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 Socialstructural
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 socialstructural
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.
FURTHER READINGS
Carrington, Kerry, and Russell Hogg, eds. 2002. Critical
Criminology: Issues, Debates, Challenges. Portland, Ore.:
Willan Publishing.
Cullen, Francis T., and Velmer S. Burton, Jr. 1994. Contemporary
Criminological Theory. New York: New York
Univ. Press.
Reid, Sue T. 1994. Crime and Criminology. 7th ed. Madison,
Wis.: Times Mirror Higher Education Group, Brown &
Benchmark.
White, Rob. 2001. “Criminology for Sale: Institutional
Change and Intellectual Field.” Current Issues in Criminal
Justice 13 (November).
CROSS-REFERENCES
Critical Legal Studies; Forensic Science;Marx, Karl Heinrich.
