Criminology (from Latin , 'accusation', and Ancient Greek , -logia, from λόγος logos, 'word, reason') is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, legal sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, scholars of law and jurisprudence, as well as the processes that define administration of justice and the criminal justice system.
The interests of criminologists include the study of the 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 encompasses the activities of legislative bodies, law-enforcement agencies, judicial institutions, correctional institutions, and educational, private, and public social agencies.
History of academic criminology
Modern academic criminology has direct roots in the 19th-century Italian School of "criminal anthropology", which, according to the historian Mary Gibson, "caused a radical refocusing of criminological discussion throughout Europe and the United States from law to the criminal. While this 'Italian School' was in turn attacked and partially supplanted in countries such as France by 'sociological' theories of delinquency, they retained the new focus on the criminal."Gibson, M. S. (1982). The 'female offender' and the Italian school of criminal anthropology. Journal of European Studies, 12(47), 155-165. According to Gibson, the term criminology was most likely coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as . In the late 19th century, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous French term .
History in the United States In the United States, criminology grew substantially as a discipline in the first quarter of the twentieth century. From 1900 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. During the post-1960s expansion of higher education, criminology in the United States began to institutionalize outside of sociology, particularly through the rapid development of standalone criminal justice programs. This shift was fueled in part by federal initiatives such as the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) and the Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP), which provided funding for academic training in policing and corrections during a period of social unrest and concern over crime.Jeffery, C. R. (1990). Criminology: An interdisciplinary approach. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Lilly, J. R., Cullen, F. T., & Ball, R. A. (1995). Criminological theory: Context and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. These developments strained the long-standing association between sociology and criminology, as many sociologists viewed the new practice-oriented criminal justice programs as academically weaker or less theoretically grounded.Cressey, D. R. (1979). Fifty years of criminology: From sociological theory to political control. Pacific Sociological Review, 22(4), 457–480. https://doi.org/10.2307/1388842Farrell, B., & Koch, L. (1995). Criminal justice, sociology, and academia. The American Sociologist, 26(1), 52–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692009 In response, some educators split from the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in 1963 to form the International Association of Police Professors (which in 1970 became the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS)), arguing that ASC remained too narrowly sociological in focus.Cullen, F. T. (1995). Fighting back: Criminal justice as an academic discipline. ACJS Today, 13(4), 1–3.Cao, L. (2020). Criminology qua criminal justice as an open discipline: On the relationship between sociology and criminology in the USA. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 31(4), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511253.2020.1807031
By the 1990s, the field had moved toward reconciliation, with many programs embracing a dual identity as Criminology/Criminal Justice. Despite early concerns about academic rigor, criminal justice majors became highly popular and financially attractive to universities, sometimes referred to as academic "cash cows."Clear, T. R. (2001). Presidential address: Has academic criminal justice come of age? Justice Quarterly, 18(4), 709–726. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418820100095071Southerland, M. D. (1991). Criminal justice curricula in the United States: An examination of baccalaureate programs, 1988–1989. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 2(1), 45–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511259100082281 Graduate education also expanded: by the end of the 1990s, there were more than 100 master's-level programs and at least 25 Ph.D. programs in criminology and criminal justice across the country. This institutionalization continued into the 2000s, culminating in the launch of Criminology & Public Policy in 2001, a journal founded by the ASC to bridge theoretical and applied research, with its first editor, Todd Clear, a past president of ACJS.Frost, N. A., & Clear, T. R. (2007). Doctoral education in criminology and criminal justice. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 18(1), 35–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511250601144258
Criminology is now widely recognized as an interdisciplinary field that integrates insights from sociology, psychology, political science, law, and public health. Although some scholars argue that criminology should remain embedded within sociology to preserve its theoretical foundations,Savelsberg, J. J., & Sampson, R. J. (2002). Introduction to mutual engagement: Criminology and sociology. Crime, Law and Social Change, 37(2), 99–105. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014552932605 others see disciplinary independence as beneficial for policy relevance and innovation.Laub, J. (2006). Edwin H. Sutherland and the Michael-Adler report. Criminology, 44(2), 235–257. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2006.00048.xWellford, C. (2007). Crime, justice and criminology education: The importance of disciplinary foundations. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 18(1), 2–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511250601144191 As of 2020, nearly 50 criminology Ph.D. programs existed in the U.S. and Canada, and the National Research Council has identified criminology as an "emerging discipline" since 2006.National Research Council. (2010). A data-based assessment of research-doctorate programs in the United States. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Early schools of thought There were three main schools of thought in early criminological theory, spanning the period from the mid-18th century to the mid-twentieth century: Classical, Positivist, and Chicago. These schools of thought were superseded by several contemporary paradigms of criminology, such as the sub-culture, control, strain, labelling, critical criminology, cultural criminology, postmodern criminology, feminist criminology, Queer criminology, and others discussed below.
Origins and classical school The Classical school arose in the mid-18th century and reflects ideas from utilitarian philosophy. Cesare Beccaria, author of On Crimes and Punishments (1763–64), Jeremy Bentham (inventor of the panopticon), and other early criminological philosophers proposed ideas including: Punishment should be used as a way to deter people from further criminal action. This is premised on the belief that individuals want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Punishment should be "public, prompt, necessary, the minimum possible [i.e., no more than necessary for effective deterrence] under the given circumstances, and established by law." Actual harms, not intent, should determine the severity of punishment. This school developed during a major reform in penology when society began designing prisons for the sake of extreme punishment. This period also saw many legal reforms, the French Revolution, and the development of the legal system in the United States.
Positivist The Positivist school argues that criminal behavior stems from internal and external factors beyond the individual's control. Its key method of thought is that criminals are born as criminals and not made into them; this school of thought also supports theory of nature in the debate between nature versus nurture. They also argue that criminal behavior is innate and within a person. Philosophers in this school applied the scientific method to the study of human behavior. Positivism comprises three segments: biological, psychological and social positivism.David, Christian Carsten. "Criminology - Crime." Cybercrime. Northamptonshire (UK), 5 June 1972. Web. 23 February 2012. <>.
Psychological positivism is the view that criminal acts, or the people who commit them, are driven by internal factors.
Social positivism, often referred to as Sociological Positivism, posits that criminals are produced by society. This school claims that low-income levels, high poverty/unemployment rates, and poor educational systems create and motivate criminals.
Criminal personality The notion of a criminal personality is derived from the school of thought known as psychological positivism. It essentially means that parts of an individual's personality exhibit traits commonly associated with criminals, such as neuroticism, antisocial tendencies, aggressive behavior, and other factors. There is evidence of correlation, but not causation, between these personality traits and criminal actions.
Italian Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), an Italian sociologist working in the late 19th century, is often called "the father of criminology". He was one of the key contributors to biological positivism and founded the Italian school of criminology. Lombroso took a scientific approach, insisting on empirical evidence for studying crime. He suggested physiological traits such as the measurements of cheekbones or hairline, or a cleft palate could indicate "atavistic" criminal tendencies. This approach, whose influence came via the theory of phrenology and by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, has been superseded. Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, believed social as well as biological factors played a role, and believed criminals should not be held responsible when factors causing their criminality were beyond their control. Criminologists have since rejected Lombroso's biological theories since control groups were not used in his studies.Compare:
Sociological positivist