Criminology

Criminology 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 includes within its scope 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." 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: Golden Age of Research which has been described as a multiple-factor approach, Golden Age of Theory which endeavored to show the limits of systematically connecting criminological research to theory, and 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 and the Law Enforcement Education Program, which provided funding for academic training in policing and corrections during a period of social unrest and crime concern. 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. In response, some educators split from the American Society of Criminology in 1963 to form the International Association of Police Professors, arguing that ASC remained too narrowly sociological in focus.
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." 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.
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, others see disciplinary independence as beneficial for policy relevance and innovation. 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.

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, Jeremy Bentham, 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 under the given circumstances, and established by law."
Severity of punishment should be determined by actual harms, not intent.

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 criminal behaviour comes from internal and external factors out of 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 within this school applied the scientific method to study human behavior. Positivism comprises three segments: biological, psychological and social positivism.
Psychological Positivism is the concept that criminal acts or the people doing said crimes do them because of internal factors driving them.
Social Positivism, which is often referred to as Sociological Positivism, discusses the thought process 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 having a criminal personality is achieved from the school of thought of psychological positivism. It essentially means that parts of an individual's personality have traits that align with many of those possessed by criminals, such as neuroticism, anti-social tendencies, aggressive behaviors, and other factors. There is evidence of correlation, but not causation, between these personality traits and criminal actions.

Italian

, 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.

Sociological positivist

suggests societal factors such as poverty, membership of subcultures, or low levels of education can predispose people to crime. Adolphe Quetelet used data and statistical analysis to study the relationship between crime and sociological factors. He found age, gender, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption were important factors to crime. Lance Lochner performed three different research experiments, each one supporting education reduces crime. Rawson W. Rawson used crime statistics to suggest a link between population density and crime rates, with crowded cities producing more crime. Joseph Fletcher and John Glyde read papers to the Statistical Society of London on their studies of crime and its distribution. Henry Mayhew used empirical methods and an ethnographic approach to address social questions and poverty, and gave his studies in London Labour and the London Poor. Émile Durkheim viewed crime as an inevitable aspect of a society with uneven distribution of wealth and other differences among people.

Differential association (sub-cultural)

Differential association posits that people learn crime through association. This theory was advocated by Edwin Sutherland, who focused on how "a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law." Associating with people who may condone criminal conduct, or justify crime under specific circumstances makes one more likely to take that view, under his theory. Interacting with this type of "antisocial" peer is a major cause of delinquency. Reinforcing criminal behavior makes it chronic. Where there are criminal subcultures, many individuals learn crime, and crime rates swell in those areas.