Criminology - britannica

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Criminology -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
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https://www.britannica.com/print/article/143163
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Historical development
Methods
Major concepts and theories
Trends
Criminology
!Full Article
Criminology, scientific study of the nonlegal
aspects of crime and delinquency, including
its causes, correction, and prevention, from
the viewpoints of such diverse disciplines as
anthropology, biology, psychology and
psychiatry, economics, sociology, and
statistics.
Viewed from a legal perspective, the term crime refers to individual criminal
actions (e.g., a burglary) and the societal response to those actions (e.g., a
sentence of three years in prison). By comparison, the field of criminology
incorporates and examines broader knowledge about crime and criminals. For
example, criminologists have attempted to understand why some people are
more or less likely to engage in criminal or delinquent behaviour.
Criminologists have also examined and attempted to explain differences in
crime rates and the criminal code between societies and changes in rates and
laws over time.
Many criminologists consider themselves to be neutral public policy experts,
gathering facts for various governmental officials responsible for drawing
policy conclusions. However, some criminologists—like their counterparts in
such fields as the atomic and nuclear sciences—maintain that scientists must
shoulder responsibility for the moral and political consequences of their

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research. Thus, some criminologists have actively campaigned against capital
punishment and have advocated in favour of various legal reforms.
Criminologists who oppose this activist role contend that the findings of
criminological research must be weighed along with political, social, religious,
and moral arguments, a task best left to political bodies. Not denying the right
of criminologists to express their opinions as ordinary citizens and voters, this
view nonetheless maintains that a government by popular will is less dangerous
than a government by experts.
In the last decades of the 20th century, criminology grew to encompass a
number of specialized study areas. One of these was criminalistics, or scientific
crime detection, which involves such measures as photography, toxicology,
fingerprint study, and DNA evidence (see also DNA fingerprinting). It had
previously been excluded from criminology because of its focus on particular
criminal actions rather than on the broader knowledge about crime and
criminals. Criminology further expanded its reach by devoting significant
attention to victimology, or the study of the victims of crime, the relationships
between victims and criminals, and the role of victims in the criminal events
themselves. Criminal justice has also emerged as a separate but closely related
academic field, focusing on the structure and functioning of criminal justice
agencies—including the police, courts, corrections, and juvenile agencies—
rather than on explanations of crime. (See juvenile justice.)
The relationship of criminology to various other disciplines has resulted in
considerable diversity in its academic placement within universities.
Universities in Europe have tended to treat criminology as part of legal

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education, even in circumstances where its principal teachers were not lawyers.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the Institute of Criminology is part of the
law faculty of the University of Cambridge; in other schools criminological
research and teaching have usually been divided between departments of
sociology or social administration, law faculties, and institutes of psychiatry. In
South America the anthropological and medical elements predominate, and in
the United States, though there has been a trend toward housing criminology
and criminal justice in separate multidisciplinary departments, criminology has
most often been situated in departments of sociology.
Historical development
Criminology developed in the late 18th century, when various movements,
imbued with humanitarianism, questioned the cruelty, arbitrariness, and
inefficiency of the criminal justice and prison systems. During this period
reformers such as Cesare Beccaria in Italy and Sir Samuel Romilly, John
Howard, and Jeremy Bentham in England, all representing the so-called
classical school of criminology, sought penological and legal reform rather than
criminological knowledge. Their principal aims were to mitigate legal penalties,
to compel judges to observe the principle of nulla poena sine lege (Latin: “due
process of law”), to reduce the application of capital punishment, and to
humanize penal institutions. They were moderately successful, but, in their
desire to make criminal justice more “just,” they tried to construct rather
abstract and artificial equations between crimes and penalties, ignoring the
personal characteristics and needs of the individual criminal defendant.
Moreover, the object of punishment was primarily retribution and secondarily

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"
Cesare Beccaria
Cesare Beccaria, engraving by Carlo
Faucci, 1766.
Courtesy of Civica Raccolta Stampe A.
Bertarelli, Castello Sforzesco, Milan
"
John Howard
John Howard, oil painting by Mather
Brown; in the National Portrait Gallery,
London.
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery,
London
"
Jeremy Bentham, detail of an oil
painting by H.W. Pickersgill, 1829; in
the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery,
deterrence, with reformation lagging far behind.
In the early 19th century the first annual
national crime statistics were published in
France. Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874), a
Belgian mathematician, statistician, and
sociologist who was among the first to
analyze these statistics, found considerable
regularity in them (e.g., in the number of
people accused of crimes each year, the
number convicted, the ratio of men to women,
and the distribution of offenders by age).
From these patterns he concluded that “there
must be an order to those things which…are
reproduced with astonishing constancy, and
always in the same way.” Later, Quetelet
argued that criminal behaviour was the result
of society’s structure, maintaining that society
“prepares the crime, and the guilty are only
the instruments by which it is executed.”
Whereas Quetelet focused on the
characteristics of societies and attempted to
explain their resulting crime rates, the Italian
medical doctor Cesare Lombroso (1836–
1909) studied individual criminals in order to

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London
determine why they committed crimes. Some
of his investigations led him to conclude that
people with certain cranial, skeletal, and neurological malformations were
“born criminal” because they were biological throwbacks to an earlier
evolutionary stage. Highly controversial at the time he presented it, his theory
was ultimately rejected by social scientists. Lombroso also contended that there
were multiple causes of crime and that most offenders were not born criminal
but instead were shaped by their environment. The research of both Quetelet
and Lombroso emphasized the search for the causes of crime—a focus that
criminology has retained.
Methods
Criminology encompasses a number of disciplines, drawing on methods and
techniques developed in both the natural and the social sciences. As do other
disciplines, criminology distinguishes between pure and applied research and
between statistical and intuitive ways of thinking. More than most other
disciplines, however, criminological research depends upon the willing
cooperation of governmental agencies and other public authorities for the
provision of essential data.
Descriptive statistics
The manner and extent of data collection differ considerably from country to
country and even within countries that have federal systems. Variables include
how often data are collected and published, what items are given importance,
whether the choice is between complete listings or sample surveys, and what
# $

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the ratio between governmental and private research is. These differences,
combined with differences in law and legal administration and in popular views
and habits, have made it difficult to devise a meaningful system of international
criminal statistics and to compare national statistics that are collected
separately.
The most common data used in criminological research are official statistics,
which are collected as part of the operation of criminal justice agencies. For
example, police collect data on the crimes they know about and on the people
they arrest for committing those crimes; courts collect data on the cases that are
brought to them and on the outcomes of those cases, including convictions; and
prisons and jails, as well as probation and parole agencies, collect data on the
people under their jurisdiction. In all cases the usefulness of official criminal
statistics depends on human factors such as the willingness of private
individuals to report criminal events to the police, of the police to officially
respond to the criminal event, and of court officials to prosecute the case.
Because these decisions depend on a variety of factors—including whether the
criminal laws at issue are popular or unpopular, whether the criminal event
occurs in a high-crime or low-crime area, and whether the victim or offender is
a member of a minority group—they are not very reliable as a measure of the
amount of crime in a society or of changes in the amount of crime over time.
To overcome problems with official statistics, researchers in many countries
have utilized victimization surveys, in which random samples of the population
are generally asked whether they have been victims of crime within a specified
period of time. Although these surveys have methodological problems (e.g.,

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they rely entirely on the memory of victims), they have generally been more
accurate than official statistics in displaying trends in crime over time. These
surveys have often been conducted by governmental agencies, such as the U.S.
Census Bureau, which began its annual survey in 1972. Many other countries
later implemented victim surveys, including Britain, France, Germany, Sweden,
Canada, Israel, and New Zealand; the United Nations also sponsors an
international crime victim survey.
Criminologists supplement the official statistics with self-report surveys, in
which people are asked if they have committed any offenses of a particular
kind. Usually conducted by individual criminologists rather than by
government agencies, these studies generally survey juveniles rather than
adults, and they typically ask respondents about relatively minor criminal
events rather than very serious ones. Nevertheless, the combined information
from self-report surveys, victimization surveys, and official statistics will
generally provide a more accurate description of crime.
Case studies
The case study, also called the individual case history, concentrates on the
career or life of one individual or group of individuals and is the method used
primarily, though not exclusively, by psychologists, psychiatrists, and
psychoanalysts. Although the method has some shortcomings, such histories
can provide insights into the personalities and motives of criminals. The
number of criminological case studies has grown steadily, but their reliability is
sometimes suspect: their publication is comparatively rare; professional ethics
often forbid the exposure of details given confidentially; and those studies

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actually published may be atypical of the general subject they attempt to
explore. In a similar vein, autobiographies and other books written by criminals
can cast light on criminal motives and acts. Despite their considerable human
and scientific interest, however, such works generally suffer from significant
disadvantages—including a lack of objectivity.
Typologies
Typologies involve classifying offenses or offenders according to some criteria
of relatedness or similarity. For example, criminologists have made many
attempts to arrange offenders into categories such as “normal” or “abnormal”
and “habitual” or “professional” and to develop a continuum of criminals that
would extend from the “insane” at one extreme through various career
criminals, petty offenders, and white-collar criminals to “organized” or
“professional” criminals at the other extreme. The typological method, while
broader than the case study, is not so broad as the statistical method, being less
impersonal and heterogeneous than that method and less individual or specific
than the case study. The method, developed initially in Germany and Austria,
has been criticized because it attempts to reduce complex phenomena to simple
terms while tending to ignore important individual differences. Despite its
considerable intuitive appeal, its problems seem to outweigh its benefits, and it
is consequently not often used.
Experimental methods
A controlled experiment involves taking two closely related situations or
groups, subjecting one of them to a specific stimulus, and comparing the

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subsequent characteristics of both. In the past, so-called experiments by
judicial, penal, and reformatory institutions were not really controlled or even
experimental in the scientific sense, because public agencies considered
themselves bound by the idea of justice to give equal treatment to equals rather
than one kind of treatment to one group and another kind to another group. By
the 1980s, however, public criminal justice agencies were more willing to
engage in experimental research. Police in Minneapolis, Minn., for example,
participated in a controlled random experiment on the use of arrest in domestic
violence situations. When police encountered domestic violence, the decision of
whether to arrest the offender was determined by random assignment, and these
events were recorded for the next six months. The results indicated that, if the
offender was arrested and spent one night in jail, the incidence of repeat
domestic violence against the same victim in the next six months was halved.
The research had a significant impact on police policies regarding domestic
violence throughout the United States, and, because of such significant results,
experimental research became more common in criminology and criminal
justice.
Such experimentation is nonetheless criticized by justice officials and the
public, largely because they continue to believe that equal treatment should be
accorded to equals. Nevertheless, its use has been spreading, largely because it
seems to be the most effective means of determining whether police policies
actually produce their intended effects.
Prediction studies
Criminological prediction attempts to forecast the future conduct of persons

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under certain conditions. Whether based on statistics, case histories, or a
combination of both, the predictions indicate the likelihood that a specific
individual or group will be affected by certain conditions or treatments. Thus,
for example, some people who commit some kinds of crimes, such as drug and
sex offenses, are considered fairly likely to recidivate, while people who
commit crimes such as murder are considered fairly unlikely to recidivate.
Although statistical prediction can never be conclusive and can merely show
certain probabilities, the method can be valuable in supplementing the
inevitably limited personal experience of judges and administrators. In the last
decades of the 20th century, prediction research became a very popular
criminological method.
Action research
Action research, which is often contrasted with experimental research, consists
of drawing upon the observations of field-workers and other persons directly
involved with delinquents, potential delinquents, or prisoners. For example,
social workers have attempted to help children and adolescents living in slums
cope with their problems and at the same time have studied their delinquent
behaviour, related it to their environment, and evaluated the results of youth
clubs or other services offered. Action research attempts to achieve practical
results through collaboration with field-workers. Trying to build a bridge
between abstract theories and practical work, it often dispenses with formal
hypotheses and simply aims at identifying and implementing tactics and
activities that will help prevent delinquent behaviour. The best known and
perhaps most successful example was Clifford Shaw’s Chicago Area Project,

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carried out during the 1920s and ’30s, which applied the ecological theories of
University of Chicago sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess in an
attempt to motivate local residents to deal with the social problems of their
neighbourhoods.
Cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural approaches
In the late 20th century, criminology increasingly focused on cross-cultural
approaches. Some cross-cultural studies have emphasized comparisons between
descriptive statistics (e.g., two studies of delinquency in Philadelphia birth
cohorts—persons born in the same year—were replicated with similar cohorts
in Puerto Rico and China). Other studies have attempted to determine the
individual characteristics associated with the increased likelihood of
committing crime. For example, a study comparing youths born in Dunedin,
N.Z., with youths born in Pittsburgh found that crime-prone youths in both
countries tended to combine impulsivity with “negative emotionality” (e.g.,
anger, anxiety, and irritability). Still other studies explored the characteristics of
societies that led to higher or lower crime rates; one such study found that the
rates of lethal violence in the United States in the 1980s were five times greater
than in other industrialized countries but that rates of other types of crimes were
similar or even lower. Researchers have attempted to explain why this pattern
existed and have also recommended policies designed to reduce lethal violence.
Major concepts and theories
Biological theories
Biological theories of crime asserted a linkage between certain biological

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conditions and an increased tendency to engage in criminal behaviour. In the
1890s great interest, as well as controversy, was generated by the biological
theory of the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, whose investigations of
the skulls and facial features of criminals led him to the hypothesis that serious
or persistent criminality was associated with atavism, or the reversion to a
primitive stage of human development. In the mid-20th century, William
Sheldon won considerable support for his theory that criminal behaviour was
more common among muscular, athletic persons (mesomorphs) than among
tall, thin persons (ectomorphs) or soft, rounded individuals (endomorphs).
During the 1960s, significant debate arose over the possible association
between criminal tendencies and chromosomal abnormalities—in particular, the
idea that males with the XYY-trisomy (characterized by the presence of an extra
Y chromosome) may be more prone to criminal behaviour than the general
population.
Although the popularity of such earlier biological theories has waned, research
has continued, yielding important findings. For example, studies have found
general evidence for a connection between biology and criminality for both
twins and adoptees. Twins are more likely to exhibit similar tendencies toward
criminality if they are identical (monozygotic) than if they are fraternal
(dizygotic). The fact that identical twins are more similar genetically than
fraternal twins suggests the existence of genetic influences on criminal
behaviour. Similarly, studies of adopted children have shown that the likelihood
of criminality generally corresponds with that of their biological parents. The
rate of criminality is higher among adopted children with one biological parent

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who is a criminal than it is among children who have one adoptive parent who
is a criminal but whose biological parents are not criminals. The highest rates of
criminality are found among children whose biological and adoptive parents are
criminals.
Biochemical research in the 1980s and ’90s attempted to identify specific
factors associated with an increased risk of engaging in criminal behaviour. For
example, certain neurotransmitter imbalances in the brain (e.g., low levels of
serotonin), hormonal imbalances (e.g., higher levels of testosterone), and
slower reactions of the autonomic nervous system appear to be associated with
increased criminality. These factors do not absolutely determine whether a
person will commit a crime; indeed, most people with these factors do not
commit crimes. Instead, the presence of these factors merely increases the
chance that the person will engage in criminal behaviour. Because these various
biological factors may be influenced by environmental conditions, however, the
direction of causation is unclear.
Researchers have identified other biological factors associated with increased
violence and aggressiveness, including alcohol intoxication, the use of some
drugs (e.g., crack cocaine but not marijuana), diet, and the ingestion of toxic
substances. Drinking alcohol has tended to increase criminality temporarily, and
the long-term effects of ingesting lead (such as is found in lead-based paint)
have generally been associated with long-term increases in criminality. Further,
certain types of head injuries and complications during pregnancy or birth are
correlated with long-term increases in the tendency of the child to commit
crime. The direction of causation in these cases is clearer than with serotonin

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"
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud, 1921.
Mary Evans/Sigmund Freud Copyrights
(courtesy of W.E. Freud)
and testosterone but not entirely certain. For example, it could be the case that
some other nonbiological intervening factor (e.g., poverty) causes the increased
tendency to commit crime and also causes the increased tendency to experience
complications during pregnancy and birth, to ingest lead and other toxins, and
to abuse alcohol.
Psychological theories
Psychologists approach the task of explaining delinquent and criminal
behaviour by focusing on an individual’s personality. In particular, they
examine the processes by which behaviour and restraints on behaviour are
learned. These processes often are conceived as being the result of the
interaction of biological predispositions and social experiences.
Among the earliest psychological theories of
crime were those based on the work of
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Freud argued
that human nature includes a great reservoir
of instinctual drives (the “id”) that demand
gratification. These drives are restrained by
moral and ethical codes (the “superego”) that
children internalize as a result of their great
love for and attachment to their parents. Adults develop a rational part of their
personality (the “ego”) that mediates between the drives of the id and the
restraints of the superego. Because the id is a relatively constant drive,
criminality is assumed to result from the failure of the superego, a consequence
of its incomplete development. However, the empirical evidence for this theory

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is thin.
Later psychological theories of crime were based on behaviour theory, such as
that of the American psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904–90), who viewed all
human behaviour—criminal and otherwise—as learned and thus manipulable
by the use of reinforcement and punishment (see behaviourism). The social
learning theory of Ronald Akers expanded behaviour theory to encompass ways
in which behaviour is learned from contacts within the family and other
intimate groups, from social contacts outside the family (particularly from peer
groups), and from exposure to models of behaviour in the media, particularly
television.
Beyond these broad psychological theories, it is sometimes argued that crime is
associated with certain mental conditions. Mental illness is generally the cause
of a relatively small proportion of crimes, but its perceived importance may be
exaggerated by the seriousness of some of the crimes committed by persons
with mental disorders. The closure of many American mental institutions in the
1960s and ’70s thrust many mentally ill people into the surrounding
communities, where some of them later became troublesome. Because
authorities had no other place to put them, there was a strong tendency for
mentally ill people to end up in jails and prisons.
One particular personality configuration—antisocial personality disorder—is
thought to be strongly associated with criminality. However, because the
criteria for diagnosing the disorder emphasize committing crimes and engaging
in crimelike behaviour, it is unclear whether the disorder is a cause of crime or

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simply a label that psychiatrists use to describe people who happen to be
criminals. In the 1990s, psychological research was focused on early childhood
experiences that tended to lead to criminality in later life, including poor
parental child-rearing techniques, such as harsh or inconsistent discipline.
Research also isolated impulsivity—the tendency to engage in high levels of
activity, to be easily distracted, to act without thinking, and to seek immediate
gratification—as a personality characteristic associated with criminality.
Sociological theories
The largest number of criminological theories have been developed through
sociological inquiry. These theories have generally asserted that criminal
behaviour is a normal response of biologically and psychologically normal
individuals to particular kinds of social circumstances.
Examples of these approaches include the theory of differential association,
which claims that all criminal behaviour is learned and that the learning process
is influenced by the extent of the individual’s contact with persons who commit
crimes. The more an individual associates with such persons, the more likely it
becomes that he will learn and adopt criminal values and behaviours. The
theory of anomie, proposed by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton,
suggests that criminality results from an offender’s inability to attain his goals
by socially acceptable means; faced with this inability, the individual is likely to
turn to other—not necessarily socially or legally acceptable—objectives or to
pursue the original objectives by unacceptable means. The concept of a criminal
subculture—an alternative set of moral values and expectations to which people
can turn if they cannot find acceptable routes to the objectives held out for them

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by the broader society—represents an integration of the differential-association
and anomie theories. Developed from studies of gangs of delinquents in U.S.
cities, the subculture approach has been disputed by some sociologists, who
deny the existence of any subculture of delinquency among the less affluent; the
behaviour of gangs, they argue, is in fact an expression of widespread lower-
class values that emphasize toughness and excitement.
Another set of sociological theories also denies the existence of subcultural
value systems. Neutralization theory, advanced by the American criminologists
David Cressey, Gresham Sykes, and David Matza, portrays the delinquent as an
individual who subscribes generally to the morals of society but who is able to
justify his own delinquent behaviour through a process of “neutralization,”
whereby the behaviour is redefined to make it morally acceptable. Control
theory emphasizes the links between the offender and his social group—his
bond to society. According to this view, the ability of the individual to resist the
inclination to commit crime depends on the strength of his attachment to his
parents, his involvement in conventional activities and avenues of progress, and
his commitment to orthodox moral values that prohibit the conduct in question.
The theory of low self-control retains the focus on restraints from engaging in
crime but argues that those restraints are primarily internal. People with low
self-control, according to this theory, are impulsive and insensitive to others,
tend to engage in physical rather than mental activities and to take risks, and are
oriented toward the short term rather than the long term. Advocates of self-
control theory argue that these characteristics result from parental child-rearing
practices and coalesce in the individual by about age eight, remaining stable

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throughout life.
In contrast, labeling theory portrays criminality as a product of society’s
reaction to the individual. It contends that the individual, once convicted of a
crime, is labeled a criminal and thereby acquires a criminal identity. Once
returned to society, he continues to be regarded as a criminal and is
consequently rejected by law-abiding persons and accepted by other
delinquents. Over time, therefore, the offender becomes increasingly socialized
into criminal behaviour patterns and more estranged from law-abiding
behaviour.
“Radical” criminological theories focus on power but anchor it in the political
and economic structure of society. In particular, these theories generally explain
both crime and criminal justice as by-products of capitalism and explore
alternative systems that might generate more harmonious social relations.
Radical theories tend to view criminal law as an instrument by which the
powerful and affluent coerce the poor into patterns of behaviour that preserve
the status quo. One such view, the so-called “peacemaking” theory, is based on
the premise that violence creates violence. Advocates of this theory argue that
criminal justice policies constitute state-sanctioned violence that generates
rather than suppresses criminal violence.
A similar view is represented by conflict theories, which hold that the powerful
pursue their own self-interest though the enactment and enforcement of
criminal laws. According to conflict theory, those with power and wealth are
more likely to obey the criminal law because it tends to serve their interests. In

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addition, they are better able than poor people to avoid being incriminated when
they do violate the law.
Social-structural-strain theories attempt to explain the high rate of theft for
monetary gain in the United States as a product of the class structure of
American society. They hold that pressures to achieve financial success drive
people to engage in this type of crime. They also maintain that less-affluent
people commit these types of crime more frequently than wealthy people do,
because members of lower economic classes generally have fewer opportunities
to make money through legitimate means.
Finally, ecological theories focus on the influence of neighbourhood
organization on criminal activity. Researchers have found that poorer
neighbourhoods, where families frequently move from one location to another
and where there is a relatively high proportion of single-parent households, tend
to have higher crime rates. Ecological theorists argue that this is a result of the
inability of neighbourhood residents, because of the chaotic conditions of their
lives, to organize effectively to achieve their goals.
A non-Western view: China
Since 1949 China has generally advocated a Marxist interpretation of the causes
of crime, viewing it as a product of an exploitative class structure founded upon
the institution of private property. Because the official view is that crime is
impossible in a purely socialist system, the “unreformed” elements of Chinese
society are often identified as the causes of contemporary crime. A number of
specific sources of criminal activity have been suggested: (1) external enemies

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and remnants of the overthrown reactionary classes (the latter referring to the
government of the Republic of China in Taiwan), (2) other remnants of the old
(pre-1949) society, including gangsters and hooligans, who refuse to reform, (3)
lingering aspects of bourgeois ideology that value profit, cunning, selfishness,
and decadence and thus encourage crime, and (4) the poverty and cultural
backwardness that is seen as the legacy of the old society. The Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s also has been cited as a cause of crime,
largely because it is thought to have confused notions of right and wrong and to
have destroyed respect for authority.
The economic reforms launched in China beginning in the mid-1970s led to
dramatic economic growth but also to a significant increase in criminal activity.
Although some dismissed the increase as a residual effect of the Cultural
Revolution, the phenomenon is more often explained as arising from various
unintended consequences of the economic reforms, including a loss of respect
for leaders of society and for the collective goals of the socialist state and the
spread of selfishness and lack of regard for others. Thus, because Chinese
criminology views crime as mainly caused by backward thinking and
ignorance, Chinese authorities have emphasized thought reform and education
to combat criminal activity. Similar theories of the causes of crime are found in
other societies that retain a Marxist economic system, including Cuba and
North Korea.
Trends
Criminology represents a diverse body of knowledge that incorporates a wide
variety of approaches. Although few contemporary trends can be applied to the

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whole field of study, it is nonetheless the case that much research is increasingly
quantitative, particularly in studies examining the causes of crime. Some of this
work applies the statistical approach originated by Quetelet to explain the crime
rates associated with particular societies and social groups; other work employs
the approach originated by Lombroso to explain the likelihood of an
individual’s committing a crime in terms of his biological, psychological, or
social characteristics. In addition, these approaches are increasingly aimed at
probabilistic predictions rather than absolute or deterministic ones. Finally,
criminologists now tend to concentrate on identifying factors in societies that
are associated with relatively small increases in crime rates and factors in
individuals that are associated with relatively small increases in the probability
that they will commit crimes. All of this reflects the inherent complexity of the
subject and points to the conclusion that no single factor actually determines
whether an individual commits a crime or whether a society has high or low
crime rates.
Hermann Mannheim Thomas J. Bernard
Citation Information
Article Title: Criminology
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 18 October 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/science/criminology
Access Date: September 21, 2021

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