A Short History of Criminology

Criminology is a young discipline, although humans have probably been theorizing about
crime and its causes ever since they first made rules and observed others breaking them.
What and how people thought about crime and criminals (as well as all other things) in the
past was strongly influenced by the social and intellectual currents of their time. This is no
less true of what and how modern professional criminologists think about crime and
criminals. In prescientific days, explanations for bad behavior were often of a religious or
spiritual nature, such as demonic possession or the abuse of free will. Because of the legacy
of Original Sin, all human beings were considered born sinners. The gift of the grace of God
kept men and women on the straight and narrow, and if they deviated from this line it was
because God was no longer their guide and compass.
Other more intellectual types believed that the human
character and personality are observable in physical
appearance. Consider Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’s
distrust of Cassius because he “has a lean and hungry
look.” Such folk wisdom was systematized by an Italian
physician named Giambattista della Porta, who developed
a theory of human personality called physiognomy in
1558. Porta claimed that the study of physical appearance,
particularly of the face, could reveal much about a
person’s personality and character. Thieves, for instance,
were said to have large lips and sharp vision. Porta was
Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
writing during a historical period known as the Heavily influenced biological positivism
in criminology
Renaissance, a period between approximately 1450 and
1600, which saw a change in thinking from the pure God-
centered supernaturalism and relative barbarism of the middle Ages to more human-centered
naturalism.

Renaissance means “rebirth” and refers to the rediscovery of the thinking traditions of the
ancient Greeks. The sciences (primitive as they were) and arts were becoming important, the
printing press was invented, and Christopher Columbus “discovered” America during this
period. In short, the Renaissance began to move human thinking away from the absolute
authority of received opinion and toward a way that would eventually lead to the modern
scientific method. Another major demarcation in the emergence of the modern world was the
Enlightenment, or Age of Reason. The Enlightenment was the period approximately between
1650 and 1800. It might be said that the Renaissance provided a key to the human mind and
the Enlightenment opened the door. Whereas the Renaissance is associated with advances in
art, literature, music, and philosophy, the Enlightenment is associated with advances in
mathematics, science, and the dignity and worth of the individual as exemplified by a concern
for human rights. This concern led to reforms in criminal justice systems throughout Europe,
a process given a major push by Cesare Beccaria’s work On Crimes and Punishments, which
ushered in the so-called classical school. The classical school emphasized human rationality
and free will in its explanations for criminal behavior.

Modern criminology really began to take shape with the increasing faith among intellectuals
that science could provide answers for everything. These individuals witnessed the
harnessing of the forces of nature to build and operate the great machines and mechanisms
that drove the Industrial Revolution. They also witnessed the strides made in biology after
Charles Darwin’s works on the evolution of species. Criminology saw the beginning of the so
called positivist school during this period. Theories of character, such as Franz Josef Gall’s
system of phrenology—assessing character from physical features of the skull—abounded.
The basic idea behind phrenology was that cognitive functions are localized in the brain, and
that the parts regulating the most dominant functions were bigger than parts regulating the
less dominant ones. Criminals were said to have large protuberances in parts of the brain
thought to regulate craftiness, brutishness, moral insensibility, and so on, and small bumps in
such “localities” as intelligence, honor, and piety. The biggest impact during this period,
however, was made by Cesare Lombroso’s theory of atavism, or the born criminal.
Criminologists from this point on were obsessed with measuring, sorting, and sifting all kinds
of data (mostly physical) about criminal behavior. The main stumbling block to
criminological advancement during this period was the inadequacy of its research. The
intricacies of scientifically valid research design and measurement were not appreciated, and
statistical techniques were truly primitive by today’s standards.

The so-called Progressive Era (about 1890 to 1920) ushered in new social ideologies and new
ways of thinking about crime. The era was one of liberal efforts to bring about social reform
as unions, women, and other disadvantaged groups struggled for recognition. Criminology
largely turned away from what was disparagingly termed “biological determinism,” which
implied that nothing could be done to reform criminals, to cultural determinism. If behavior is
caused by what people experience in their environments, so the optimistic argument went,
then we can change their behavior by changing their environment. It was during this period
that sociology became the disciplinary home of criminology. Criminology became less
interested in why individuals commit crime from biological or psychological points of view
and more concerned with aggregate level (social structures, neighborhoods, subcultures, etc.)
data. It was during this period that the so-called structural theories of crime, such as the
Chicago school of social ecology, were formulated. Anomie strain theory was another
structural/ cultural theory that emerged somewhat later (1938). This theory was doubtless
influenced strongly by the American experience of the Great Depression and of the exclusion
of blacks from many areas of American society.

The period from the 1950s through the early 1970s saw considerable dissatisfaction with the
strong structural approach, which many viewed as proceeding as if individuals were almost
irrelevant to explaining criminal behavior. Criminological theory moved toward integrating
psychology and sociology during this period and strongly emphasized the importance of
socialization. Control theories were highly popular at this time, as was labeling theory.

Because the latter part of this period was a time of great tumult in the United States (the anti-
war, civil rights, women’s, and gay rights movements), it also saw the emergence of several
theories, such as conflict theory, that were highly critical of American society. These theories
extended to earlier works of Marxist criminologists, who tended to believe that the only real
cause of crime was capitalism. These theories provided little new in terms of our
understanding of “street” criminal behavior, but they did spark an interest in white-collar
crime and how laws were made by the powerful and applied against the powerless.

Perhaps because of a new conservative mood in the United States, theories with the classical
taste for free will and rationality (albeit modified) embedded in them reemerged in the 1980s.
These were rational choice, deterrence, and routine activities theories, all of which had strong
implications for criminal justice policy. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we witnessed a
resurgence of biosocial theories. These theories view all behavior as the result of various
biological factors interacting with each other and with the past and present environments of
the actors involved. Biosocial theories have been on the periphery of criminology since its
beginning but have been hampered by perceptions of them as driven by an illiberal agenda
and by their inability to “get inside” the mysteries of heredity and the workings of the brain.
The truly spectacular advances in the observational techniques (brain scan methods, $10
cheek swabs to test DNA, etc.) in the genomic and neurosciences over the past two decades
have made these things less of a mystery today, and social scientists are increasingly realizing
that there is nothing illiberal about recognizing the biology of human nature.

No science advances without the technology at its disposal to plumb its depths. For instance,
the existence of atoms was first proposed by Greek philosophers more than 2,500 years ago.
This was dismissed as merely philosophical speculation until the early 19th century, when
English chemist John Dalton proposed his atomic theory of chemistry, which asserted that all
chemical reactions are the rearrangements of atoms. Dalton was heavily criticized by
chemists who wanted a “pure” chemistry uncontaminated by physics. Yet chemists
everywhere soon adopted the idea of atoms, but still debated whether they were an actual
physical reality or just a useful concept. Using scanning tunneling microscopes, today we can
see individual atoms, and the argument has been put to rest.

Criminologists are in a position similar to that of chemists 100 years ago. The concepts,
methods, and measuring devices available to geneticists, neuroscientists, endocrinologists,
and other biological scientists may do for the progress of criminology what physics did for
chemistry, what chemistry did for biology, and what biology is increasingly doing for
psychology. Exceptionally ambitious longitudinal studies carried out over decades in concert
with medical and biological scientists, such as the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and
Development Study (Moffitt, 1993), the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
Study (Udry, 2003), and the National Youth Survey (Menard & Mihalic, 2001), are able to
gather a wealth of genetic, neurological, and physiological data. Such studies are being
conducted with increasing frequency. Integrating these hard science disciplines into
criminology will no more rob it of its autonomy than physics robbed chemistry or chemistry
robbed biology. On the contrary, physics made possible huge advances in chemistry, and
chemistry did the same for biology. These advances would not have happened had scientists
maintained their call for the “purity” of their disciplines.

Definition of Criminology
Criminology can be simply defined as the study of the crime.

Webster1 defines the criminology that "the scientific study of crime and criminals.”

However, we must also acknowledge that this definition is as inadequate as it is succinct.

1
(1959)
Edwin Sutherland has offered what remains a more or less acceptable definition of
criminology, one that is quoted with approval by Wolfgang and Ferracuti:

“Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes

within its scope the process of making laws, of breaking laws, and of reacting toward the
breaking of laws. The objective of criminology is the development of a body of general and
verified principles and other types of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime, and
treatment”.

To this definition, Wolfgang and Ferracuti append a note that "the term criminology should
be used at designate a body of scientific knowledge about crime (emphasis in original).

Some might raise the question whether criminology is the body of knowledge on the
phenomenon of crime or the study of it. Thorsten Sellin suggests that the term be used to
designate both "the body of scientific knowledge and the deliberate pursuit of such
knowledge."2 However criminology is a science which is widely studied for its' own sake, just
like other sciences; crime and criminals are not a bit less interesting than stars or microbes.

But this point of view is secondary as compared with the practical aspect, just as in the case
of medical science. Indeed, comparison with the latter repeatedly suggests itself.

Criminology is an academic discipline that makes use of scientific methods to study the
nature, extent cause and control of criminal behaviour.

Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey define criminology as the body of knowledge
regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes within its scope the processes of making
laws, of breaking laws and or reacting toward the breaking of laws. The objective of
criminology is the development of a body of general and verified principles and of other
types of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime and treatment.

From the definition given by Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey, the most important areas
of criminology include:

1. The development of criminal law and its use to define crime

2
Wilson Thomas P. "Conceptions of Interaction and Forms of Sociological Explanation." American
Sociological Review 35 (August 1970), pp.: 697-710; George Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, Punishment and
Social Structure (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 50; Rudoff, Alvin. "The Soaring Crime Rate:
An Etiological View." Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science (December 1971),
pp.: 543- 547; Cohen, Albert K. "Sociological Research in Juvenile Delinquency." American Journal of Ortho-
Psychiatry 27 (October 1957), pp.: 781-788; Cohen, Morris R., and Ernest Nagel. An Introduction to Logic and
Scientific Method. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1934, pp: 131-154.
 2. The cause of law violation and
3. The methods used to control criminal behaviour.

Criminologists use objectives research methods to pose research questions (hypotheses),

gather data, create theories and test their validity. Criminology is essentially an
interdisciplinary science. Criminologists have been trained in diverse field’s most commonly
sociology, but also criminal justice, political science, psychology, economics and the natural
sciences.

Criminology is also sometimes confused with the study of deviant behaviour. While Deviant
behaviour is behaviour that departs from social norms, criminal behaviour has to do with
violation of law. To understand the nature and purpose law, criminologist study both the
process by which deviant acts are criminalized and become crimes.

Criminology ought before anything to show humanity the way to combat, and especially,
prevent, crime. What is required more than anything is sound knowledge, whereas up to the
present we have had far too much of dogma and dilettantism. Whoever is in close touch with
what is called socio-pathological phenomena should make a note of these especially criminal
jurists, whose knowledge of the law imperatively needs to be supplemented with that of the
subject-matter with which it has to deal.3

Criminology is an academic discipline that makes use of scientific methods to study the
nature, extent cause and control of criminal behaviour. Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey
define criminology as the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It
includes within its scope the processes of making laws, of breaking laws and or reacting
3
Hood, Roger, and Richard Sparks. Key Issues in Criminology. New York: World University Library, 1970, pp:
45-49; Jeffery, Clarence Ray. "The Historical Development in Criminology." In Hermann Mannheim, Ed.,
Pioneers in Criminology. Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1966, pp: 102-109; Jones, David A. Crime
and Criminal Responsibility. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1978, pp: 67-69; Kadish, Sanford H., and Monrad G.
Paulsen. Criminal Law and Its Processes. 3rd ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975, pp: 77-81; Korn, Richard R., and
Lloyd W. McCorkle. Criminology and Penology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959, pp: 131-134;
Lafave, Wayne R., and Austin W. Scott, Jr. Criminal Law. St. Paul, Minn.: West, 1972, pp: 161-164;
Mannheim, Hermann. Comparative Criminology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, pp: 32-35; Pound, Roscoe.
The Spirit of the Common Law. Boston: Beacon, 1963, p: 35; Reckless, Walter C. "American Criminology."
Criminology 8 (May 1970), pp.: 4-20; Schafer, Stephen. Theories in Criminology. New York: Random House,
1969, pp: 122-126; Schur, Edwin M. Law and Society. New York: Random House, 1969, pp: 34-38; Bell,
Daniel. "Crime as an American Way of Life." Antioch Review 13 (June 1953),pp.: 38-39; Black, Donald J.
"Production of Crime Rates." American Sociological Review 35 (August 1970), pp: 733-748; Slwaski, Carol J.
"Crime Causation: Toward a Field Synthesis." Criminology (February 1971), pp: 375-396. - Radzinowicz, Sir
Leon, and Joan King. The Growth of Crime: The International Experience. New York: Basic Books, 1977;
Robison, Sophia M. "A Critical View of the Uniform Crime Reports." Michigan Law Review 54 (April 1966),
1031-1054.
toward the breaking of laws. The objective of criminology is the development of a body of
general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding this process of law,
crime and treatment. From the definition given by Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey, the
most important areas of criminology include:

1. The development of criminal law and its use to define crime

2. The cause of law violation and
3. The methods used to control criminal behaviour.

Criminologists use objectives research methods to pose research questions (hypotheses),

gather data, create theories and test their validity. Criminology is essentially an
interdisciplinary science. Criminologists have been trained in diverse fields most commonly
sociology, but also criminal justice, political science, psychology, economics and the natural
sciences. Criminology is also sometimes confused with the study of deviant behaviour. While
Deviant behaviour is behaviour that departs from social norms, criminal behaviour has to do
with violation of law. To understand the nature and purpose law, criminologist study both the
process by which deviant acts are criminalized and become crimes.

NATURE AND SCOPE OF CRIMINOLOGY

The term “criminology” is used both in a general and special sense. In its broadest sense
criminology is the study (not yet the complete science) which includes all the subject matter
necessary to the understanding and prevention of crime and to the development of law,
together with the punishment or treatment of delinquents and criminals. In its narrower sense
criminology is simply the study which attempts to explain crime, to find our “how they get
that away.” If this latter narrower definition is adopted, one must recognize related fields,
including penology, concerned with the treatment of adult criminals, crime detection, the
treatment of juvenile delinquents, and the prevention of crime. The treatment of delinquency
and crime cannot be wholly separated from their explanation, since one of the reasons for
crime and for its continuance into adult life is the damage done by ineffective treatment both
of juveniles and adults. Ultimately we shall hope to show that both crime and the treatment of
crime are parts of dynamic processes of social relations, crime evoking punishment and other
reactions and these reactions in turn cooking reactions of criminals as they are deterred,
“reformed,” or stimulated to further crime.

If any science is to explain any kind of phenomena consistently, these phenomena must be
reasonably homogenous. Criminology as a behavioral science or study faces an almost
unsolvable difficultly because of the extreme diversity of types of behavior our legislators
have seen fit to make punishable as crimes. To mention but a few of these types, does it seem
logical that we should be able to explain in terms of a common theory behavior as diverse as
the running of stop lights, the raping of women, robbery, huge racketeering syndicates,
treason, murder, and the white-collar crimes of some businessmen? Not all of these crimes
express the same attitudes of mind, not even a universal consciously antisocial attitude. Not
all are conflict behavior, or exploitative behavior, or either wholly rational or wholly
emotional behavior. Facing this dilemma, criminologists have attempted various solutions.
Valuable research has concentrated its attention on particular kinds of crime, such as
professional thieving, embezzlement, murder, sex crime and white-collar crime. Cressey has
gone further and believes he has arrived at sociologically meaningful subdivisions by
isolating types of embezzlement.

Cressery’s plan would seem to lead us to theories as to the causes of specific crimes, rather
than to any general theory of crime. Other criminologists, such as E. H. Sutherland, have tried
to discover processes or relationships which will explain all crime, in spite of its great
variety. Thus we have theories of social disorganization and differential association, theories
of delayed maturation, theories of economic exploitation, theories of anomie or normlessness,
theories of subgroup influence, and so forth. But we shall find that it seems that not all crime
can be explained in terms of any given social process or relationship. Very many
criminologists have given much of the effort to find a single theory explaining crime without
having abandoned the effort to discover why men commit crime. Starting with evidence
derived from case studies and many other sources, they list factors found in the life processes
of criminals. They are able to determine fairly well the interrelationship of these factors in
individual cases. They then find particular factors which often repeat themselves in many
cases, such, for example, as gang membership, lack of status in constructive groups, tensions
in homes, and sense of failure in competition.

Discovery of such single repeating factors does not prove them causes of crime, since the
meaning of any life experience may be different for one criminal than for another. This is
because one factor or experience is, in different cases, combined with different accompanying
factors which give the total gestalt and meaning which express themselves in criminal
behavior. However, it is very significant when we find clusters of factors repeating
themselves in many cases. The multifactor approach does seem to meet the dilemma of the
criminologist in considerable measure. A large proportion of children in our type of society
whose fathers have deserted the home, who have lived in city slums, who have experienced a
sense of failure in competitive relations, who have lost status in constructive groups and
joined juvenile gangs, who have come to believe that everyone has a racket, and whose early
misbehavior has not been dealt with effectively either in the home or by schools and other
social agencies - a large proportion of such children seem to appear continually in our
juvenile courts, and many of them later in our adult courts. The discovery of repeated
incidents of such combinations of experiences enables us to develop approximations to
theories of crime. Such specific life experiences may often be shown to be by-products of the
culture of our society.

Nature and extent of criminology

Criminology draws on the range of human and social science disciplines. The subject is
evolving in its theoretical and methodological development, reflecting the rapid social
changes it tries to capture and the increasing cross-fertilization of ideas and methods between
the human sciences. In its modern forms, it is characterised by robust debates over how to:

 conceptualize and explain its subject matter

 operationalize its theories in conducting research
 inform debates over crime control policy, the scope of human rights, the links
between criminal and social justice, and the expanding knowledge bases of the crime
prevention, security, policing and justice-related professions
 develop and enhance its methodological and technical expertise
 Manage the sensitive ethical issues arising from empirical research.

Criminology is both a theoretical and an empirical discipline. At the heart of criminology are
theoretical debates about a wide range of perspectives. Criminology emphasises the
importance both of theoretical work and of a firm evidence base for its theories. It also
engages in formal and critical evaluation of crime prevention, security and crime control
policies, as well as of other responses to crime and deviance. However, in furthering these
values, it needs to nurture a lively debate and dialogue between a range of theoretical and
methodological perspectives, employing both quantitative and qualitative data. It must guard
against attempts to foreclose this dialogue with the premature creation of theoretical or
methodological protocols favouring particular sub-discipline fields, whether endorsed by
state officials, by the mass media, or by fashions of academic thought.

Empirically, criminology is concerned with:

  processes of criminalization and victimization
 the causes and organization of crime and deviance
 processes of preventing and managing crime and victimization
 official and unofficial responses to crime, deviance and social harm
 Representations of crime, offenders, victims and agents and agencies of control.

Given its strong policy orientation and close relationship with the criminal justice
professions, many of criminology's most significant theoretical advances have been made
through empirical studies. Criminology also contributes to and benefits from continuous
theoretical debates within the social sciences. The vitality of the discipline also requires a
continuous interchange between theory and analytic and evaluative research, and attention to
increasingly salient ethical debates about crime, security, and human rights at international,
national, regional and local levels.

Criminology is intrinsically a reflexive discipline, involving an understanding of contested

values in the constitution and application of criminological knowledge.

Conclusion
 Criminology is the scientific study of crime and criminals. It is an interdisciplinary/
multidisciplinary study, although criminology has yet to integrate these disciplines in
any comprehensive way.
 The definition of crime is problematic because acts that are defined as criminal vary
across time and culture. Many criminologists believe that because crimes are defined
into existence we cannot determine what real crimes are and criminals are. However,
there is a stationary core of crimes that are universally condemned and always have
been. These crimes are predatory crimes that cause serious harm and are defined as
mala in se, or ‘inherently bad’ crimes, as opposed to mala prohibita “bad because
they are forbidden” crimes.
 The history of criminology shows that the cultural and intellectual climate of the time
strongly influences how scholars think about and study crime and criminality. The
Renaissance brought more secular thinking, the Enlightenment more humane and
 rational thinking, the Industrial Revolution brought with it more scientific thinking,
and the Progressive Era saw a reform-oriented criminology reminiscent of the
classical school.
 Advances in any science are also constrained by the tools available to test theories.
The ever-improving concepts, methods, and techniques available from modern
genetics, neuroscience, and other biological sciences should add immeasurably to
criminology’s knowledge base in the near future.
 Theory is the ‘bread and butter’ of any science, including criminology. There are
many contending theories seeking to explain crime and criminality. Although we do
not observe such theoretical disagreement in the more established sciences, the
social/behavioral sciences are young, and human behavior is extremely difficult to
study.
 When judging among the various theories, we have to keep certain things in mind,
including predictive accuracy, scope, simplicity, and falsifiability. We must also
remember that crime and criminality can be discussed at many levels (social,
subcultural, family, or individual) and that a theory that may do a good job of
predicting crime at one level may do a poor job at another level.
 Theories can also be offered at different temporal levels. They may focus on the
evolutionary history of the species (the most ultimate level), the individual’s
subjective appraisal of a situation (the most proximate level), or any other temporal
level in between. A full account of an individual’s behavior may have to take all these
levels into consideration because any behavior arises from an individual’s
propensities interacting with the current environmental situation as that individual
perceives it. This is why we approach the study of crime and criminality from social,
psychosocial, and biosocial perspectives.
 Criminologists have not traditionally done this, preferring instead to examine only
aspects of criminal behavior that they find congenial to their ideology and,
unfortunately, often maligning those who focus on other aspects. The main dividing
line in criminology has separated conservatives (who tend to favor explanations of
behavior that focus on the individual) and liberals (who tend to favor structural or
cultural explanations). The theories favored by criminologists are strongly correlated
with sociopolitical ideology.
 All theories have explicit or implicit recommendations for policy because they posit
causes of crime or criminality. Removing those alleged causes should reduce crime, if
the theory is correct, but the complex nature of crime and criminality makes policy
decisions based on theory very risky indeed. Policymakers must consider many other
issues demanding scarce resources, so the policy content of a theory should never be
used to pass judgment on the usefulness of theory for criminologists.

Bibliography
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 Pearson Prentice Hall.
 Molan T. M (2003) Criminal law, London The HLT Group ltd.
 Seigel L.J (2006) Criminology, Belmont Thomson Wadsworth Inc