Introduction to Criminology

The scientific and interdisciplinary study of crime, criminal behavior, offenders, victims, and society's responses to crime.

Paul Topinard, a French anthropologist, is commonly credited with introducing the term criminologie.

Raffaele Garofalo, author of Criminologia.

The study of crime, derived from the Latin crimen and Greek logos.

It draws on sociology, psychology, biology, law, economics, anthropology, and other disciplines to explain crime and responses to it.

Criminology studies crime and criminal behavior broadly, while criminalistics applies scientific techniques to the examination of physical evidence.

Criminology investigates crime as a social and behavioral phenomenon; criminal law defines offenses and establishes legal consequences.

Criminology covers the broader study of crime, while penology focuses on punishment, corrections, and the treatment of offenders.

The study of the causes, contributing factors, and explanations of criminal behavior.

The study of how laws develop, operate, and interact with social institutions, values, and behavior.

Punishment, sentencing, institutional and community corrections, rehabilitation, and offender reintegration.

Crime violates criminal law, while deviance violates social norms and may or may not be illegal.

An act considered inherently wrongful, such as murder or theft, regardless of its legal prohibition.

An act considered unlawful because a statute or regulation prohibits it, even if it is not inherently immoral.

A school emphasizing free will, rational choice, legal certainty, and proportionate punishment as foundations for crime prevention.

Cesare Beccaria.

On Crimes and Punishments, also known as Dei delitti e delle pene.

Punishment should be lawful, proportionate, prompt, and sufficiently certain to deter crime rather than unnecessarily cruel.

Certainty of punishment is generally more effective than excessive severity.

Jeremy Bentham.

Actions and policies should be evaluated according to their tendency to produce pleasure or happiness and prevent pain or suffering.

Bentham's framework for evaluating expected pleasure and pain, including their intensity, duration, certainty, and other dimensions.

The assumption that individuals can make choices by weighing anticipated benefits and consequences.

A modification of classical thought recognizing that age, mental capacity, and other circumstances may affect responsibility and punishment.

It retains choice and responsibility but allows consideration of individual circumstances that may limit culpability.

An approach that seeks empirical explanations of criminal behavior through biological, psychological, and social influences.

Cesare Lombroso.

L'Uomo Delinquente, commonly translated as The Criminal Man.

The historical claim that some offenders were evolutionary throwbacks identifiable through supposed physical traits; the theory is scientifically discredited.

Physical characteristics he incorrectly proposed as indicators of an atavistic criminal type.

Its assumptions and methods were flawed, and physical appearance does not establish criminal propensity.

Enrico Ferri.

His emphasis on multiple interacting factors in criminal behavior and on preventive social measures.

Raffaele Garofalo.

Conduct violating basic sentiments of pity and probity, which he believed were essential to social life.

The classical school emphasizes choice and legal deterrence; the positivist school emphasizes empirical investigation of factors influencing behavior.

The view that behavior is influenced or caused by factors operating beyond unrestricted individual choice.

An approach examining biological and physiological factors potentially associated with criminal behavior.

An approach examining cognition, personality, development, and other psychological factors associated with offending.

An approach examining social structures, relationships, environments, and institutions as influences on crime.

Émile Durkheim.

A condition of weakened or disrupted social regulation in which norms provide insufficient guidance for behavior.

Crime is a normal feature of social life, and responses to it can help clarify or reinforce collective norms.

A perspective linking crime patterns to weakened community institutions, informal social control, and neighborhood conditions.

Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay.

Edwin Sutherland's theory that criminal behavior is learned through interaction and communication with others.

Delinquency becomes more likely when definitions favorable to violating the law outweigh definitions unfavorable to it.

A perspective explaining some offending as a response to pressures, blocked opportunities, or difficulties achieving valued goals.

Robert K. Merton.

The systematic study of victims, victimization, victim-offender relationships, and the consequences and prevention of victimization.