Shortcuts on this page: Terminology, History, Motives, Policy

    Criminology is an advanced, theoretical field of study.  It can be defined as the study of crime, the causes of crime (etiology), the meaning of crime in terms of law, and community reaction to crime.  Not too long ago, criminology separated from its mother discipline, sociology, and although there are some historical continuities, it has since developed habits and methods of thinking about crime and criminal behavior that are uniquely its own.

    Theory is a complex subject in its own right. Criminological theory is no exception; it also tends to be complex. Some definitions of terms might help to understand the field:

• Criminology - the science of crime rates, individual and group reasons for committing crime, and community or societal reactions to crime.

• Criminologist - a person who studies criminology; not to be confused with a "criminalist" who reconstructs a crime scene or works with crime scene evidence for forensic purposes.

• Applied criminology - the art of creating typologies, classifications, predictions, and especially profiles of criminal offenders, their personalities and behavior patterns.

• Theory construction - an informed, creative endeavor which connects something known with something unknown; usually in a measurable way.

• Theory building - efforts to come up with formal, systematic, logical, and mathematical ways in which theories are constructed.

• Theoretical Integration - efforts to come up with grand, overarching theories which apply to all types of crime and deviance.

• Theoretical Specification - efforts to figure out the details of a theory, how the variables work together; usually associated with a belief that many, competing theories are better than integrated efforts.

• Theoretical Elaboration - efforts to figure out the implications of a theory, what other variables might be added to the theory; also associated with the belief that theory competition is better than theoretical integration.

• Variables - the building blocks of theories; things that vary; things you can have more or less of; e.g., crime rates, being more or less criminally inclined (criminality).

• Other terms - see the online glossaries at CrimeTheory.com and  CJ Central.

    Criminologists use words a certain way to indicate relationships between causes (independent variables) and effects (dependent variables). Here are some general guidelines that might help when reading some actual writing of a criminologist:

• "varies with" -- this means things fluctuate together; as one thing goes up, the other thing goes down; usually used to describe a possible inverse relationship but also used to describe a direct relationship.

• "where..." -- while not technically a verb, this word usually indicates a feedback relationship, where things go up or down in response to one another. Often, but not always, the case involves an important Z factor which moderates, distorts, or confounds the relationship. Relationals like "varies", "fluctuates", "predominates", "associated with", and "overrepresented by" are usually found when the theorist is dealing with socio-demographic variables, like age, race, or social class.

• "seems to be" -- this wishy-washy language usually means that the theorist suspects a weak relationship, probably way less than 50%.

• "tends" -- this might mean, but not always, that there are important Z factors which are antecedent, intervening, or contingent; that is, that come before, in the middle, or after an X and Y relationship. Or, it may be a cojoint relationship.

• "is conducive to" -- this usually means that the cause is a mysterious, unknown construct; typically found in highly abstract theories involving words like anomie, relative deprivation, norms, or controls. In some cases, it refers to a confounding or contextual relationship.   For more extensive information:

See my BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY
See my ADVANCED GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY

    Criminology has many Perspectives, Approaches, and Theories, and most of the academic resources available on the Internet are simply lists like this.  However, there are the online lecture notes of Profs. Demelo and Keel, and there's international resources at the Australian Institute of Criminology and the UK's JusticeLink.  For other resources, visit my Best of CJ webpage. 

    The HISTORY of criminology dates back to Lombroso, whom many regard as the father of criminology.  Others claim that Phrenology (studying bumps on the head) better represents the origins of the science.  Even today, there is still an interest in the biological causes of criminal behavior. See the Crime Times - the Biocriminology Newsletter.

    Psychology and Sociology have influenced Criminology significantly. One of the things we are still struggling with, however, is the study of PSYCHOPATHS. Do they exist? And to what extent do criminals consider others in their decisionmaking to commit crime? We are, of course, talking about MOTIVES, and I've assembled every motive ever thought of in one place for you -- right here, right now. Use this printer-friendly page or see them below:

    Motives alone are usually not sufficient explanations by themselves. There may be facilitating or triggering factors like the presence of a gun and victim provocation.

    Criminology has been extremely concerned with the issue of POLICY RELEVANCE. For most of the modern theories, I've tabulated the POLICY IMPLICATIONS. Use the printer-friendly page, or view it now:

BIOLOGICAL THEORY: Treat the defect and protect society from the untreatable. Treatment to include drugs, psychosurgery, plastic surgery, genetic counseling, and eugenics for the untreatables. Protection to include experts as decision makers, individualized diagnosis, prediction, and indeterminate sentencing. Tendency to medicalize justice issues, and potential for misuse by government as form of social control.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY: Prediction, prevention, and therapeutic intervention. Intervention therapies to include psychoanalysis, group therapy, counseling, family therapy, drug treatment, and reconditioning. Psychoanalysis involves correcting childhood problems. Counseling involves resocializing and uncovering new behavioral options. Drug treatment is recommended for those with certain traits. Cognitive therapy involves learning new ways to think. Tendency to do better with sexual and violent crimes, but ignores situational factors and has some untestable assumptions.

DISORGANIZATION-ECOLOGICAL THEORY: Acculturation and assimilation along with community empowerment. Acculturation and assimilation to include helping immigrants and isolated subcultures feel like part of mainstream society. Sometimes requires moving people to new parts of town and urban renewal. Community empowerment to include strengthening grass-roots organizations, and integrating networks with wider political, social, and economic resources. Tendency to have social engineering and ethnocentric implications, and fails to explain insulation of some people from inner-city influences.

ANOMIE-STRAIN THEORY: Social change and equal opportunity. Some rehabilitation emphasis through coping with stress programs. Social change involves reorganizing socioeconomic roles available in society; bringing salaries in line with contribution to society, so that professional athletes don't make more than teachers, for example, and eliminate greed, jealousy, and excessive economic aspiration. Equal opportunity to include focus on entitlements of legitimate options through better educational system, improved management practices in workplace, creation of fulfilling jobs, welfare floors, War on Poverty, Head Start programs, and better aptitude-career planning. Tendency to be too much of a full plate for practical use, but has had some success when implemented in piecemeal fashion.

LEARNING THEORY: Rehabilitation through reeducation and resocialization. Segregate offenders and keep suggestible people away from bad influences. Resocialize through parental skills and peer evaluation training. Reeducate by replacing excuses and justifications for crime with reasons for following the law. Tendency to have better success at behavioral change, not cognitive change, but does not explain solitary offending nor middle-class deviation.

CONTROL THEORY: Prevention and rehabilitation through increased bonding. Bonding to include inculcating a desire not to hurt parents, teachers, friends, employers, police, and religious figures, establishing trust relationships, developing prospects for the future, and believing in the basic institutions of society. Tendency to have highest level of success of all criminological theories, especially when combined with work-retraining schemes, but difficult to put into practice when dealing with diverse ethnic and social class differences.

LABELING THEORY: Prevention through limiting social shaming reaction in others and replacing moral indignation with tolerance. Some rehabilitation emphasis in helping offenders be rehabilitated from the label. Prevention to include alternatives to prison programs involving diversion, client empowerment schemes, mediation and conciliation, victim-offender forgiveness ceremonies, restitution, and reparation. Tendency to have impractical policy implications, and doesn't explain explain serious offending well.

RADICAL-CONFLICT THEORY: Social change and redistribution of wealth. Some rehabilitation emphasis in empowering employees to see exploitation inherent in capitalist system. Social change to include decriminalization of consensual crimes and drug offenses, dismantling of bourgeois therapies, institutions, and Police State. Redistribution of wealth through employee ownership of corporations. Eventual move toward strict equality and socialist or communist society. Tendency to be trivialized as Marxist ideology, and does not explain high crime rates in more socialist countries.

FEMINIST THEORY: Social change and elimination of power. In general, seeks to replace gender-based power structures; i.e., patriarchy, with matriarchy, which focuses upon women's principles of care, nurturance, connectivity, community, and ethics. Elimination of power involves decentralized socialism providing equal access to the process of decision making. Tendency to ignore women as offender as well as unique qualities of persons of color, and retreats into diversity issue subsuming all differences as examples of women struggling to define themselves.

MIDDLE-CLASS THEORY: No strong policy implications, but implies reorganization of youthful outlets for fun and play so that "harmless" activities are taken more seriously, or that economic affluence should be regulated in some way.

INTEGRATED THEORY: No strong policy implications. It depends on which specific theories are integrated. Implications usually involve some aspect of each specific theory.

Last updated: 01/21/04
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