Fields of Study

Criminal justice; law enforcement; law; psychology; philosophy; sociology; anthropology; political science; social work; forensic science; psychiatry.

Summary

Criminology is the study of crime causation and control. Criminologists attempt to elucidate the characteristics and motivation of criminals—from the most mundane and innocuous (scofflaws and petty thieves) to the most obscure and heinous (mass murderers and serial killers)—and how they differ from noncriminals. Why do people commit crimes? Are people born criminals, or do their experiences dictate whether they will break the law? Can crime be controlled or eliminated? Why are some communities safer than others? What causes changes in crime rates? Criminologists search for answers to these and related questions.

Understanding who commits crimes and why can directly affect the passage of laws and the operations and practices of the criminal justice system, which comprises the agencies authorized to respond to criminal acts (law enforcement, courts, and corrections). Criminological theories can provide the basis for the creation of new and more effective programs and interventions designed to help lower crime rates, thereby making communities safer.

Key Terms and Concepts

Biological Theory: Explanations of crime that focus on genetically based, inherited, or physical characteristics.

Crime: Act that constitutes the violation of a law or criminal statute.

Crime Typology: Classification of crimes according to different types of offenses and criminal motivations as well as offender and victim characteristics.

Criminal Career: Frequency, type, and duration of criminal activities committed by an individual offender over a period of time.

Criminality: Strong psychological propensity or tendency to commit crime.

Desistance: Cessation of criminal activity after a period of offending.

Deterrence: Attempt to prevent crime by making punishments match the severity of the crime committed.

Positivism: Application of empirical scientific methods to study crime and criminals.

Psychological Theory: Explanations of crime that focus on early-childhood experiences and personality traits.

Sentence: Punishment that follows a conviction for a crime, such as a fine, community supervision, incarceration, or the death penalty.

Social Theory: Explanation of crime that focuses on environmental processes or structures and the relationships between and among social groups.

Theory: Set of testable, interrelated propositions intended to describe, explain, and predict an event or activity.

Definition and Basic Principles

Criminology draws from writings in the areas of law and crime control as well as from research in the social and behavioral sciences, such as sociology (particularly the subspecialty of the sociology of social-anthropology deviance), medicine (particularly the subspecialty of psychiatry), and psychology (particularly the subspecialty of clinical psychology).

Background and History

Edwin H. Sutherland, who came to be known as the “dean of American criminology,” wrote the first modern-day textbook on criminology in 1924. Criminology paved the way for twentieth century criminological academic pursuits, and his contributions to the discipline are still relevant. Sutherland recognized that crime was a complicated phenomenon affected by political, social, economic, and geographic variables, and he rejected the notion that criminals were simpleminded. In two of his classic textbooks, The Professional Thief and White Collar Crime, Sutherland presented in-depth ethnographic analyses of a professional thief and white-collar criminals, demonstrating the humanity and complexity of criminals.

How It Works

Criminologists are theoreticians and researchers. In studying the distribution and causes of crime, criminologists conduct research and other quantitative studies, analyzing large public surveys and data sets and asking offenders to report their histories, experiences, and decisions to pursue criminal activities. Criminologists also use qualitative research, such as ethnographic studies, to explore firsthand how people move into and out of criminal lifestyles and develop their skills and expertise in criminal specialties.

Criminologists develop theories using a deductive or an inductive approach. The deductive method of theory development starts with general propositions that are used to generate hypotheses, that is, testable questions. These questions are examined in carefully conducted studies, and the data are tested to see if they support the researcher’s theory. The inductive method of theory development starts with data used to generate propositions, which are the building blocks of theory. As the theory becomes increasingly elaborate, more data are collected in a process of theory refinement. As both of these approaches suggest, the key elements of a good criminological theory are testability and empirical support.

Criminological theories are primarily derived from schools of thought that provide basic frameworks for formulating theories and their propositions as well as testable hypotheses. The schools also provide a general perspective and level of analysis for studying crime. Theories of crime are built on the concepts, variables, methodologies, and traditions of a particular discipline. The major disciplines in criminology include sociology, psychology, and biology. Sociology-based theories examine social structures and processes as well as the relationship between social groups. One sociological theory, strain theory, suggests that people without access to legitimate means to achieve success turn to crime. These people are feeling a certain amount of strain (economic, social, emotional, mental) in their lives, and they turn to crime to alleviate it. If members of society are unable to attain their goals because of lack of resources (money, education) those members may engage in illegitimate actions to achieve their goals. Some will retreat from mainstream society to join deviant subcultures, such as gangs and communities of drug users.

Psychology-based theories examine individual differences in characteristics and traits. Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, authors of A General Theory of Crime, posit that people commit crimes because of poorly developed or low self-control, which explains all delinquent and criminal behaviors and is the single, most important cause of crime at the individual level. People who are in control of themselves are able to consider the consequences of their behavior and are careful and deliberate in their decision-making. Such individuals self-monitor effectively and conform in socially desirable ways. In contrast, people with low self-control are present-oriented, impulsive, reckless, and lack empathy. They prefer physical rather than mental activities and engage in antisocial behaviors to meet their selfish needs. Self-control is learned during childhood and once learned it is difficult to change.

Biology-based theories examine the genetic contribution to crime, known as heritability, by employing several different methods of research. For example, twin studies compare identical and fraternal twins raised in the same household to determine the degree to which they are similar regarding crime—that is, their concordance rates. If both twins in identical pairs, who share all the same genes, are more likely to engage in crime than those in fraternal pairs, who share half of their genes, the evidence suggests that crime has a genetic component.

Another type of biology-based investigation strategy is the adoption study. In this type of research, investigators compare the criminality of parents and children who were separated at birth. The children in these investigations were reared by adoptive parents and had no contact with their biological parents. If the criminal involvement of the adoptive children was more like that of their biological parents than their adoptive parents, the data suggest that crime is affected more by nature (biology) than by nurture (environment).

Criminological theories are published in books. Even more important, the work of criminologists is published in journals, which are repositories for the body of knowledge in the field. Publication in a journal lends a degree of prestige and respectability to a study because it has been scrutinized by the author’s peers prior to publication. Journals that publish the research of criminologists include Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, and Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

Applications and Products

Several schools of thought are responsible for most of the major theories of crime. These include the Classical School, the Positivist School, and the Chicago (Ecological) School.

Classical School. This school of thought came about during the age of Enlightenment and was fueled by major reforms in penology and law in which imprisonment replaced corporal punishment as the predominant sanction. Cesare Beccaria (who argued against the death penalty in On Crimes and Punishments, published in 1764), Jeremy Bentham (English philosopher and the inventor of the panopticon, an early, revolutionary prison design), and other Classical School theorists argued that all people—including criminals—act on the basis of free will. Classical criminologists advocated for a humane penology.

In the Classical framework, people are considered fundamentally rationale beings who maximize pleasure and minimize pain as well as weigh the costs and benefits of each action in a process of rational choice. Thus, people decide to commit crimes using a straightforward, cost-benefit analysis. Beccaria wrote that threat of sufficient punishment can deter people from committing crimes, and that the most effective punishments are swift and consistent, and the severity is commensurate with the seriousness of the crime.

In addition to being against the death penalty, Beccaria also stood against torture and the inhumane treatment of prisoners—punishments he considered to be nonrational (ineffective) deterrents. Bentham similarly considered punishment for crimes only as useful as they served as deterrents for future offenses.

Positivist School. Formed in the late nineteenth century, the Positivist School maintained that criminal behavior stemmed from factors beyond a person’s control, both internal (biological and psychological) and external (sociological). Positivists believed that crime and criminals could be best understood through the application of scientific techniques, and that biological, personal, and environmental factors determine criminal behaviors in a cause-and-effect relationship. Biological positivism was first proposed by the Italian physician Cesare Lombroso. Lombroso described criminals as “atavistic throwbacks,” who acted on their primitive urges because they had failed to evolve fully. Their brains were underdeveloped, rendering them incapable of comporting their behaviors to the rules and regulations of society. They could also be differentiated from noncriminals by their physical characteristics. For example, murderers had glassy eyes, aquiline noses, and thin lips. Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, believed that social as well as biological factors played a role in criminality. He argued that criminals should not be held responsible for their crimes when the factors causing their criminality were patently deterministic.

As an example of psychological positivism, Hans Eysenck, a British psychologist and author of Crime and Personality (1964), contended that certain psychological traits were at the root of what drove one to crime. His model of personality also contained the dimension of psychoticism, which consists of traits similar to those found in profiles of people with psychopathy, a set of behaviors and characteristics (the lack of empathy, conscience, and impulse control) that predispose people to commit serious crimes. Eysenck’s model also acknowledged the influence of early parental socialization on childhood and adult tendencies to engage in criminal behaviors. His approach bridged the gaps among biological (William H. Sheldon), environmental (B.F. Skinner), and social learning-based (Albert Bandura) explanations of criminal behavior.

One of the tenets of sociological positivism is that societal factors (poverty, membership in subcultures, low levels of education) create a predisposition to crime. Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet was one of the first to explore the relationship between crime and societal factors. He reported that poverty and low educational levels were important components in crime. British statistician Rawson W. Rawson linked population density and crime rates with statistics. He theorized that crowded cities create an environment conducive to crime and violence. French sociologist Émile Durkheim viewed crime as an inevitable consequence of the uneven distribution of wealth among the social classes.

Chicago (Ecological) School. Between 1915 and the early 1940’s, sociological research in the United States was dominated by various academic disciplines at the University of Chicago—most notably, political science and sociology. To journalists, social reformers, and sociologists, the everyday struggles associated with living in Chicago became a microcosm of the human condition and an encapsulation of human suffering. In this atmosphere of urban despair and blight, many creative scholars combined their talents and applied their intellects to examine the harsh sequelae of urbanism, particularly those problems generated by inner-city living. The Chicago School brought to its research on urbanism many innovative, trenchant, and eclectic methods of social scientific analyses. Members of the Chicago School used a wide array of methodologies in their research, which was conducted in the field (streets, housing developments, opium dens, brothels, alleys, and parks) rather than in the sterility of a library, laboratory, or faculty office.

The Chicago School is exemplified in the work of urban sociologists at the University of Chicago, notably Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess. In their 1925 book, The City, Park and Burgess identified five zones that often form as cities develop. The business district is in the center of the Park-Burgess model, and the zones that appear concentrically include the factory zone, the zone of transition (which was often crime prone), followed by the working-class, residential, and commuter zones. While researching juvenile delinquency in the 1940’s, Chicago School sociologists Henry McKay and Clifford R. Shaw discovered that most troubled and troublesome adolescents were concentrated in the zone of transition.

Chicago School sociologists adopted a social-ecology approach in their study of cities, postulating that urban neighborhoods with high levels of poverty often experience a breakdown in social structure and institutions (families and schools). In the ecological model, such areas are hotbeds of social pathology, including disorganization, disorder, and decline—all of which render social institutions unable to control behavior, resulting in a downward spiral of neighborhood decay and creating an environment ripe for criminal and other deviant behaviors. Such neighborhoods tend to experience high rates of population turnover, which does not allow informal social structures to develop adequately and, in turn, makes it difficult to maintain social order in the community.

Impact on Industry

Criminology has greatly affected crime-control policies and practices. Theories of crime have implications for punishments and crime-prevention techniques. The adoption of utilitarian-based (Classical) approaches to punishment led to the creation of determinate sentencing structures in which sanctions—in particular, lengths of incarceration—are pre-established and based on the seriousness of the offense. The punishment fits the crime in terms of severity, while characteristics of the offender are given little weight in the sentencing decision.

Another application of the Classical School of criminology stems from rational-choice theory, which argues that criminals, like everyone else, weigh costs and benefits when deciding whether to commit a crime. An economic calculus is their primary decision-making modality. Rational-choice theories also suggest that increasing the likelihood of being caught through added surveillance (cameras), the visible presence of police officers or security guards, more voluminous street lighting, and other environmental measures is effective in reducing crime.

Based on the Positivist School of thought, social-disorganization theory suggests strategies to reduce crime by strengthening communities. The Chicago Area Project (CAP) exemplifies this strategy and has achieved legendary status in the annals of criminology. Founded in 1934 by Chicago School sociologist Clifford R. Shaw, CAP has a long history of community building in which low-income residents assume responsibility for addressing critical neighborhood problems, such as delinquency, gang violence, substance abuse, and unemployment. Skeptical of psychological explanations of delinquency and programs aimed solely at reforming individuals, Shaw created CAP as a new form of grassroots community organization. Its goal was to prevent delinquency by encouraging local residents’ active participation in community self-renewal. CAP rests on a powerful network of organizations and special projects that promote positive youth development and prevent juvenile delinquency through community building.

Careers and Course Work

Educational programs in criminology focus largely on crime and deviant behavior and include courses in criminal law and procedures, psychology, sociology, research methodology, and statistics. Criminology students also study the components and operations of the criminal justice system. Academic programs in criminology differ from those in criminal justice, which focus more on the criminal justice system itself and often provide training and job placement for particular careers in the field.

Criminologists are mostly doctoral-level academicians and policy analysts. The individuals who work in the criminal justice system are most properly described as criminal justice professionals or practitioners. These include a wide variety of personnel: judges, state’s attorneys, public defenders, police officers, probation officers, parole agents, correctional officers, and victims’ advocates. Criminologists can also be confused with criminalists, who specialize in the collection and analyses of the physical evidence deposited at a crime scene (also known as ballistic, fingerprint, shoe-print experts; crime laboratory technicians; and crime scene investigators and photographers).

Primarily involved in theory construction, research, teaching, writing, and policy analysis, criminologists contribute a great deal of expertise to the study of policing, police administration and policies, juvenile justice and delinquency, corrections, correctional administration and policies, drug addiction and enforcement, criminal subcultures, typologies of criminals, and victimology. In addition, they examine the various biological, sociological, and psychological factors related to criminal trajectories, which are pathways into and out of criminal behavior. Some criminologists also engage directly in community initiatives as well as in evaluation and policy projects with local, state, and federal criminal justice agencies.

Criminologists conduct their own research while teaching courses in psychology, legal studies, criminal justice, criminology, sociology, and pre-law at two- and four-year colleges and universities. Others work for state and federal justice agencies as policy advisers or researchers. These agencies include the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National Institute of Justice, the National Institute of Corrections, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Criminologists can also be found in the private sector, where they provide consulting services on various issues such as crime statistics, juvenile and adult correctional programming, crime prevention and security protocols, legal reform, and justice initiatives, or they can work for large think tanks such as RAND or Abt Associates, pursuing policy-oriented research and evaluations.

Becoming a criminologist requires a minimum of a master’s degree in criminology. However, criminologists who work in university settings typically possess doctoral degrees and postdoctoral training. In addition, criminologists can receive their doctoral degrees in other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, political science, or public policy, and specialize in crime and criminals during the course of their advanced studies.

Social Context and Future Prospects

The precipitous increases in crime that accompanied the creation of the urban ghetto and the alienation of the immigrant populations during the turbulent 1960’s, as well as the crime-accelerating effects of unstable drug markets in the 1990’s, provided further impetus for criminological theory and research and the continual search for solutions to Americans’ crime problems. Despite the admonitions of European criminologist Hermanus Bianchi, who warned criminologists to ply their trade away from politics, modern criminologists are interested in informing political agendas and public policies relating to crime control and justice issues. Indeed, many practitioners increasingly seek to incorporate into their everyday activities evidence-based practices grounded in scientific knowledge and solid theorizing. Nonetheless, as historian Lawrence Friedman notes, enduring cultural taboos have become obstacles to the implementation of lasting and effective crime-control efforts; these include widespread resistance to adopting strict gun-control laws, legalizing/decriminalizing drugs, and increasing taxes to pay for social and rehabilitative programs.

Further Reading

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