- Hi there. This is Margaret from criminologyweb.com.
And in this video,
I'll answer the question of what is criminology?
One question that I get asked a lot is what criminology is.
Criminology is a scientific study
of several different aspects of crime.
Namely, first, the nature and extent of crime.
This asks questions such as,
how much crime is there in our society,
what crime types are there, et cetera.
The second field is the causes of crime
and this includes questions like
why do some people commit crime
and why do others not commit crime?
Or why does crime happen at some places and not at others?
The causes of crime is without a doubt
one of the most studied areas in criminology.
Another area of criminology is the consequences of crime.
Crime affects a large number of people, offenders,
and the reasons why they commit crime
often receive the bulk of the attention.
But many more people are involved
in one way or another.
Of course, the victims of crime can experience
a range of consequences,
including potential injuries, psychological consequences
and inability to work or pursue other activities
and financial damages among others.
And besides the victims, the people around them
such as their families, entire communities,
and even society as a whole are affected by crime.
Another sub area is the reactions to crime.
This covers responses to crime by law enforcement.
For example, it covers the police
and how they handle crime, the practices that they use,
the decisions that they make
while they're doing their job,
and the way in which they treat offenders.
It also looks at the way
in which courts sentence offenders,
how judges make decisions and process cases,
and whether and how different offenders
are treated in different ways.
And finally, this subfield
focuses on different types of punishment
on what happens after imprisonment
such as when offenders are on parole or on probation.
And also on prison life, like on prison practices
and how inmates experience day to day life in prison.
And finally, criminology concerns the prevention of crime.
There are many strategies that are claimed to prevent crime
and some of these may be effective, but others may not.
And so, it requires good research
to test out which programs are effective
so that we can invest in those
and not invest in programs that do not work to reduce crime.
One thing that I've always found useful
when defining criminology is to see it as an object science.
The idea here is that there are many different sciences
that study crime.
So, crime is the object of study
across those different sciences.
Criminology is very diverse
because people look at crime
from very different perspectives.
For example, lawyers, sociologists,
economists, biologists, anthropologists,
psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers,
political scientists, and historians
have all contributed to criminology.
But they all come from their own background
and have different views on crime, on methods.
and theoretical perspectives.
Some people think that that creates problems for criminology
because it's very difficult to create
a sort of integrative framework.
But others think and I feel that way too,
that it makes criminology so interesting
because it's so multidisciplinary.
Here are a couple of examples
of how different disciplines look at crime.
When looking a crime from a law perspective,
it deals more normatively with the conditions
under which punishment may be imposed.
Sociology is about groups and social relationships
and how crime happens within these relationships,
for example, in youth groups and gangs.
Psychology is all about human behavior and experiences.
Biology about the natural basic conditions of life,
And economics looks, for example,
at the costs and benefits of criminal behavior.
And history deals with questions like
how is the course of crime over the past centuries?
How do people deal with offenses in the past?
And have there been any changes
in what is considered to be a crime?
So, all of these disciplines
offer their own unique lens on crime,
and that is what makes criminology
so incredibly interesting.
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