The Concept of Crime

Criminology is best seen as a social science, which is concerned  with the aspects  of human behaviour. Criminology has many meanings but the most commonly accepted is the specific scientific understanding of crime and criminals. It is a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary subject. This is because criminology draws from the works of legal scholars, philosophers, Biologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists. Basically, crime appears to be a sociological concept. And does not exist as an autonomous entity but is socially constructed.

The term ‘criminology’ is essentially concerned with the scientific study of crime.  It should not be confused with the science of criminal detection or Forensic science and forensic pathology.  There is no direct linkage between the detection of crime by the enforcement agents and the study of crimes and criminal behaviour carried out by the criminologists.  Sometimes however there may exist indirect connection. The criminologist usually focuses more on ‘how’ and ‘why’ crimes are committed rather than ‘who’ did it, and providing proof of guilt. “Criminology is best seen as a social science concerned with those aspects of human behaviour regarded as criminal because they are prohibited by the criminal law, together with such aspects of socially deviant behaviour as are closely related to crime and may usefully be studied in this connection” (Hall Williams, 1984). Simply put, criminology is the study of crime and criminal behaviour. It is an interdisciplinary field of study which analyses the aspects of a particular human behaviour. This entails the examination of the particular aspects of the behaviour that predisposes him to be referred to as criminal. The study recognizes what determines and why individuals commit crime and juvenile delinquency; and as well as the steps necessary in controlling crime.

The major branches of criminology are: Penology, the study of penal sanctions or punishment; Victimology, the study and rehabilitation of the victims of crime; Criminalistics, the methods of investigation and detection of crime, especially the job of law enforcement agencies and forensic experts; Administration Of Criminal Justice involving the courts and prisons; and Empirical Research, for analyzing crime data with regard to arrests, convictions and sentencing. As an academic field of study, criminology includes other disciplines such as law, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, medicine, economics, political science, geography,  biology, chemistry, history, public administration and anthropology. To study crime, the criminologist, tries to identify the individual and the society. Therefore, the psychological, physiological, social as well as environmental factors are important in determining why an individual exert criminal behaviour.

In defining criminology as an independent discipline the seventeenth and eighteenth century understanding of crime was regarded as an omnipresent temptation to which all human kind was vulnerable. But the question was, “why some succumbed and others resisted”. The explanation was trailed off into the unknowable resort to fate, or the will of God, or providence. That is, the Christian tradition discusses individual wrongdoing in explicitly moral and spiritual terms which contradict the systematically controlled empirical evidence. They believed that the invocation of the Devil or divine intervention is a spiritual account for human action. For instance,  the  story tells us how a woman fell in  with bad company and sorely tried by temptation, became too fond of drink, lost  her reputation and was driven to crime by lust. Nevertheless this puritan’s tale of sin and repentance is rich in the features with the contemporary criminological theories. Other discourses on crime and criminals are the various writings of ancient and medieval philosophers. These include criminal biographies and broadsheets, accounts of the Renaissance underworld, Tudor vogue pamphlets, Elizabethan dramas and Jacobean city comedies that made rudimentary versions of an understanding of how one becomes deviant. Others are the utopia of Thomas More and the Famous novels of Daniel Defoe especially  “Moll  Flanders” published in 1722. In fact, what we need to recognize was that there were  variety  of ways of thinking about crime, and that criminology is only one version among others. 

The important connection between the literature of the reformers and the criminology that followed was that the reformers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were writings about a set of legal institutions about the systematic arrangement of social policy goals and order.  The Enlightenment writers wrote secular analyses, emphasizing the importance of reason and experience rather than the theological forms of reasoning, which are dominated by irrational, superstitious beliefs and prejudices. This is based on “unscientific” reliance upon speculative reasoning rather than observed facts. By the middle years of the nineteenth century the “scientific” style of reasoning about crime had become a distinctive feature of the emergent culture of amateur social science.

The scientific style of reasoning was the Enlightenment thinking about crime. What we saw was a paradigm shift from non-rational thinking to that which is based on the principles of Enlightenment of crime. The cornerstones of such thinking were the French philosophers’ ideologies that highlight the importance of rationality. They made a distinctive move away from the systems that were by irrational to a more rational and predictable factors. Reason became a key way of organizing knowledge.  There was universalism for general laws and the idea of the uniformity of human nature against the view that beliefs of other nations and groups are not inherently inferior to European Christianity. Secularism became opposed to the church. The thinkers include Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.

In defining criminology as a legal subject, Sykes defines criminology as the study  of the social origins of criminal law, the administration of criminal justice, the causes of criminal behaviour, and the prevention and control of crime. In this definition, the emphasis is on the function of law and the efficacy of the administration of justice in the prevention and control of crime. Sutherland and Cressey define criminology as the body of knowledge regarding delinquency and crime as social phenomena. According to them, criminology includes within its scope, the process of making laws, of breaks laws, and the reacting to the breaking of law. They conclude that criminology consists of the sociology of law, criminal etiology and penology. This is the aspect of the subject of criminology in  sociology.

On the discussion of criminology as an inter- or intra- disciplinary subject: the modern criminological ideology is composite, eclectic and multidisciplinary. It is a body of systematically transmitted forms of knowledge. The list of  its  central topics is long and diverse, and each topic breaks down further into numerous sub- topics. The substantive areas have adopted a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, drawing upon the whole gamut of theoretical perspectives such as psychoanalysis; functionalism, internationalism, ethno methodology, Marxism, feminism, critical ethnic theory, system theory, postmodernism, etc.

Psychoanalysis

The Psychoanalysis criminology is the basis of Sigmund Freud analysis of crime. According to Freud, crime and delinquency are a consequence of an imbalance between the three factors of the subconscious mind: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id (instinct gratification) is the component of the subconscious mind that is self-serving, egocentric, and concerned with self-gratification. Conversely, the superego is the component of the mind that  represents  morality  and conscience. The ego mediates between the contrasting needs of the id  and  superego, and attempts to fulfill the desires of the id within the  boundaries  of social conventions. If the id or superego overpowers the mediating  force  of the ego, crime, delinquency, and other forms of irrational behaviour may occur.

Functionalism

The functionalism criminology is the structural - functionalism paradigm  of  Robert k. Merton and Talcott Parsons. They coined this sociological terminolog “functionalism” from a type of crime which is charactrised as a consequence of societal requirements, customs and institutions. It is a fact that no society exists without crime. Crime is both functional and dysfunctional. It is functional when its society has a normal characteristics and proper actions of a social organization, but dysfunctional when it undermines and impairs society’s capacity to provide for the well-being and safety of its members and to maintain their trust.

Interactionalism

The Interactionalism criminology is the basis of Erving  Goffman  analysis  of crime. The central point of the symbolic-integrationist theory is that behaviour should be regarded not so much in terms of what it means to others and society in general but what it means to you, the actors. Also the way other people react or respond to your behaviour powerfully influences your own perception of reality, response and reaction. It examines the new ways of looking at  behaviour,  and  what the language used symbolizes for the actor, as well as how other people’s behaviour is described and interpreted.

Marxism 

The Marxism criminology is the basis of Marxist approach of crime. Its thesis is that criminal behaviour arises from the wider social conditions or social structure of political economy. Marx observed that the economic base or the infrastructure determines the precise nature of the super structure.

Feminism

The Feminist perspective is the radical tradition of the feminist criminology by a British sociologist, carol smart. Its main focus is that economic disadvantage is the primary cause of crime. She claims that social economic and cultural liberation of women will lead to an increase in traditional “masculine” behaviour. The feminist crime according to her arises out of frustrations, sub service, and dependency.

Therefore, the main focus of the criminologist is in the main criminal behaviour as an aspect of social behaviour including the way people are perceived  and  dealt with as offenders. The offenders are the acts or conducts that violate the criminal law of the society. Examples are murder or culpable homicide, robbing or brigandage, stealing, theft. In the same vein, if the act or conduct does not violate the criminal law of society then that act or conduct does not constitute a crime. Example: telling falsehood; gluttony, greed.

REFERENCES

Carrabine, Eamonn, et al (2004). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction.

London: Routledge.

Ferdinand, Theodore N. (1966). Typologies of Delinquency: A Critical Analysis.

New York: Random House.

McGuire, Mike, et al, eds. (2002). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Neubeck, Kenneth J. and Davita S. Glasberg (2005). Sociology: Diversity,  Conflict, and Change. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Williams, Hall J. E. (1984). Criminology and Criminal Justice. London: Butterworths.

  

Click to Save or and to Print this Article for free