Criminology: Understanding Crime and the Justice System

Posted on Jan 23, 2025 in Criminology and Security

Criminology

  1. What is Criminology? It is the study of law enforcement and the criminal justice system.
  2. What Does Criminology Study?
    • Offender: The person who commits an offense by action or omission contemplated in the Criminal Law.
    • Victim: The person who directly suffers the consequences of a crime.
    • Behavior: The response to stimuli and society.
    • Society: A group of people who participate in a social connection.
    • Crime: An action contrary to the law and considered socially dangerous or reprehensible, which is committed voluntarily.
    • Crime Scene: The physical place where an event worthy of police investigation has taken place.
  3. Etymology and Definition: “Criminology” is derived from the Latin crimen, which means accusation, and the transliterated Greek logia, which has come to denote “the study of”. Therefore, the term literally means “the study of crime”.
  4. Sociology Criminology: In recent years, criminology has been recognized as a scientific discipline in its own right.
  5. Criminologists look at a broad range of topics related to crime; they are dedicated to studying not only the causes of crime but the social impact as well.

  1. Fields of Study

    In essence, criminologists look at every conceivable aspect of deviant behavior. This includes the impacts of crime on individual victims and their families, society at large, and even criminals themselves. Some of the specific areas that criminology covers include:
    • Crime Prevention refers to the range of strategies that are implemented by individuals, communities, businesses, non-government organizations, and all levels of government to target the various social and environmental factors that increase the risk of crime, disorder, and victimization.

Major Criminology Theories

  • Rational Choice Theory: This theory emphasizes punishment as the best means to deter individuals from committing crimes: Make the cost sufficiently outweigh the reward and individuals will decide that crime is not worth it.
  • Biological and Biosocial Theories: Classical biological and biosocial theories of criminality state that people are “born criminals” who cannot be deterred from committing crimes: Whether due to mental or physical disability, criminals cannot learn to control themselves.
  • Social Learning Theory: Social learning theory proposes that we engage in either criminal or non-criminal behavior based on the social environment around us, and that we’re especially influenced by how other people reward or model behavior.
  • Labeling Theory: Labeling theory proposes that applying a label, whether that means informally designating a youth as a “bad kid” or a “troublemaker” or a more formal arrest or incarceration record, has a long-term effect on a given person.

Criminalistics vs. Criminology

What Does a Forensic Scientist Do?

Forensic science is the scientific method of gathering and examining information about the past, which is then used in a court of law. Forensic sciences are used around the world to resolve civil disputes, to justly enforce criminal law and government regulations, and to protect public health.

A forensic scientist is in charge of collecting and analyzing physical evidence. There are two different kinds of forensic scientists: crime scene investigators and laboratory analysts.

Some of the duties crime scene forensic scientists must perform are: analyzing crime scenes to collect evidence, taking photographs of the crime scenes, making sketches, recording observations/findings, and cataloging/preserving evidence.

  1. What Do They Do?

    • Criminalistics: A criminalist applies scientific methods and techniques to examine and analyze evidence and testifies in court about his or her findings.
    • Criminology: A criminologist conducts specific research to analyze criminal behavior and the things that contribute to it.

  2. How Can You Become One?

    Criminalistics: They need to have a bachelor’s degree in biological, physical, or forensic science. They are also required to complete 24 credit hours in math, biology, or chemistry.
    Criminology: They need to complete an undergraduate course in sociology, criminal law, psychology, constitutional law, juvenile delinquency, and criminal theory.

  3. What Type of Evidence Do I Work With?

    • Criminalistics: They examine and identify physical evidence and come to conclusions from it. They also identify significant evidence and remove valueless evidence.
    • Criminology: Criminologists can use their training and skills to conduct research, advocate on behalf of victims, improve juvenile justice procedures, investigate white-collar criminals, and examine DNA and other physical evidence.

  4. Where Will I Work and When Will I Get Called In?

    • Criminalistics: Criminalists are employed at sheriffs’ departments, crime labs, government agencies, medical examiners’ offices, colleges/universities, private companies, and law enforcement agencies.
    • Criminology: Criminologists typically work at colleges and universities, conducting research and teaching classes on corrections, juvenile justice, law enforcement administration, criminal ethnography, drug abuse and addiction, theoretical criminology, and other related courses.

Victimology

  1. What is Victimology? Victimology focuses on helping and protecting people affected by crimes.
  2. Criminology and the Victims: Faced with great concern for the criminal, criminology had almost completely forgotten the victims of crime. Victimology analyzes the victim as an “actor” and as a “sufferer”, that is, as a participant and as a person affected by a criminal act.
  3. Victim: A person who has directly or indirectly suffered harm or damage to his or her rights because of a violation of human rights or the commission of a crime.
  4. Offender: The causal agent of the damage, subject to analysis to understand criminal dynamics.

  5. Types of Victims

    1. Provocatory Victim: This is a victim of an event due to their actions.
    2. Victim of the Crime: This is a person who has suffered physical, sexual, financial, or emotional harm because of the commission of a crime.
    3. Fake Victim: This is someone who victimizes themselves to obtain a benefit, be it to collect insurance, cover embezzlement, etc.
    4. Guilty Victim: The victim instigated a conflict and was killed in self-defense.

  6. Partially Guilty

    • Victims of Ignorance or Recklessness: Refers to someone who suffers the consequences due to either a lack of knowledge (ignorance) or reckless behavior.
    • Victim with Little Guilt: Refers to a person who is suffering because of a situation or wrongdoing but has minimal or no responsibility for it.
    • Voluntary Victim: Refers to a person who consciously or intentionally assumes a victim role or exposes themselves to a harmful situation.

  7. Not Guilty

    Is a legal term used to declare that a person is not responsible for a crime or wrongdoing they have been accused of.

“Ideal” Victim: Refers to a concept in criminology and victimology where the victim is perceived as more deserving of sympathy and support based on certain characteristics or circumstances.

Data Collection

  1. What is Data Collection? It is the process of gathering the information you need to be able to make a decision.
  2. Criminal justice researchers can engage in data collection in a variety of different ways, including surveys, interviews, experiments, or focus groups. One of the most common ways of gathering data is to use secondary data.
  3. So, What is Data? The scores obtained on the measure of dependent variables.

  1. Evidence Collection Techniques

    Depending on the place of intervention, previously called the scene of the events, which can be closed or open, and based on this, search and location techniques are applied, such as:
    • Stripe or Linear
    • Paintings
    • Zones
    • Spiral
    • Radial
    • Free Technique
    • Point to Point

  2. Place

    To be able to choose a technique, it is first necessary to determine if the intervention site is open or closed. For closed places, the following can be used:
    • Point to Point
    • Stripes
    • Quadrants
    • Radial

  3. Types of Data

    1. Primary Data: It may be qualitative or quantitative. Primary data are empirical observations gathered by the researcher or research associates for the first time for any research and then used in the statistical analysis.
    2. Secondary Data: Also known as published data. Data which is not originally collected but rather obtained from published sources and statistically processed are known as secondary data.