What Is Criminology?

Have you ever wondered what causes crime rates to rise or fall? Have you ever pondered why some people break the law while others do not? Alternatively, have you ever asked yourself why some forms of law-breaking are considered more serious than others? Have you ever been puzzled about why some actions become defined as criminal in the first place, while others are not? Have you ever wondered whether there is a difference between what is lawful and what is just?

What Is Criminology?

Criminology can be defined as the systematic study of the etiology, prevention, control, and treatment of crime which aims to produce various forms of scientific, professional, and practical knowledge.

Why Do Criminals Commit Crimes?

What makes criminals different from you? How does understanding why criminals commit crimes give society and law enforcemnt an advantage when seeking to prevent future offenses? Theorists have asked these questions for centuries. In an attempt to answer these important questions, scientists throughout history have formed their own ideas about what drives criminals to commit their crimes. Theories postulated and tested by scientists and criminologists generally fall into three categories (biological, psychological, and sociological). These are based on how they attempt to explain criminal behavior.

What Is Police Studies?

Policing can be understood as an activity, as a process, and as an outcome. Criminologists who study police are interested in how order is created, how the law is enforced, and how the police work with other agents, organizations, and agencies to keep the peace and maintain community relations. A series of pressing problems have confronted policing as an institution almost since its inception, including racism, corruption, inefficacy, and abuse of power. Criminologists work not simply to understand the history and etiology of these problems, but also to develop constructive approaches to their resolution.

Criminologists find these, and similar such questions, simply captivating. They are fascinated by the complex realities surrounding crime and want to understand how changing social, political, economic, and cultural conditions may affect prevailing definitions of crime, propensities toward criminal behaviour, and the structure of larger legal, police, and penal responses. As is always the case in the social sciences, the challenges involved in producing criminological knowledge are complicated by the fact that the realities under investigation are seldom static, fixed, or even objectively accessible. For example, changes in the definition of crime may affect crime rates, or changes in the way that crime data is collected may also affect the rates. Furthermore, the various players involved in the definition of a given activity as a crime may see the need for the change