Criminology Final Paper
1. Criminology is a science which, as its goal, attempts to predict, decrease, and ultimately enable preventive measures against crime, or alternatively, making law enforcement officers more efficient by allowing them to “put themselves in the mind of a criminal”.
Historically, criminology has been dominated by two primary schools of thought, classical theory and positivist theory. In short, the difference between them can be shown by a simple generalization: adepts of classical school believe punishment must fit the crime, while positivists believe it must fit the criminal. Classics therefore believe in reciprocal justice, making worse punishments for worse crimes (murder would ultimately be punishable by death). Positivists believe that before deciding on a punishment, criminal’s personal factors like mental health, psychological portrait, the environment he/she was brought up in, must be considered. The focus is not on retaliation but on ensuring a criminal does not commit crime again.
Starting from the 1920s the discourse in criminology has been massively dominated by various versions of positivist approach. At that time, criminologists for the first time became focused not only on preventing escalation on crime, but understanding the mind of the criminal. Public sector also became educated in order to try and rehabilitate criminals as well as promote more acceptable and productive lifestyle decisions among youth.
1960s and 1970s gave rise to delinquency theory and trying various approaches, including looking into drug addicted population, to explain causes of crime. Crime levels continued to rise, which also led to development of theory of moral panic, i.e. panic society experiences when its core values and beliefs are threatened. The 1980s brought forth concern on how crime impacts not only criminals and society, but victims themselves too. In addition, the concepts of race, gender, socioeconomic factors began to be regarded as contributing to criminal acts. Such approach with the focus on preventing crime again and recognizing causes might be outside of our control, prevailed until the end of 20th century and until nowadays.
2. As it was mentioned before, there many various and sometimes mutually exclusive explanations as to what causes a criminal to commit a delinquent act. The two theories which are prominent nowadays attempt to explain the causes of crime. They are life-course theory and neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory. Central discussion in causes of crime involves rival concepts of nature vs. nurture. In a nutshell, those who believe it is nature say criminals are born this way, whereas supporters of nurture claim criminals are made by a combination of external factors. Both life-course theory and ENA focus on nature. However, while in life-course theory impact of nurture is unacknowledged, although it does play a role, nurture in ENA theory is an important supportive factor.
The life-course theory analyzes the factors, such as age, relationships, historical or life events major changes and shocks which happen over the course of person’s lifetime. The nature-based factors related to life-course theory are categorized into five concepts: (a) cohorts, (b) …
