What is the Purpose of Critical Criminology?

The investigation of crime, society’s reaction to it and approaches to prevent it are all areas that have interested me from my adolescent years. I have an interest and passion for Criminology studies for the strict purpose of wanting to fulfill a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of crime and exploring how crimes affect our society. This shady interest in the criminal world has encouraged me to pursue the subject at degree level and to seriously consider a career in a related field. At the beginning of the course my understanding on crime and criminology was mostly derived from the internet or media. These tools became very useful for me to learn different subjects of crime.

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

Criminologists seek to understand the commission of crime in a given society, attempting to figure out why certain crimes occur, and then to study how these can be prevented, and deterred by individuals. The two key approaches I will examine in this assignment is that of the early 'Classicalist' approach, and the opposing 'Positivist' approach, each of which are crucial for understanding modern criminology today.

The Neo-Marxist “new criminology” developed in the early 1970’s is also key to understanding how Marxists explain crime. Taylor, Walton and Young’s work maintained that crime was best understood in the context of capitalism and the inequalities it creates. One way that the neo-Marxists slightly differ with the traditional Marxist theories is that it says there is more freedom of choice that people have when choosing to commit crime and people are not just puppets of the economy. Here it could be said that the Neo-Marxists are taking interactionist theories on board and are moving away from the structuralist theories of traditional Marxism and Functionalism. With their book “The New Criminology” Taylor et al. attempted to come up with a fully social theory of deviance and looked into the importance of the labelling of certain groups within society as being criminal, in their case it was black working class men being labelled as criminal and dangerous by the law and order systems as well as the media. The book analyses the crisis faced by British capitalism during the recession of the 1970’s and the resulting threat to the authority of the state. It argues that the state responded to this crisis by mounting a law and order campaign which lead to a moral panic over mugging. As a result, black youth became increasingly

Schmalleger, F. (2012). Criminology Today: An Integrative Introduction (6th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection Database

Marxist criminology is just one of the criminological schools. It is very much centered on the work of structural functionalism criminologists and parallels it very closely on the focus of what produces ‘stability and continuity in society.’ However, it is different in the approach in the sense that it looks at a predestined ‘political philosophy.’ Marxists focus on why things change and are quick to identify what disrupts life in industrialized nations. They describe how society is divided up into slices and how slices of the pie include power, wealth, prestige, and the perceptions of the world.

Orthodox criminology refers to the how criminologists accept the states ideas of crime without thinking of power relations. This thinking is shared by everyone and becomes a universal idea and these ideas are in the interests of everyone. However, certain groups of individuals are targeted and blamed for crimes based on their class, race, gender, sexuality and more. The theory of Critical criminology as defined in Primer in Radical Criminology is defined as “a way of doing criminology that frames the problem of crime in terms of the sociological forces of class, race, gender, culture, and history.”(1) In other words it focuses on challenging the state on their traditional, “normal” views of crime by looking at other factors. Three differences between critical and orthodox criminologists are the following. The first difference is that critical criminologists seek to find the root of what is behind the crime problem. (14) Rather than saying that the homicide was committed because he was an African American male who is poor (orthodox criminology), critical criminologists look at a deeper sociological explanation, like the community he grew up in has high rates for violence. A second difference is that radical criminologists understand that there is no fixed definition of crime and that there is more than one

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.

A theoretical perspective in the field of criminology that addresses power differentials, inequalities and hierarchies as the explanations of crime is known as critical criminology. In the making and enforcement of law, critical theoretical perspectives are helpful in the reduction of crime by reducing the social, economical and political disparities in a social agency. Critical criminology actually provides a huge framework for the discussion of many other approaches followed in criminology like conflict theory, post-modernism and peacemaking criminology etc.

Classical criminological theory was introduced in 1764. The tenants of this theory became the backbone for the development of all criminological theories to come. After over 200 years have passed since its conception, is classical criminological theory still relevant to today’s society in explaining the causes of crime? This essay will address this question by discussing the major components of classical criminological theory while highlighting its strengths and weaknesses. The essay will also examine a more modern criminological theory, Merton’s anomie/strain theory, and decipher major differences between the two theories. This essay will also explain the aspects of classical criminological theory that are applicable or outdated in their

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the meaning and validity of the label criminology has as a ‘rendezvous discipline’. To do this, this essay illuminates where criminology originates from and what its primary focus is. The Chicago School, Lombrosian Theory, Positivist and Classical criminology, are discussed. Other disciplines namely Sociology, Psychology, and the Criminal Justice Sector are examined and applied to the broad subject of criminology, to show the network of how this subject came to be recognised as such a discipline. Exposed are main issues that occur for the likes of criminologists and other

For critical criminology, the thought process of criminological thinking is believed to be traced back to as early as

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).

White R & Haines F, Crime and Criminology: An Introduction, 2nd ed, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2000.

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)