ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
UNDERGRADUATE STUDY PROGRAM
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CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

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GIVEN FOR LAW STUDENTS

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2020
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1. INTRODUCING CRIMINOLOGY

1.1. Definition and Subject Matter

1.2. Basic Concepts in Criminology

1.3. Historical Development of Criminology

1.4. Schools of Thought in Criminology

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1.1. Definition and Subject Matter

1.1.1. Definition

 It is the scientific concern in the phenomenon of crime and criminal behavior.

 It is essentially an interdisciplinary science as well as an advanced, theoretical field

of study.

 It includes all the subject matter necessary to the understanding and prevention
of crime, together with the punishment or treatment of delinquents and criminals.

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  Though both deal with crime, criminology differs from criminal justice in that the
latter focuses on the components of the justice system including police, courts, and
corrections. In its restricted sense, it is simply the study of the attempts to explain
crime.

 The word “criminology” refers to the study of

 Crime,
 the criminal,
 the legal process in respect to crime commission,
 the social reaction to crime and criminals,
 the treatment of offenders, and
 methods of preventing and controlling crime

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  For Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald Cressey,
Criminology is the study of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon.
It includes within its scope the process of making laws, of breaking laws, and of
reacting toward the breaking of laws … The objective of criminology is the
development of a body of general and verified principles and other types of knowledge
regarding this process of law, crime, and treatment or prevention.

 The three components are the most important areas of interest to criminologists:

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A. The Making of Laws: the development of criminal law

 concern in studying the emergence of customs, and reactions to violations of

customs.
 interest in learning what society does when customs no longer function to
regulate conduct perceived as undesirable.
 attention in studying whether the laws that replace customs have the desired
effect.
 what leads a society to designate some wrongs as crimes while it leaves other
wrongs to be settled in private?
 what conditions influence a society’s choice of the wrongs it publicly
condemned as crimes?

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Major Perspectives of Law Making

# The Consensus View

 law making is a smooth accommodation of interests in a society so as to produce
a system of law and enforcement to which everybody, basically, subscribes.

 certain acts are deemed so threatening to the society’s survival that they are
designated as crimes. If the majority of the group shares this view, we can say the
group has enacted by consensus.

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  members of society by and large agree on what is right and wrong, and that law is,
in essence, the codifications of social values, a mechanism of control that settles
disputes that arise when some individuals stray too far from what is considered to
be acceptable behavior.

 In Emile Durkheim’s words, ‘We can say that an act is criminal when it offends
strong and defined states of the collective conscience.’

 View society as a stable entity in which laws are created for the general good.
Their function is to reconcile and to harmonize most of the interests that most of us
accept, with the least amount of sacrifice.

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 # The Conflict View
 the criminal law expresses the values of the ruling class in a society, and the
criminal justice system is a means of controlling the lower classes.

 struggle for power is a far more basic feature of human existence than consensus.
It is by means of power struggles that various interest groups manage to control
lawmaking and law enforcement.

 the appropriate object of criminological investigation is not the violation of laws

but the conflicts within society.

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 # The Interactionist View
 holds that
 people act according to their own interpretation of reality, through which
they assign meaning to things;

they observe the way others react to it, either positively or negatively; and

they reevaluate and interpret their own behavior according to the meaning
and symbols they have learned from others.

 People, institutions, and events are viewed subjectively and labeled either
good or evil according to the interpretation of the evaluator.

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  the definition of crime reflects the preferences and opinions of people who hold
social power in a particular legal jurisdiction. These people use their influence to
impose their definition of right or wrong on the rest of the population.

Conversely, criminals are individuals who society chooses to label as outcast or

deviants because they have violated social rules.

Crimes are outlawed behaviors because society defines them that way and not
because they are inherently evil or immoral acts.

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B. The Breaking of Laws: the cause of law violation

 Why some people who are inclined to do so engage in particular acts at particular
times?
Opportunities to commit a crime play a great role in the decision to commit a
crime. Opportunities consist of simply of suitable targets inadequately
protected.
 Why are some people more prone to commit crime while others are not?

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C. Society’s Reaction to the Breaking of Laws: Crime Control

 Criminological research on society’s reaction to the breaking of laws began more

recently than research on the causes of crime.

 Research has revealed that society’s reaction to law breaking has often been
irrational, arbitrary, emotional, politically motivated, and counterproductive.

Criminological researchers often uncover inhumane and arbitrary practices and

provided the data base and the ideas for construction of humane, effective, and
efficient crime control, both within and outside the criminal justice systems.

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 1.1.2. Subject Matter

 The overwhelming majority of criminologists believe that criminology is concerned

with the making and breaking of all norms (because society also uses un-codified
norms to govern its members; it uses customs), and with society’s reactions to
these activities.

The universe of criminology is broad. It studies

# what crime is,
# how criminal laws are created,
# who has the power to create them,
# what the purpose of such laws is,
# how they are enforced, and
# what role social class plays with respect to crime and criminal justice
system.
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  Criminologists are also interested in studying :

# causes and problems of criminal acts.

# kinds of sanctions or incentives that can best protect the environment.

# the wrong doings of government, mismanaged economy, and corrupted

governance
# the relationship between ideology and power in the making,enforcing,
and breaking of laws.
# research the effectiveness of law enforcement, its popularity and
unpopularity, and its humaneness.
# what happens on the streets and in the highest government offices

Very little happens on earth without criminological implications.

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1.2. Basic Concepts in Criminology

1.2.1. Crime

 Dictionary:
# It is an action prohibited by law or a failure to act as required by law - an activity
that involves breaking the law

# It is also an immoral, shameful, unwise, or regrettable act .

 Geography[culture], Time, power[key issue], public opinion & media are contexts
on which the definition of crime is affected.

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  Mushanga:
# Crime, in law, is the contravention of the Penal Code of a state. The state, as a
political personality, makes very many laws in the course of its history. It regards
some of its laws as more serious than others.
 Driving a motor vehicle without a valid driving permit is a traffic offence but
rape is a crime.
 An offense is any breach of the law, but a crime is an offense which comes
as a result of the breach of a specific criminal law
 Wrongs committed against the state are crimes in general, and wrongs
committed against civil law are referred to as torts

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 # As per to him, crimes change with laws and acts that are labeled crimes in one
country are not necessarily so labeled in another society.

There is no one simple answer to the question of what constitutes crime.

Instead there are a range of different perspectives about what should be
considered the remit or focus of criminological study

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A. The Legalistic Position

 Suggests that what constitutes crime is a behavior which violates the criminal law.

Michael (a lawyer) and Adler (a philosopher) believed that this definition is the
most precise and least ambiguous and It allows scientific study of crime.

 However, it may be naïve to assume that by using an uncomplicated definition

the subject becomes simple. Crime is a social phenomenon that involves people in
complex interactions.

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B. Social Conflict Position
 argue that ‘scientist’ criminologists should not be constrained simply by legal
codes as the unqualified acceptance of the legal definition of the basic units or
elements of criminological inquiry violates a fundamental criterion of science.

# Sellin: Conflict between Cultures

 believed that in a healthy, homogenous society, laws were based upon rules of
normal behavior and people largely did not break society’s laws because those
laws reflected their views.

 The core component in crime is conflict between cultures. There fore, crime is
more complex than simply the act of breaking the legal code and arose out of
competing interests between groups in society.

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# Vold: Competing Group Interests

 Vold was different to Sellin because he was influenced by the idea that the
criminal law does not always reflect the values of the society. He sought to
explain why laws were made and whose interests they represented.

 He examined the conflict between interest groups in the same culture and
suggested that people come together united by particular interests, and the
desire to see those interest represented.

Hence, the groups might be able to agree a comprise position, but alternatively
one may exert influence and make the state’s support legislate against the
other.

 However, this does not account for criminal behavior that does not arise from
group interests.
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# Chambliss: Crime Exists to Protect the Ruling Class
 Contended that acts defined as criminal existed to protect the ruling economic
class. Crime served to reduce surplus labor, whilst providing jobs for some
people in the criminal justice system.

 Crime, for the working class was a smoke-screen. It diverted the attention away
from the exploitation.

 Quinney suggested that the powerful decide prohibited aspects of behavior,

which becomes a ‘social reality’ that people accept. He moved towards a
more radical standpoint and argued (like Chambliss) that the criminal justice
system was a powerful tool for ensuring that power remained in the hands
of the elite

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C. Crime as a Social Harm

 In his work, White Collar Crime, Sutherland(1949) suggested that many of the
crimes involving business people were not dealt with by criminal but by
regulatory and civil law, despite the fact that they caused harm to society (social
harm).

 He argued that in order to avoid class bias within criminology, crime should be
expanded to include any act causing social harm that was prohibited by any law
(not necessarily just criminal law). E.g. tobacco firms & deaths caused by smoking

 But Paul Tappan (1947) argued that it would be wrong to label any person or
organization as criminal if they had not been found guilty of a criminal offence.

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D. Crime as a Violation of Human Right

 Herman and Julia Schwendinger (1970) argued that all humans have certain
natural rights, such as, right to life, liberty, good health, freedom of movement,
happiness etc.

 Hence, crime is the violation of such human rights-which should be studied by

criminologists.

 For them, it provides more objective unit of study than the legalistic position. It
also allows for states and governments to be judged to be criminal.

But it does not solve all problems regarding definitions.

Do all people agree on what human rights people are entitled to?
Is there a consensus on what constitutes a right?

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E. Crime as a Social Construction

 Argued that crime is decided by society. Society makes the laws that regulate
individuals’ behavior, and so society determines what is considered criminal and
what is lawful. It is just like saying that deviance ‘is in the eyes of the beholder’.

Base its ground from Howard Becker who argued ‘social groups create deviance by
making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance’.

 The focus of criminology should be how and why some acts become criminal and
others do not. The question ‘In whose interest was it that a certain act was
criminalized?’ is vital for them.

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 Criminal

 Who and what is considered criminal is a complex debate without easy answers.

 From the practical point of view one cannot but agree with those who accept
the legal definition of crime-a crime is an act made punishable by law and a
criminal is a person who has committed a legally forbidden act. Practically, in
all countries an act becomes a criminal act only if there is a provision in the
criminal code of a particular country.

 However, there are a number of legal criteria to determine whether a person

may be dealt with as a criminal or not. These criteria include the following: age,
voluntarily (no compulsion), criminal intent, injury to the state/public, and
prescribed legal punishment.

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 1.2.2. Deviance

 Crime is generally used to describe behavior that breaks the criminal law.

Deviance describes behavior that is statistically uncommon, marginal, and not

mainstream, but may be illegal or prohibited by law.

 Deviance refers to violation of social norms (which can also include law). In other
words, the violation is conduct which people of a group consider dangerous, or
embarrassing, or irritating that they bring special sanctions to bear against persons
who exhibit it.

Jack D. Douglas and Frances C. Waksler have presented the continuum of the funnel
of deviance.

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 Narrowest Judgment A judgment that something is absolutely evil

Deviant behavior is made criminal

[ Crime is among the forms of deviance from preferred norms ]

Broadest Judgment A feeling that something is vaguely wrong, strange, and peculiar

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 1.2.3. Juvenile Delinquency

 To some people juvenile delinquency is a child who was born against the law, that
is, an illegal child. To others an individual who has broken minor laws that do not
disturb the public much is a juvenile delinquent.

However, juvenile delinquency really disturbs the public and much wider than its legal
definition and sometimes becomes serious. The social condition in which juvenile
delinquency occurs is very relevant to understanding problem of juvenile
delinquency rather than the breach.

According to generally accepted socio-legal definition, juvenile delinquency includes

not only those minors who have actually broken the law but also those who are
likely to do so.

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  Broader definition of juvenile delinquency should cover a number of facts:
#Those who committed and become part of the official statistics;
#Those who have committed minor act but not yet reported and
#Those who have more likely potential to commit in the future.

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 1.2.4. Function of Crime

A philosopher produces ideas, a poet verses, a parson

sermons, a professor text-books, etc. A criminal
produces crime … the criminal produces not only crime
but also criminal law; he produces the professor who
delivers lectures on this criminal law; and even the
inevitable text-book in which the professor presents his
lectures as a commodity for sale in the market. Further,
the criminal produces the whole apparatus of the police
and criminal justice, detectives, judges, executioners,
juries, etc. and all these different professions, which
constitute so many categories of the social division of
labor.

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 “… is present not only in the majority of societies of
one particular species but in all societies of all
types. There is no society that is not confronted
with the problem of criminality. Its form changes;
but, everywhere and always, there have been men
who have behaved that crime, while still normal, is
tending to lose this character of normality. … crime
is an integral part of all healthy societies. … crime is
normal because a society exempt from it is utterly
impossible ”

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 1.3. Historical Development of Criminology

 The word ‘criminology’ was used by a French anthropologist P. Topinard for the first
time towards the end of the nineteenth century (1887). But before Topinard, there
had been earlier writings especially on the one part of Criminology, that is called
Penology; notably Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) in Italy; and by Jeremy Bentham
(1784-1834) in England.

 In 1829 Andre Guerry’s analysis of the geographical distribution of crime in France

appeared, and in 1835 a Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet published a
monograph on the social distribution of criminal behavior in France, Belgium,
Luxemburg and Holland.

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  Then, Cesare Lombroso, an Italian of Jewish blood (1835-1909) with the help of his
famous pupil, Enrico Ferri (1865-1928) used anthropological methods in the study
of crime for the first time. They attempted to show that criminality is an individual
act which was biologically determined.

 The scientific study of crime and criminality is a relatively recent development. It

has been known as such for only a little more than a century. In 1885 the Italian law
professor Raffaele Garofalo coined the term (in Italian, criminologia). The French
anthropologist Paul Topinard used it for the first time in French (criminologie) in
1887.

Present day criminology has its roots in disciplines of sociology, psychology,

psychiatry, and law. Some branches of philosophy also deal with some aspects of
criminology as when they deal with the justification of punishment

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1.4. Schools of Thought in Criminology
 Thought refers to the set of ideas: the intellectual, scientific, & philosophical ideas
associated with a particular place, time or group.

 Schools of Thought in criminology refers to a system of thought, together with

proponents of that system of thought. The system of thought consists of a theory
of crime causation integrated with policies of control implied in the theory.

1.4.1. Pre-Classical School of Criminology

 In the Middle Ages (1200-1600), superstition and fear of satanic possession

dominated thinking and people who violated social norms or religious practices
were believed to be witches or possessed by demons. The prescribed method for
dealing with the possessed was burning at the stake, a practice that survived into
the seventeenth century.
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  The Following are typical examples:

 Between 1575 and 1590, Nicholas Remy, head of the Inquisition, in the French
province of Lorraine, ordered 900 sorcerers and witches burned to death;

 Likewise, a contemporary, Peter Binsfield, the bishop of the German city of

Trier, ordered the death of 6,500 people.

 An estimated 100,000 people were prosecuted throughout Europe for

witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries.

 It was also commonly believed that some families produced offspring who
were unsound and unstable and that social misfits were inherently damaged by
reason of their “inferior blood”.

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  It was common practice to use cruel tortures to extract confessions, and those
convicted of violent or theft crimes suffered extremely harsh penalties including
whipping, branding, maiming, and execution.

1.4.2. Classical School of Criminology

 By the mid-18th c., social philosophers began to rethink the prevailing concepts of
law and justice. They argued for a more rational approach to punishment,
stressing that the relationship between crimes and their punishment should be
balanced and fair.

 This view was based on the prevailing philosophy of the time called utilitarianism
which emphasized that behavior occurs when the actor considers it useful,
purposeful, and reasonable.
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  It stands to reason that criminal behaviors can be eliminated or controlled if
people begin to view them as troublesome and disappointing and not easily
rewarding. Reformers called for a more moderate and just approach to the penal
sanctions, which could substitute for the cruel public executions designed to frighten
people into obedience.

 According to Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) and Jeremy Bentham, human’s

behavior is governed by pleasures and people commit crime by assessing the
situation whether they are going to benefit pleasure or cost pain. So, no need to
study the causes as it is already known.

 To deter crime, Beccaria believed, one must administer pain in an appropriate

amount to counterbalance the pleasure obtained from crime; “let the punishment fit
the crime”.
Beccaria proposed the following principles:
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  The writings of Beccaria and his followers form the core of what today is referred
to as classical criminology. Classical criminological theory had several basic
elements:

 In every society, people have free will to choose criminal or lawful solutions to
meet their needs or settle their problems.
 Criminal solutions may be more attractive than lawful ones because they
usually require less work for a greater payoff; if left unsanctioned, crime has
greater utility than conformity.
 A person’s choice of criminal solutions may be controlled by his or her fear of
punishment.
 The more severe, certain, and swift the punishment, the better able it is to
control criminal behavior.
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 1.4.3. The Positive School of Criminology

 Associated with the emergence of positivism [rather than rely on pure thought and
reason, careful observation and analysis of natural phenomena was being undertaken
to understand the way the world worked] which originated in Italy during the 19th
c.

 Positivist criminology emerged and took the belief that human behavior is a function
of internal and external forces. This approach focuses on cause- effect relationship
which is called Determinism, a doctrine that states every event is inevitable of
consequences or results of antecedents that determine the acts of people.

 These forces can be economical, social, political, historical, personal, psychological,

and biological make up

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  The following are the basic assumption of this school of thought

 the society can be studied and understood in scientific methods by

adopting the natural (scientific) method of analysis particularly the
application of statistical analysis.

 Doctrine of determinism: Positivist school emphasizes on the acts

[defining criminal behaviors and setting their punishment] than the actors
[why people become criminals than what crime is in itself ] as opposed to
the classical school.

The scientific approach used by the positivist diverted the researcher from the
legal approach to the system of administration of justice. The classical school
emphasized on defining crime on the bases of legal provisions (taking for granted) of
the society.
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  The law is not the major but they insist that a further study is needed to
understand why people commit crime and not because the law says. But this does
not mean the law has no influence because eventually the ‘criminal’ is punished
by the law

Academically, positivists deemphasize the legal approach to crime and

emphasize on the sociological and psychological approaches.

They argue that the law should not be targeted although one can ask “why most
societies or countries do have criminal law”. It is simply to protect itself from
threats. For them, criminology is also interested in why certain laws are provided.

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 A. Biological Determinism

If Charles Darwin's Theory of evolution was scientific as applied to animals, the
same approach should be applied to "man" as an "animal".

Society and any failures of its government were not the causes of crime. The
problem lay in the propensities [tendency to demonstrate a particular behavior] of
individual offenders who were biologically distinguishable from law-abiding citizens.

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 B. Psychological Determinism

People with low intelligence are often seen as not knowing any better. They are
seen as not appreciating the reasons for the existence of law.

Almost all causes of criminal behavior originate in the personality-the complex

set of emotional and behavioral attributes that tend to remain relatively constant as
the individual moves from situation to situation.

Criminal adaptation to the condition of helplessness occurs because choosing

crime over possible alternatives provides certain psychological advantages or
gratifications.

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 C. Social Determinism [Sociological Explanation]

Sociologists focus on structural factors and social processes as explanatory

factors of crime.

Although there may be some factors related to criminal behavior at individual

level, the majority experts in the field believe that the key to understanding
delinquent or criminal behavior lies in the social environment.

For sociologists, explanations of crime and delinquency as an individual-level

phenomenon fail to account for the consistent social patterns in deviance.

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 Points of
Comparison Classical School Positivist School

Date 18th c. 19th c.

To reform the legal system and To apply scientific methods to the study
Attempts Protect the accused against harsh of crime and its problems
and arbitrary action by the state

Definition Crime as a legal entity: any behavior Criminal act as psychological and social
of Crime prohibited by law is crime entity: antecedents of society that
create crime should be studied
Free Will: Human Behavior is not Determinism: Factors that affect
Emphasis
Affected by Factors Human Behavior

Focus of Theorized that proper punishment Believed that scientific treatment of

Theory had a deterrent effect not only on criminals to protect society and
criminal but also on the lawful rehabilitate the criminals.
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 1.4.4. The Modern Criminology

 Modern critics attack the traditional criminological view on the ground that their
search for characteristic differences between the class of criminals and the class of
non-criminals rests upon erroneous assumption. This false dichotomy has been
based on a misconceived characterization of criminals as ‘criminal type’.

 As Michael Phillipson aptly observes that to take crime out of its social context and
to try to explain it as a product of physical characteristics or mental deficiencies is a
myth.

 He summarizes his criticism of traditional criminology by suggesting that it

contains four false assumptions, namely,

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 The human Crime can be
population can be located by the
There are The official statics
divided into two study of
universal causes are indices of
groups, criminals individual
of crime trends in crime.
and non- criminals; and
criminals;

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 Justifications:

 Modern criminologists explain criminality in terms of social conflict [societal

reasons] and suggests a pragmatic approach to the resolution of the problem.

Engels (1971) pointed out that resentment among the deprived class of
society due to their exploitation and demoralization was one of the
reasons for growing criminality. Therefore, there was need to change
the whole of the social and economic structure of society.

 They believe that distinction between criminals and non-criminals is the direct
outcome of a mistaken notion of labeling certain individual offenders as ‘criminal
types’. They prefer to identify the criminal with a particular social type who has
been a victim of well known inequalities . Thus there is nothing like ‘criminal type’ -
social deviance as a cause of criminal behavior.
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 Quiz

 What are the Emphasis areas of criminology as per to Edwin H.

Sutherland and Donald Cressey?

 What does it mean when we say “crime is socially constructed”?

 Tell at least two differences between the classical and positivist

school of thought regarding to crime and crime related issues.

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