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NATURE & SCOPE OF CRIMINOLOGY
SEMESTER – VII | PAPER – IV : CRIMINOLOGY &
PENOLOGY - PAPER CODE – 7004(A)
Nature and Scope of Criminology
Criminology is, ordinarily, the science of crime and seeks to study the phenomenon of criminality in its entirety. Criminology as a branch of knowledge is concerned with those particular conducts of individual behaviour which are prohibited by society. It is therefore a societal study which seeks to discover the causes of criminality and suggest remedies to reduce crimes. Criminology consists of two main branches - Criminal Biology , which investigates causes of criminality found in the mental and physical constitution of the deviant, and Criminal Sociology which deals with enquiries into the effect of environment as a cause of criminality. Criminology, penology and criminal law are inter-related fields. Penology deals with the custody, treatment, prevention and control of crimes. Criminal law seeks to implement policies envisaged by criminology and penology (the formulation of criminal policy essentially depends on crime causations and factors correlated therewith). The object of criminology is to study the sequence of law making, law-breaking and reaction to law breaking from the point of view of the efficiency of law as a method of control. The science of criminology aims at taking up case to case study of different crimes and suggest measures to 'reform' the offenders. Liberalisation of punishment for affording greater opportunities for rehabilitation of offenders has been accepted as the ultimate object of penal justice.
The most significant aspect of criminology is its concern for crime and criminals. It presupposes the study of criminal with basic assumption that no one is born criminal. It treats reformation as the ultimate object of punishment while individualization (treatment accorded to each individual according to his personality) the method of it. Criminology also seeks to create conditions conducive to social solidarity in as much as it tries to point out what behaviours are obnoxious and anti-social. The ultimate object is to render a crimeless society so far as possible with a view to achieving social harmony. DETAILED - Introduction Criminology is an advancing field of study. With improvements and advancement in the overall general society, the nature and impacts of wrongdoing have additionally changed. Criminology is a type of field that needs to change its trends with the changing times and must evolve its hypotheses and its approaches, to make itself applicable to the justice delivery system. Whenever done accurately it would upgrade the viability of the strategies and would likewise open up new open doors for criminologists. If criminology doesn’t transform, it won’t have the option to get by with the time and would surrender to the headways. Here in this article, the author had gone forward to discuss different parts of criminology in detail and how it might be advanced to support itself in the coming future. Concept of Criminology The word Criminology was originally formed by joining two ancient Greek words “krino” meaning accusation and “logos” meaning reason or study. Subsequently, on a bare understanding of the root
when two social researchers, Cesare Beccaria in Italy and Jeremy Bentham in England , pushed the possibility that the punishment should be outrageous to the point that the criminal would reason that the enjoyment of the criminal demonstration would not merit the agony of the discipline. This was known as the old-style school of criminology. As of late as 1995, an adjudicator in California condemned a man to jail for taking a cut of pizza. The appointed authority expressed that his options were limited due to the three-strikes law, and the law would not permit the adjudicator to take a gander at the particular wrongdoing. This model follows the traditional school of criminology that was created more than 200 years back. During the mid-nineteenth century, criminologists began to contend that the old-style school of criminology didn’t separate between differing degrees of violations. These criminologists were known as the positivists. The positivists accepted that the discipline should fit the crook, not the wrongdoing. Esare Lombroso , an Italian doctor, was a pioneer of the “positivist hypothesis ” He accepted that lawbreakers were conceived, not made, and that wrongdoing involved a nature, not support. He directed broad investigations on dead bodies of executed lawbreakers, thinking of the contention that specific facial highlights, for example, extremely enormous jawbones and solid canine teeth, were clear signs that an individual was or would be a crook. Notwithstanding, this hypothesis turned out to be less well known for moral reasons and for later speculations concentrating on natural factors that add to criminal conduct. During the late nineteenth century, criminologists started to consolidate science and measurements into their field of study. Hereditary qualities were utilized to decide if criminal conduct could be connected with one relative then onto the next, and
measurements were utilized to consider populace and wrongdoing. In 1946, the Society for the Advancement of Criminology was made, which later turned into the American society of criminology an insightful and logical association planned for considering counteraction and reasons for wrongdoing and treatment of crooks. Importance of Criminology There are several reasons that explain why criminology is important: Reduction in crime : Criminology helps society understand, control, and reduce crime. Studying crime helps discover and analyse its causes, which can be used towards crime reduction policies and initiatives. It helps understand the mindset of criminals : Criminology helps understand the mindset of criminals, why they commit crimes, and the factors that affect them. This helps in the proper allocation of resources to control crime. Reform of criminals : As well as controlling and reducing crime, criminology can also suggest appropriate measures for the rehabilitation of criminals. Criminology as a separate branch of study Despite the tremendous promise and significant potential, Criminology as a subject in this nation is in a condition of avoidable disregard and apathy. The teaching of criminology at degree and post-degree level isn’t widely accessible as there are just not many organizations giving instructing, exploration, or practices in
longing to make criminal equity progressively “just,” they attempted to build rather digestible and counterfeit conditions among wrongdoings and punishments, overlooking the individual qualities and necessities of the criminal respondent. Besides, the object of discipline was reprisal and optionally discouragement, with renewal lingering a long way behind. In the mid 19th century, the primary yearly national wrongdoing measurements were distributed in France. Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874 ), a Belgian mathematician, analyst, and humanist who was among the first to break down these insights discovered significant consistency in them (e.g., in the number of individuals blamed for violations every year, the number of sentences given, the proportion of men to women, and the circulation of guilty parties by age). From these examples, he reasoned that “there must be a request to those things which… are duplicated with amazing consistency, and consistently similarly.” Later, Quetelet contended that criminal conduct was the aftereffect of society’s structure, keeping up that society “readies the wrongdoing, and the blameworthy are just the instruments by which it is executed.” Though Quetelet concentrated on the qualities of social orders and endeavored to clarify their subsequent crime percentages, the Italian clinical specialist Cesare Lombroso (1836–1909) examined singular crooks to decide why they perpetrated wrongdoings. A portion of his examinations drove him to infer that individuals with certain cranial, skeletal, and neurological distortions were “brought into the world lawbreaker.” Exceptionally dubious at the time he introduced it, his hypothesis was at last dismissed by social researchers. The research of both Quetelet and Lombroso emphasized on the search for the causes of crime— a focus that criminology has retained.
Criminologist and their work in the field of criminology Criminologists are the individuals who work and explore the field of criminology. They have an interdisciplinary standpoint towards wrongdoings and search for different perspectives, for example, personal conduct standards, brain science, and such to comprehend the reasons behind the specific wrongdoings or criminal behaviour. The activity of a criminologist incorporates the investigation which depends on the nature of offence and the offenders, historical underpinnings of wrongdoing, a wrongdoing’s effect on society all in all, and how laws could be created to encourage the avoidance of violations. Because of this, criminology can be isolated into 3 channels of works which are:
- Investigation of a crime,
- Finding the reason behind wrongdoing, in this manner comprehend the crooks, and
- To devise measures to forestall wrongdoing and top off provisos which are existing in the criminal law. Benefits of Criminology to the legal system The field of criminology has made enhancements in nearly the whole equity conveyance framework. It has changed a human being’s response to crime which has in turn drastically affected both victims and criminals. It helps us to better understand crime, its cause, and its effect on society as a whole. It has prompted the foundation of increasingly specific regions, as ecological criminology which has acquired headways, police strategies, networks arranged to police, and so forth. It endeavors to clarify why certain occasions are viewed as wrongdoing in specific social orders and not in the others, subsequently, setting up law for the improvement of the law.
