lOMoARcPSD|2668334
, INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINOLOGY AND
PSYCHOLOGY OF CRIMES
College year 2023/2024
What is Criminology?
Criminology (from Latin crimen, “accusation”, and Greek-logia) is
the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes and control of criminal
behavior in both the individual and in society. The term “criminology” was
coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as criminologia.
Around the same time, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the
analogous French term criminologie (Wikipedia).
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 of other types of knowledge regarding this process
of law, crime, and treatment or prevention (Sutherland and Cressey as
cited by Siegel/ Freda Adler, Gerhard O. W. Mueller and Williams
S. Laufer, 1995).
In its broadest meaning, criminology is the body of knowledge
regarding crimes, criminals and the effort of society to prevent and
repress them. This means that criminology is an interdisciplinary field
of inquiry- that is, it draws knowledge from other disciplines such as
biology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, law, medicine, statistics,
economics, and political science in order to provide an integrated
approach in the study of crimes and criminal behaviors.
In a narrower sense, criminology is the scientific study of crimes
and criminal behavior. In a key sense, this is the central aspect of the
definition of criminology. It specifies the very essence of this course. This
means that criminology is primarily concerned with knowing and
understanding the cause of crime and criminal behavior. It seeks to
comprehend the reasons behind the commission of crime. Furthermore
criminology is a science in itself. It applies scientific methods of inquiry to
the study of crimes and criminal behavior. Therefore, criminology is not
common sense nor guesswork, but rather, the scientific study of crime.
The knowledge obtain through criminological research is based on
empirical evidence.
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, Other definitions of criminology include:
Criminology is the science which studies crime, forms of criminal
behavior, the causes of crime, the definition of criminality, and the societal
reaction to criminal activity. Related areas of inquiry may include juvenile
delinquency, victimology (the study of crime victims), theories of
prevention, policing and corrections (Sousa, 2008).
Criminology is a social science dealing with the nature, the extent
and causes of crimes, the characteristics of criminals and their
organizations, the problems of apprehending and convicting law violators,
and the management of jail facilities and correctional institutions. It is a
scientific study of the non-legal aspects of crime, including juvenile
delinquency. In its wider sense, it embraces penology, it is primarily the
study of the causation, correction, and prevention of crimes, seen from
the viewpoints of such diverse disciplines (Wikipedia).
Criminology, on the other hand, is closer to psychology than it is to
criminal justice, because it studies the minds and behaviors of criminals
as opposed to their criminal actions (Sousa, 2008).
Principal Divisions of Criminology
The study of criminology has three principal divisions (Tradio,
1999):
1. Criminal Etiology – an attempt at scientific analysis of the
causes of crimes;
2. Sociology of Law – an attempt at scientific analysis of the
conditions under which penal/criminal laws develop as a process of
formal social control; and
3. Penology – concerned with the control and prevention of crime and
the treatment of youthful offenders.
Three Principal Divisions according to Edwin Sutherland
1. The sociology of law
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