Criminology is the study of the causes and nature of crime, must start with a consideration of what is meant by crime. There is a widespread tendency to equate crime and sin, but there are many offences against the law that are not regarded as sins by the accepted moral codes of the day and many sins which are not criminal since they are not forbidden by law.
In electing to prohibit certain actions, the State cannot ignore the ethical standards of the day, but the determining factors are primarily concerned with the harm the community may suffer through a particular action, rather than with moral issues, taking into account also whether the offence can be detected in a sufficient number of cases for the law to be workable.
Nowadays when environmental conditions are stressed as a cause of crime, it is likely to be the sociological rather than the purely economic factors that are given most weight. The study of subcultures is now seen to be significant to the criminologist. Moral standards and accepted codes of behavior may vary greatly between different sections of the community, and conformity to the norms of his own world, that is to say a strong social sense, may lead an individual to be regarded as anti-social by the community as a whole as represented by its courts and criminal laws.
The modern emphasis on the emotional and mental factors in the causation of crime has produced a school of thought which, like the Marxian, tends to regard the criminal as made by circumstances, though it stresses a wholly different set of circumstances. In this view the criminal is someone in need of psychiatric treatment rather than punishment. That such treatment has a role to play is now widely realized, but the more responsible psychiatric thought recognises its limitations. Nevertheless modern psychological work has made it clear that persons do exist who without being certifiably insane or insane in the sense laid down by the M’Naughten Rules are none the less not fully responsible for their actions.
What Is Criminology;What Does A Criminologist Do?
The activity of a criminologist is usually carried out by a police specialist. However, there are professionals who are working in the private security field, the field of justice,state investigative agencies or in the world of prisons.
In addition to assisting magistrates and investigators on both sides, the criminologist also deals with:
- high-profile scientific research analyzing the root causes and consequences of crime in its cause-effect mechanisms;
- security and prevention covering the role of security manager;
- consultant for police forces and investigators in general: from the police commissioner to the single policeman and to the defense;
- coordinating the parties’ working groups, ie both the prosecution and the defense;
- supporting the victims;
- prevent crime by suggesting effective methods and systems to avoid potentially dangerous situations.
We can say;Criminology is defined as the science that studies crimes, authors, victims, behaviors, social reactions, forms of control and prevention.
