exploitative societies. In socialist society, where criminality is a vestige of the past, biological characteristics, age, sex, and other factors influence formation of the personality to a certain extent, but correct upbringing gives everyone an equal opportunity for positive social behavior.

There are general and specific aspects of criminology. The general aspect concerns the subject and method of criminology and its history; criminology’s basic concepts and its links to related sciences; the concept of crime and related social processes; the criminological theory of personality and behavior prediction (including typology); the theory of crime prevention, including early prevention, in society as a whole and in specific circumstances; and problems of ensuring legality in crime prevention and of using the methods and data of criminology in social planning and forecasting. The specific aspect of criminology includes the comprehensive study and prevention of particular types of crime (violent, mercenary-violent, mercenary), of crimes in various groups (minors, “young adults”), and of recidivism.

Soviet criminology developed as a science in the 1920’s, when agencies, universities, and specialized scientific establishments (offices for the study of crime and the criminal) began to conduct selective research and the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal was established. Between 1957 and 1963 systematic development of the methodology of criminological research for scientific and practical purposes was carried out by the Institute of Criminalistics of the Procuracy of the USSR. In 1963 the institute was succeeded by the All-Union Institute for the Study of the Causes of Crime and Development of Measures to Prevent Crime. Theoretical problems of criminology are also worked out at institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in the law departments of many universities, and at a number of institutes of legal expertise.

In foreign socialist countries there is considerable criminological research, built on the same theoretical and methodological principles that are used in the USSR. In all these countries either specialized research institutions for criminology or specialized research subdivisions in ministries and government departments have been established. (Specialized institutions include the Council of Criminological Research in Bulgaria, the Institute of the Procuracy in Hungary, the Institute of Criminology under the general procurator in Czechoslovakia, and the Institute of Research on Criminology and criminalistics in Yugoslavia.) Questions of criminology are studied in law departments at the universities of all the socialist countries.

In the bourgeois countries criminology as an independent science developed in the 1870’s. In the 18th and early 19th centuries the Enlightenment thinkers, the Utopian socialists, and the revolutionary democrats held progressive views on crime as a phenomenon related to social inequality and therefore requiring social preventive measures and a restructuring of society. Bourgeois criminology, however, did not accept these views, instead searching for “explanations” of crime that would not challenge the essence of the capitalist system. Despite the conceptual differences that have arisen in bourgeois criminology, all are intended to substantiate the “eternal nature’* of crime, supposedly inherent in any social system. Questions of crime prevention are studied only within the framework of special measures to combat crime, and the studies are based primarily on material dealing with crimes against persons, larceny, robbery, and so forth. Crimes committed in the state administrative apparatus and in the business world are little studied. In fact bourgeois criminology replaces the problem of establishing the causes of crime with a search for the factors influencing the commission of crimes by specific persons. All schools of bourgeois criminology reject “traditional” measures of criminal law and replace them with “security measures” or “a system of social protection,” thereby significantly increasing opportunities for arbitrary actions by the police and judicial agencies.

REFERENCES

Boldyrev, E. V. Mery preduprezhdeniia pravonarushenii nesovershennoletnikh v SSSR. Moscow, 1964.
Gertsenzon, A. A. Vvedenie v sovetskuiu kriminologiiu. Moscow, 1965.
Gertsenzon, A. A. Ugolovnoe pravo i sotsiologiia. Moscow, 1970.
Sotsiologiia prestupnosti (Sovremennye burzhuaznye teorii). Moscow, 1966.
Kriminologiia (textbook), 2nd ed. Moscow, 1968.
Kudriavtsev, V. N. Prichinnost’ v kriminologii. Moscow, 1968.
Karpets, I. I. Problema prestupnosti. Moscow, 1969.
Orlov, V. S. Podrostok i prestuplenie. Moscow, 1969.
Prestupnost’ nesovershennoletnikh v kapitalisticheskikh stranakh, part 2. Moscow, 1970.
lakovlev, A. M. Prestupnost’ i sotsial’naia psikhologiia. Moscow, 1971.
Sakharov, A. B. Prichiny prestupnosti i lichnost’ prestupnika v SSSR. Moscow, 1961.

G. M. MIN’KOVSKII and V. K. ZVIRBUL’

criminology

the scientific study of crime, criminal behaviour, law enforcement, etc.

criminology

Criminology

The scientific study of the causation, correction, and prevention of crime.

As a subdivision of the larger field of sociology, criminology draws on psychology, economics, anthropology, psychiatry, biology, statistics, and other disciplines to explain the causes and prevention of criminal behavior. Subdivisions of criminology include penology, the study of prisons and prison systems; biocriminology, the study of the biological basis of criminal behavior; feminist criminology, the study of women and crime; and criminalistics, the study of crime detection, which is related to the field of Forensic Science.

Criminology has historically played a reforming role in relation to Criminal Law and the criminal justice system. As an applied discipline, it has produced findings that have influenced legislators, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, Probation officers, and prison officials, prompting them to better understand crime and criminals and to develop better and more humane sentences and treatments for criminal behavior.

History

The origins of criminology are usually located in the late-eighteenth-century writings of those who sought to reform criminal justice and penal systems that they perceived as cruel, inhumane, and Arbitrary. These old systems applied the law unequally, were subject to great corruption, and often used torture and the death penalty indiscriminately.

The leading theorist of this classical school of criminology, the Italian Cesare bonesano beccaria (1738–94), argued that the law must apply equally to all, and that punishments for specific crimes should be standardized by legislatures, thus avoiding judicial abuses of power. Both Beccaria and another classical theorist, the Englishman Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), argued that people are rational beings who exercise free will in making choices. Beccaria and Bentham understood the dominant motive in making choices to be the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Thus, they argued that a punishment should fit the crime in such a way that the pain involved in potential punishment would be greater than any pleasure derived from committing the crime. The writings of these theorists led to greater Codification and standardization of European and U.S. laws.

Criminologists of the early nineteenth century argued that legal punishments that had been created under the guidance of the classical school did not sufficiently consider the widely varying circumstances of those who found themselves in the gears of the criminal justice system. Accordingly, they proposed that those who could not distinguish right from wrong, particularly children and mentally ill persons, should be exempted from the punishments that were normally meted out to mentally capable adults who had committed the same crimes. Along with the contributions of a later generation of criminologists, known as the positivists, such writers argued that the punishment should fit the criminal, not the crime.

Later in the nineteenth century, the positivist school of criminology brought a scientific approach to criminology, including findings from biology and medicine. The leading figure of this school was the Italian Cesare Lombroso (1836–1909). Influenced by Charles R. Darwin's theory of evolution, Lombroso measured the physical features of prison inmates and concluded that criminal behavior correlated with specific bodily characteristics, particularly cranial, skeletal, and neurological malformations. According to Lombroso, biology created a criminal class among the human population. Subsequent generations of criminologists have disagreed harshly with Lombroso's conclusions on this matter. However, Lombroso had a more lasting effect on criminology with other findings that emphasized the multiple causes of crime, including environmental causes that were not biologically determined. He was also a pioneer of the case-study approach to criminology.

Other late-nineteenth-century developments in criminology included the work of statisticians of the cartographic school, who analyzed data on population and crime. These included Lambert Adolphe Quetelet, (1796– 1874) of France and André Michel Guerry, of Belgium. Both of these researchers compiled detailed, statistical information relating to crime and also attempted to identify the circumstances that predisposed people to commit crimes.

The writings of French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) also exerted a great influence on criminology. Durkheim advanced the hypothesis that criminal behavior is a normal part of all societies. No society, he argued, can ever have complete uniformity of moral consciousness. All societies must permit some deviancy, including criminal deviancy, or they will stagnate. He saw the criminal as an acceptable human being and one of the prices that a society pays for freedom.

Durkheim also theorized about the ways in which modern, industrial societies differ from nonindustrial ones. Industrial societies are not as effective at producing what Durkheim called a collective conscience that effectively controls the behavior of individuals. Individuals in industrial societies are more likely to exhibit what Durkheim called anomie—a Greek word meaning "without norms." Consequently, modern societies have had to develop specialized laws and criminal justice systems that were not necessary in early societies to control behavior.

Early efforts to organize criminologists in the United States attracted law enforcement officials and others who were interested in the criminal justice system. In 1941, a group of individuals in California organized for the purpose of improving police training and the standardization of police-training curricula. In 1946, this movement developed into the establishment of the Society for the Advancement of Criminology, which changed its name to the American Society of Criminology in 1957. Initial efforts of this organization focused upon scientific crime detection, investigation, and identification; crime prevention, public safety, and security; law enforcement administration; administration of criminal justice; traffic administration; and probation.

The American Society of Criminology has since attracted thousands of members, including academics, practitioners, and students of the criminal justice system. Studies of criminology include both the theoretical and the pragmatic, and some combine elements of both. Although some aspects of criminology as a science are still considered radical, others have developed as standards in the study of crime and criminal justice.

Sociology and Criminology

During the twentieth century, the sociological approach to criminology became the most influential approach. Sociology is the study of social behavior, systems, and structures. In relation to criminology, it may be divided into social-structural and social-process approaches.

Social-Structural Criminology Social-structural approaches to criminology examine the way in which social situations and structures influence or relate to criminal behavior. An early example of this approach, the ecological school of criminology, was developed in the 1920s and 1930s at the University of Chicago. It seeks to explain crime's relationship to social and environmental change. For example, it attempts to describe why certain areas of a city will have a tendency to attract crime and also have less-vigorous police enforcement. Researchers have found that urban areas in transition from residential to business uses are most often targeted by criminals. Such communities often have disorganized social networks that foster a weaker sense of social standards.

Another social-structural approach is the conflict school of criminology. It traces its roots to Marxist theories that saw crime as ultimately a product of conflict between different classes under the system of capitalism. Criminology conflict theory suggests that the laws of society emerge out of conflict rather than out of consensus. It holds that laws are made by the group that is in power, to control those who are not in power. Conflict theorists propose, as do other theorists, that those who commit crimes are not fundamentally different from the rest of the population. They call the idea that society may be clearly divided into criminals and noncriminals a dualistic fallacy, or a misguided notion. These theorists maintain, instead, that the determination of whether someone is a criminal or not often depends on the way society reacts to those who deviate from accepted norms. Many conflict theorists and others argue that minorities and poor people are more quickly labeled as criminals than are members of the majority and wealthy individuals.

Critical criminology, also called radical criminology, shares with conflict criminology a debt to Marxism. It came into prominence in the early 1970s and attempted to explain contemporary social upheavals. Critical criminology relies on economic explanations of behavior and argues that economic and social inequalities cause criminal behavior. It focuses less on the study of individual criminals, and advances the belief that existing crime cannot be eliminated within the capitalist system. It also asserts, like the conflict school, that law has an inherent bias in favor of the upper or ruling class, and that the state and its legal system exist to advance the interests of the ruling class. Critical criminologists argue that corporate, political, and environmental crime are underreported and inadequately addressed in the current criminal justice system.

Feminist criminology emphasizes the subordinate position of women in society. According to feminist criminologists, women remain in a position of inferiority that has not been fully rectified by changes in the law during the late twentieth century. Feminist criminology also explores the ways in which women's criminal behavior is related to their objectification as commodities in the sex industry.

Others using the social-structural approach have studied Gangs, juvenile delinquency, and the relationship between family structure and criminal behavior.

Social-Process Criminology Social-process criminology theories attempt to explain how people become criminals. These theories developed through recognition of the fact that not all people who are exposed to the same social-structural conditions become criminals. They focus on criminal behavior as learned behavior.

Edwin H. Sutherland (1883–1950), a U.S. sociologist and criminologist who first presented his ideas in the 1920s and 1930s, advanced the theory of differential association to explain criminal behavior. He emphasized that criminal behavior is learned in interaction with others, usually in small groups, and that criminals learn to favor criminal behavior over noncriminal behavior through association with both forms of behavior in different degrees. As Sutherland wrote, "When persons become criminal, they do so because of contacts with criminal patterns and also because of isolation from anticriminal patterns." Although his theory has been greatly influential, Sutherland himself admitted that it did not satisfactorily explain all criminal behavior. Later theorists have modified his approach in an attempt to correct its shortcomings.

Control theory, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, attempts to explain ways to train people to engage in law-abiding behavior. Although there are different approaches within control theory, they share the view that humans require nurturing in order to develop attachments or bonds to people and that personal bonds are key in producing internal controls such as conscience and guilt and external controls such as shame. According to this view, crime is the result of insufficient attachment and commitment to others.

Walter C. Reckless developed one version of control theory, called containment. He argued that a combination of internal psychological containments and external social containments prevents people from deviating from social norms. In simple communities, social pressure to conform to community standards, usually enforced by social ostracism, was sufficient to control behavior. As societies became more complex, internal containments played a more crucial role in determining whether people behaved according to public laws. Furthermore, containment theorists have found that internal containments require a positive self-image. All too often, a sense of alienation from society and its norms forms in modern individuals, who, as a result, do not develop internal containment mechanisms.

The sociologist Travis Hirschi has developed his own control theory that attempts to explain conforming, or lawful, rather than deviant, or unlawful, behavior. He stresses the importance of the individual's bond to society in determining conforming behavior. His research has found that socioeconomic class has little to do with determining delinquent behavior, and that young people who are not very attached to their parents or to school are more likely to be delinquent than those who are strongly attached. He also found that youths who have a strongly positive view of their own accomplishments are more likely to view society's laws as valid constraints on their behavior.

Political Criminology

Political criminology is similar to the other camps in this area. It involves study into the forces that determine how, why, and with what consequences societies chose to address criminals and crime in general. Those who are involved with political criminology focus on the causes of crime, the nature of crime, the social and political meanings that attach to crime, and crime-control policies, including the study of the bases upon which crime and punishment is committed and the choices made by the principals in criminal justice.

Although the theories of political criminology and conflict criminology overlap to some extent, political criminologists deny that the terms are interchangeable. The primary focus points in the new movement of political criminology similarly overlap with other theories, including the concerns and ramifications of street crime and the distribution of power in crime-control strategies. This movement has largely been a loose, academic effort.

Other Issues

Criminologists also study a host of other issues related to crime and the law. These include studies of the Victims of Crime, focusing upon their relations to the criminal, and their role as potential causal agents in crime; juvenile delinquency and its correction; and the media and their relation to crime, including the influence of Pornography. Much research related to criminology has focused on the biological basis of criminal behavior. In fact, a field of study called biocriminology, which attempts to explore the biological basis of criminal behavior, has emerged. Research in this area has focused on chromosomal abnormalities, hormonal and brain chemical imbalances, diet, neurological conditions, drugs, and alcohol as variables that contribute to criminal behavior.

The true effect of criminology upon practices in the criminal justice system is still subject to question. Although a number of commentators have noted that studies in criminology have led to significant changes among criminal laws in the various states, other critics have suggested that studies in criminology have not directly led to a reduction of crime.

In McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 107 S. Ct. 1756, 95 L. Ed. 2d 262 (1987), an individual who had been sentenced to death for a murder in Georgia demonstrated to the U.S. Supreme Court that a criminologist's study showed that the race of individuals in that state impacted whether the defendant was sentenced to life or to death. The study demonstrated that a black defendant who had killed a white victim was four times more likely to be sentenced to death than was a defendant who had killed a black victim. The defendant claimed that the study demonstrated that the state of Georgia had violated his rights under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as under the Eighth Amendment's protection against Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

The high court disagreed. Although the majority did question the validity of the study's findings, it held that the study did not establish that officials in Georgia had acted with discriminatory purpose, and that it did not establish that racial bias had affected the officials' decisions with respect to the death sentence. Accordingly, the death sentence violated neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Eighth Amendment.

Criminology has had more of an effect when states and the federal government consider new criminal laws and sentencing provisions. Criminologists' theories are also often debated in the context of the death penalty and crime control acts among legislators and policymakers. In this light, criminology is perhaps not at the forefront of the development of the criminal justice system, but it most certainly works in the background in the determination of criminal justice policies.

Cross-references

Critical Legal Studies; Forensic Science; Marx, Karl Heinrich.

criminology

the scientific study of CRIME, criminal behaviour and law enforcement.

criminology

crim·i·nol·o·gy

criminology

crim•i•nol•o•gy

criminology

criminology

criminology

criminology,

The Nature and Causes of Crime

Prevalence of Crime

Bibliography

criminology

Criminology

REFERENCES

criminology

criminology

crim·i·nol·o·gy

criminology

Criminology

History

Sociology and Criminology

Political Criminology

Other Issues

Further readings

Cross-references

criminology

criminology

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noun the scientific study of crime and criminal behavior and law enforcement

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