Everything you need to know about the Criminology (Theory and Practice)

Criminology (theory and practice )

Criminology may be described as including two separate but interdependent branches: one, which conducts scientific studies and the other, which uses theoretical principles in practice for preventing crime and treating criminals (Johnson, 1978: 53).

This development of interdependence between theory and practice depends on the one hand on the willingness of the scientists to participate in applied research and on the other hand on the openness of the criminal justice agencies (police, prisons, courts correctional institutions, probation department) to alternative interpretations of their purposes and work patterns.

Criminologists with their professional training, occupational roles, and commitment to research remain concerned with scientific research in issues like nature of crime, causes of crime, types of persons who commit crimes, factors which encourage crime, institutions engaged in controlling criminal behaviour, societal reaction to crime, functioning of structures of law-enforcement agencies, and so on.

They insist that criminology is a separate and an autonomous discipline of knowledge because “it accumulates its own set of organised data and theoretical conceptualizations that use the scientific method, approach to understanding and attitude in research.”

Though it is true that other disciplines make important contributions, yet refined analysis of crime and criminal behaviour demands “devoted and disciplined concern with the special subject”. People in criminal justice administration are excluded because they are at most consumers of the products of criminological science.

Criminology, as a theoretical discipline has to be a self-contained and independent discipline. It has to present a distinctive intellectual identity, a broad organisational base and an established flow of qualified persons (teachers, researchers) for continuity of a distinctive occupational community. Theoretical criminology has to develop as a collection of criminological sciences, rather than as a single autonomous science.

In this, sociology of course has to be dominant and has to play a major role, though psychology, biology, psychiatry, physical anthropology, law, and medical science also have to make contributions in their own way.

While it is not easy to say whether the development has to be based only on sociological approach or on multidisciplinary approach, one thing is quite clear: criminology has to develop as a special science.

Does this mean that ‘practitioners’ have to be excluded from the ranks of criminologists? According to Johnson (op. cit, 55), though some people might question it, yet the reality is that only theoreticians in criminology can take serious interest in research; practitioners still hesitate to use criminological principles.

They have yet to realise that they will gain from the closest contact with the theoreticians in criminology. Of course, the theoreticians too have to realise that they too will be made more aware of the many problems, of which they would otherwise be unaware, if they maintained communication/contact with the courts, the police and the prison officials. Theory and practice in criminology have to be kept interlinked.

A theoretician criminologist cannot be accused of abstract thinking and a practitioner cannot claim that only his thinking is concrete. The researcher derives his knowledge from empirical studies and from direct contact with criminals, prisoners, policemen, probation officers, judges, etc.

The practitioner, when criticising the theoretician criminologist, by declaring that “he tells only what we already know” is erroneous. Both have to maintain a sustained interest in each other’s work as well as in mutual partnership. The growth of criminology depends on the professional interests of both researchers and practitioners of criminological principles.