HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY: STAGES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS - HISTORY - 2025

The history of criminology has evolved over time hand in hand with other disciplines of a philosophical, ideological and even political nature. In other words, as society and the scientific disciplines that study it has evolved, the understanding of the causes and consequences of crimes has also changed.

The object of study of criminology is the criminal and his motives for committing the crime, deciphering his behavior and identifying his crime. That is, it studies the biopsychosocial aspect of crime.

To fulfill its purpose, criminology relies on other sciences such as: sociology, psychology, chemistry, medicine, physics, anthropology, forensic pathology and mathematics.

Criminology is related to Criminal Law, because it is under its protection the results of criminal investigations are processed.

The first time the term criminology was used formally was in 1885, and it was used by a law professor named Raffaele Garófalo, who edited a book by that name. But its meaning and implications are aspects that have been transforming.

Historical background of criminology

From the time of the first great Greek philosophers, crime was raised as a matter that required special attention.

While Plato considered that the crime was born in the lack of education and that the punishment should be oriented to solve this radical circumstance, Aristotle proposed the idea of ​​exemplary punishment to avoid recidivism.

There are also antecedents of criminological science, in the Utopia of Tomás Moro (1516), where crime is linked to socioeconomic factors.

According to Moro, crime responds to multiple factors, among which the unequal distribution of wealth stands out. He also spoke of the disproportion in the penal system of his time.

Historical evolution

-Illustration (mid-18th century)

The Enlightenment as an ideological and scientific movement, laid the foundations of legalism, humanism and individualism, which will be noticed later in the so-called Classical School of criminology.

In this period the approaches of:

Cesare Beccaria

He is a critic of the ways of prosecuting criminals and accuses the inequality of the citizen before the Law.

He proposes that public trials be held, that preventive arrests be made and that an evidence system be implemented.

Charles De Secondat

He is a pioneer in formally raising the need to unlink the judiciary from the executive. He stood against torture and defended the idea of ​​legislation aimed at preventing crime.

Voltaire

This theorist spoke of the proportionality and usefulness of punishment for a crime.

Juan Jacobo Rousseau

Author of The Social Contract (1762), he argues that man is perverted when he leaves his natural state and lives under the rules of a State.

For him, crime is nothing more than proof that the social pact is poorly structured and the state is weak and disorganized.

-Classical School of Criminology (18th century)

According to this line of thought, which comes from Illustration, there is a higher order (Natural Law), above the laws created in a State (Positive Law).

This natural order applies to all human affairs, including the issue of crime and its various aspects: crime, offender, punishment and justice. It is supported by a deductive and abstract methodology.

-Positivist School of Criminology (19th century)

From this school, the idea that man is driven to criminal behavior by innate characteristics is defended. At this time, the object of study becomes the criminal and how society defends itself against him, relegating him or eliminating him.

Approaches such as those of Cesare Lombroso or Enrico Ferri appear, according to which the criminal is physiologically different from the rest of the people in a society.

In other words, criminals are physically and biologically different from those who are not. Consequently, penalties such as death or life imprisonment are justified as forms of punishment for the criminal. This conception influenced the thinking of intellectuals in this field for the next 30 years.

In 1913, Charles Goring's The English Convict appeared, comparing two groups of people (some convicts and others not) and showing that they did not have the physical differences that Lombroso described.

-Modern criminology (20th century)

With the twentieth century, the field of criminology expanded: in Germany, criminology was integrated as a branch of this discipline; in the United States they propose a joint study of the science behind crime and the social reaction it provokes.

Advances in psychology and sociology affect new ways of approaching the issue of crime and, in turn, this opens new paths for criminal law.

Names such as Edwin Sutherland, David Matza, Gary LaFree, Travis Hirschi, David Farrington, Charles Tittle, Michael Gottfredson, and Jock Young are popular.

-Critical criminology

It is a position that was founded in 1968, with the National Conference on Deviation and that takes many of the notions defended by Marxism.

According to this approach, prison should be the last option and should only be given in cases where a real danger to society is proven. They propose the social reintegration of the offender.

In parallel there are movements such as minimalism, which proposes the humanization of criminal law; and abolitionism, which proposes the total replacement of the criminal justice system.

Criminology today

Criminology has evolved dramatically in the last 40 years, thanks to technological advances and advances in the criminal justice system.

The importance of criminology for Justice is undeniable: hot spot surveillance, crime mapping and analysis, specialized courts, rehabilitation and re-entry programs, questioning of eyewitnesses, DNA tests, etc.

Currently, criminologists study crime considering its social, psychological and biological factors, relying on other scientific disciplines.

Criminology and university

The first American School of Criminology began operating in 1950, at the University of California, Berkeley. 5 years later, the first was opened in Barcelona, ​​Spain.

References

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