Criminology and Criminal

Behaviour

Unit- I
FSC 1802
Introduction to Criminology
Dr. Shefali Gola
 What is Criminology?
 An interdisciplinary profession built around the scientific study
of crime and criminal behavior, including their forms, causes,
legal aspects and control.

Definition of criminology by various authors:

 Bloch and Geiss (1970:79)

 A science that deals with different aspects of behavior that violates
criminal law.

 Gibbons (1977: 3)
 Entire body of knowledge regarding the causes and prevention of crime,
punishment and correction of criminals, and operation of correctional
institutions and agencies.
 Criminology is also defined as a ‘discipline or a branch of knowledge
which embraces etiology of criminal behavior, societal responses to
crime, control of crime and the correction of criminals.’

 Walter Reckless (1955:11)

 Science which studies violation of criminal codes or set of rules
and regulations in society.

Who is a Criminologist:
A criminologist is one whose professional training and
occupational role are concerned toward a scientific approach,
study and analysis of the phenomena of crime and criminal
behavior (Wolfgang, 1963: 155-102).
 Criminalistics vs. Criminology

Criminalistics Criminology

 The scientific examination of  Includes the psychological

physical evidence for legal angle, studying the crime
purposes. scene for motive, traits, and
behavior that will help to
interpret the evidence
 Criminology and Deviance
 Deviance is defined as:
Behavior that departs from the social norm but is not always
criminal

 A Crime is defined as:

An act deemed as socially harmful or dangerous that is
specifically defined, prohibited, and punished under criminal
law

 Penology:
The branch of criminology dealing specifically with the
punitive (involving or aiming at punishment) aspect.
 Criminology and Criminal Justice
 The terms are often interchanged
 Sometimes the information can overlap
 There are major differences between them

 Criminology
 Explains the origin of crime
 Explains the extent and nature of crime in society

 Criminal Justice
 The study of the agencies of social control
 Police
 Courts
 Corrections
 Crime, Criminal and Criminology
Six imp questions are dealt with in criminology today:
Jack Young framed the following questions (Jack Young, Crime and
Society, 1981: 249-52)
1. How is an individual’s criminal behaviour explained (free will vs.
force)
2. How is the functioning of social order perceived? (consensus or
coercion)
3. How is crime defined? (legal vs. social)
4. How is extent and distribution of crime viewed? (limited vs.
extensive)
5. How are causes of crime explained? (personal vs. society)
6.What is policy regarding criminals? (punishment vs. rehabilitation)
 Field & Scope of Criminology
Broadly Criminology directs along 3 lines:
 First: Investigates nature of criminal law and its administration and
conditions under which it develops
 Second: Analyzes the causation of crime and the personality of criminals
 Third: Studies the control of crime and rehabilitation of offenders.

Scope:
 The activities of legislative bodies
 Law- enforcement agencies (police)
 Judicial institutions (courts)
 Correctional institutions (prisons and reformatories)
 Educational, private and public social agencies
Field of criminology :
 Composed of knowledge drawn from fields like sociology, law, medicine,
public administration, social work, religion and education.
 Criminology as Science and Art
 Characteristics of Scientific observation:
 Scientific observation is based upon verifiable evidences
 Scientific observation is accurate
 Scientific observation is precise
 Scientific observation is systematic
 Scientific observation is recorded
 Scientific observation is objective
 Scientific observations are made under controlled conditions
 Scientific observations are made by trained observer
 Steps in scientific method of investigation:
 Defining the problem
 Reviewing the literature
 Formulating hypothesis
 Planning the research design
 Collecting the data
 Drawing conclusion
 With these concepts of science and scientific methods, criminology can be
described as a science because it uses the method that is defined as science.
However, if ‘Science’ is referred to in terms of the ‘content’, i.e. “the body
of scientific findings”, then criminology is not a science.
 Concept of crime
 The legal definition of crime is that it is a behaviour or an
activity in violation of the legal code.

 Paul Tappan has defined crime as “ an intentional act or

violation of criminal law committed without defence or
justification and sanctioned by the state for punishment”.
 Elements of Crime
1. Act must be actually committed
2. Voluntary and committed under control over action
3. Intentional (General or specific)
4. Violation of criminal law (diff from civil laws)
5. Without self-defence or insanity
6. Sanctioned by state as punishable
 Concept of a Criminal
Criminal:
 Legally, who is convicted by a court for violating the law of the land.
 The term criminal cannot be applied to one who has not been
convicted of a crime by the court.
 However, the law has never specified whether the criminal status of a
person ends after completing the term of imprisonment upon him,
i.e., when the status begin and when it ends.

Classification of criminal:
 Mainly classified as
 First offender
 Casual habituals
 Professional
 White-collars
Classification of criminal
 Historical Perspective of Criminology
and Concept of Criminal Behavior

Brief History of Criminology

 Demonic Perspective (Middle Ages, 1200-1600)

 Classical School (the late 1700s and the early 1800s )
 Neo-classical school (emerged between 1880 and 1920 and is
still with us today)
 Positivism (the mid 1800s and early 1900s)
 Sociological Criminology (mid 1800s till now)
 Demonic Perspective

 It is based on the existence of evil behavior in the world

 Temptation Model-how to treat
criminals?

 Public humiliation and banishment (to force to leave a

country as punishment) were frequently used by religious
societies as ways of controlling their deviant populations
 For serious deviants,
capital punishment would
be a final solution
 Classical School

 The Classical "School" of Criminology is a broad label

for a group of thinkers of crime and punishment in the
18th and early 19th centuries

 Two famous writers during this classical period were

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) and Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832)
 Classical School

 Crime was committed out of total free will and that

individuals weighed the consequences of their actions
 Punishment is made in order to deter people from
committing crime and it should be greater than the pleasure
of criminal gains
Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)

 People should be presumed innocent until proven guilty (no

torture)
 The law should be codified (written) with punishments
prescribed in advance
 Punishment should be limited (less harsher) to only that
necessary to deter people from ever committing it again (no
capital punishment)
 Punishment should be severe, certain, and swift
 The criminal justice system should be organized around
crime prevention
 Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

 People act as human calculators, they put all factors into

a sort of mathematical equation to decide whether or not
to commit an illegal act
 Punishment should be just a bit in excess of the pleasures
derived from an act and not any higher than that
 The Neo-classical School

 A revision of classical school

 Neo-classical criminologists recognized that the free will approach
had a number of shortcomings
 Leading proponents were Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) and his
student Raymond Saleilles (1898)
 Some behaviors are very irrational
 Self-defense or mistake of fact
 So, not all persons were completely responsible for their own
actions
 Positive treatment toward "mental illness" type explanations
Positivist School in Criminology

 There are body and mind differences between people

 Punishment should fit the individual criminal, not the
crime
 Criminals can be treated, rehabilitated, or corrected.
 Most people believe the leading figure of positivist
criminology (often called the father of criminology) was
Lombroso (1835-1909).
 Fundamental assumptions

 The basic determinants of human behavior are genetically based

 Observed gender and racial differences in rates and types of
criminality may be at least partially the result of biological
differences b/w the sexes and racially distinct groups
 Sociological Theories of Crime

 Search for factors outside the individual - socialization,

subcultural membership, social class
 Explains crime by reference to the institutional structure of society
 Society
 Neighborhood
 Parents
 School
 Peers
 Role models
 Methods and techniques in
criminology
1. Survey Method
 Collects facts by putting questions to a large number of
persons under scientific control.
 Tools used are: Questionnaire, schedule and interview guide

Merit: Study criminal behaviour in its natural settings (family,

prison, police station, court, correction homes, etc.)
Demerits: Chances of error since informant may not
understand the question or give false information.
 2. Case study
 Method of studying social phenomenon through an intensive and in
depth analysis of an individual case:
social, medical, psychological, mental background.
 Case may be:
 A person
 A group
 Institution
 An event or situation
Merits:
 Helps in suggestion of hypothesis
 Based on the assumption that the case resembles similar types and
so analysis and generalization can be made on a large group based
on a case study.
3. Statistical Method
 Helps to reduce complex mass of data to simple units
of measurements.
 Studies effect of various factors such as age, income, education,
intelligence, etc. with regard to crime
 Average, standard deviation, correlation techniques are used.

Merits: Enables to reduce complex mass of data to simple units of

measurement.

Demerits: Give no knowledge about causation. Only directs

inquiry but shows no cusal relationship
4. Experimental

 Observations based on experiments

 Eg., effect of some new method for treating delinquents is
studied on a group of people

 Limitation:
Control Group is difficult to achieve
Insufficient data
 The Underlying Logic

Atavism
Inability to
Mental and Learn and Criminal
Physical Follow legal Behavior
Inferiority rules
Defective
genes