Relationship Between Crime And Criminology

What is crime? What makes people commit crimes and how can we stop it? These, and many other questions similar to these, are asked by criminologists everyday. Criminology is an ever growing field, mainly because there is more and more research occurring and new theories linking people and crime coming out everyday. Below the main field of criminology there are many subfields that have different theories and philosophies on what they believe link criminal behavior. Two of the main criminology perspectives are Classical Criminology and Positivist Criminology. Although these two are both studied in the criminology field, their views are distinctly contradictory from each other. These two theories and many

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior (Siegel 4). Criminology is not just understanding criminal actions but also studying how to correct and prevent crime, overall. There are five major Criminological theories, (1) Classical Theory, (2) Positivist Theory, (3) Marxist / Conflict Theory, (4) Sociological Theory, and (5) Multifactor / Integrated Theory.

Criminologists have long tried to fight crime and they have developed many theories along the way as tools to help them understand criminals. In the process of doing so, criminologist have realized that in order to really understand why criminals are criminals, they had to first understand the interrelationship between the law and society. A clear and thorough understanding of how they relatively connect with criminal behavior is necessary. Therefore, they then created three analytical perspectives which would help them tie the dots between social order and law, the consensus, the pluralist and the conflict perspectives. Each provides a significantly different view of society as relative to the law. However, while they all aim to the same

As human beings we all see and hear about crimes from a day to day basis. We all question why we have crime and what makes a person commit a crime.

The sociological discipline that deals with crime (behaviour that violates our laws) is known as criminology.

There are many different aspects of criminal justice policy. One in particular is the different theories of crime and how they affect the criminal justice system. The Classical School of criminology is a theory about evolving from a capital punishment type of view to more humane ways of punishing people. Positivist criminology is maintaining the control of human behavior and criminal behavior. They did this through three different categories of Biological studies, which are five methodologies of crime that were mainly focused on biological theories, Psychological theories, which contains four separate theories, and the Sociological theories, which also includes four different methods of explaining why crime exists. The last theory is

1). Criminology arose from the social scientific community over the year and has since come into its own discipline, it examines the entire process of lawmaking, law breaking, and law enforcing” (as cited in Akers, & Sellers, 2013). Criminology seeks to discover the depth of crime at both the micro and macro levels, from the individual’s natural biological and psychological characteristics, the nurturing of social and structural institutions, to policy, prevention and control.

Before we embark on description and analysis of a General Strain Theory of criminology, it is important to, first of all, understand the meaning of the term "criminology". Criminology, as defined by the two social theorists, Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham of Italy and England respectively in their classical school of criminology, is the scientific study of crime, its causes, law enforcement as well as prevention measures taken to curb and control the crime in this case. Despite the fact that criminology has lots of fields including sociology, economics, psychology, biology, psychiatry, statistics and even anthropology, the term also has various theories explaining the real concepts surrounding crime, criminal and criminologist. The reason as to why these theories are many is that criminologists are trying as much as possible to seek the best solutions for reducing the levels and types of crimes. In this regards, the specific theory of criminology that will be described and analyzed in this paper is the General Strain Theory.

20th century and has arguably become unequipped in defining the subject. This is due to the evolution of crime and criminals. Criminology is a discipline that focuses directly on crime, William’s definition bases itself largely on the criminal justice system; it is not now broad enough to define the criminality that exists in modern society. What constitutes now as breaking the law is questioned; is stealing a pencil from a store a crime or should it be classed as deviance. Smartt (2009) composes ‘new offences have come about, such as issuing false cheques or the cloning of credit cards, yet old statues-like the Theft Acts of 1968 and 1978 prevail’.

1. Three eras that characterize the field of criminology over the last 100 years was launch by John H. Laub. The first era went from 1900 to 1930, known as the “Golden Age of Research”. This time was mostly focused on criminal behaviors and gathering data on crime. The second era was “The Golden Age of Theory” which went from 1930 to 1960. This time they did not link criminology research to any theory being developed because the work was not organized. The third era which went from 1960 to 2000, this era the time was extended. This time scientific used it to examine criminology theories from the era that was advanced previously.

In this paper I will be addressing and discussing the two schools of criminology, which respectively are the classical school and the positivist school. I will begin by comparing and contrasting the historical background of both schools using the founders of each school. I will then continue the paper by comparing their assumptions, their findings and their key policy implications. I will do this by explaining each school’s purpose and goal. I will then argue and explain how the classical school is respectively stronger than the positivist school for being straight forward, concise and unbiased.

Criminology is a study of crime, criminals and criminal justice. Ideas about criminal justice and crime arose in the 18th century during the enlightenment, but criminology as we know it today developed in the late 19th century. Criminology has been shaped by many different academic disciplines and has many different approaches. It explores the implications of criminal laws; how they emerge and work, then how they are violated and what happens to those violators. Laws are relative and historically shaped; they vary from time to time and from place to place (Carrabine et al, 2009).

Criminology is more on the study of the crime itself, the study of criminal behavior and to the study of why criminal commit the crime and what the reasons behind committing the crime. Victimology is the study of the relationship between the victims and the criminals, to the interactions between the victims and the criminal justice system, and to the, social and how it deals with crime victims(Daigle,2012).

Criminology is the scientific study of crime and criminals. Criminological theories have provided empirical insight into factors that explain crime. However, as research developed they noticed that not just one theory can adequately explain crime and delinquency. In the early stages of research, they found the neoclassical theory that evolved from the classical school theory that made the assumption of “free will,” and that humans acted on rational choice. It was later developed that biological theories rejected the idea of “free will” and believed that human behavior could be due to genetics or human development starting at a young age. I will be going into better detail about the theories and their underlying assumptions, and how both theories play a significant role into our current knowledge of crime today.

Criminology is the scientific study of crime as an individual and social phenomenon. Criminological research areas include the incidence of crime as well as its causes and consequences. They also include social and governmental regulations and reactions to crime. Nation master.com (2013) highlights that “in criminology the positivist school has attempted to find scientific objectivity for the measurement and quantification of criminal behaviour”. The Positivist School of thought presumes that criminal behaviour is caused by various internal and external factors which are outside of the individual 's control. The scientific method was introduced and applied to the study of human behaviour. Positivism can be broken up into three segments which include biological, psychological and social positivism Nation master (2013)