Essay on Growth of Criminology in this World

The origin of the term 'criminology' can be traced back to the French anthropologist Topinard, whose major work appeared in 1879. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, the emphasis was on the reform of criminal law and not on the causes of crime.

Scholars, including the Italian scholars Beccaria and Bentham, were more concerned with the humanitarian aspects in dealing with criminals and reforming severe criminal laws. Great progress in criminology was made after the first quarter of the twentieth century.

The first American textbook on criminology was written in 1920 by sociologist Maurice Parmalee under the title Criminology. Programmes were developed for the specific purpose of training students to be criminologists, but the developments were rather slow.

In India, the teaching of criminology started in 1940 at the Jail Officers Training School at Lucknow. In 1949, a diploma course in criminology was started at the Lucknow University. In subsequent years criminology as a subject came to be taught in several universities. Four universities/institutions deemed to be universities soon introduced independent departments of criminology: Tata Institute of Social

Sciences, Bombay (1954); University of Saugar, Saugar (1959); University of Madras, Madras (1965) and University of Karnataka, Dharwad (1970). Diploma courses in criminology today are run by the Lucknow University, Lucknow and Rajasthan University, Jaipur.

At the postgraduate level, criminology as a paper was started between 1950 and 1959 by the Sociology Departments of Lucknow University, Gorakhpur University and Institute of Social Sciences, Agra and by the Psychology Departments of Baroda University, Baroda and Utkal University, Bhubaneswar.

Between 1960 and 1969, criminology paper was started by the Sociology Departments of Marathwada University, Nagpur; Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi; Kalyani University, Calcutta; Rajasthan University, Jaipur; Udaipur University, Udaipur and the Psychology Departments of Andhra University, Bhagalpur University, Madras University, Nagpur University and Ranchi University.

Lastly, between 1970 and 1980, it was introduced by the Sociology Departments of Annamalai University, Hyderabad; Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Ahmadabad and by the Psychology Departments of Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla; Osmania University, Hyderabad and S.V. University, Tirupati. In Social Work Institutes, criminology is taught at Udaipur, Baroda, Madras, Indore, Dharwad, Delhi, Waltair, Bangalore and Mangalore.

At the undergraduate level, criminology is taught either in Sociology or Psychology Department as a compulsory paper in sixteen universities and as an optional paper in eleven universities. Greater growth of criminology, thus took place between 1970 and 1980-in disciplines like sociology, psychology, social work and law-than between 1950 and 1970.

Gibbons and Garabedian (Cf. Charles Reasons, The Criminologist: Crime and the Criminal, 1974: 51-65) have recently identified three major perspectives in the growth of criminology: conservative, liberal, and radical (or critical).

Conservative criminology incorporates the following ideas: (1) criminal law is given; (2) criminals are 'morally defective' people; (3) criminologists have to study how morally defective people are produced and how society can protect itself against criminals; (4) in dealing with the question of causation of crime, conservative criminologists advocate the 'multiple factor' approach, emphasising combinations of personality, biological, and environmental factors; and (5) conservative criminologists tend to have faith in efficient police and criminal justice machinery (see, Barlow, 1978: 26).

Liberal criminology emerged in the 1940s and in the early 1950s, while radical criminology emerged in the 1970s. Since liberal criminology has dominated the field over the past fifty years, it is also called mainstream criminology. Early liberal criminology retained the emphasis of conservative criminology on offenders and their behaviour but pushed the search for the cause of crime in institutions and structure of society.

Three major views of liberal criminology are: (1) crime is the result of learning process occurring within a criminogenic culture; (2) criminality is the result of breakdown of personal and social controls; and (3) crime is a normal response to a situation of cultural discontinuity between ends and means (Gibbons and Garabedian, op.cit.: 53).

These views affirm that criminals are not perceived as 'morally defective' persons but are seen as law-abiding people in society, who commit crimes to achieve culturally supported goals wealth, prestige and power.

While early liberal criminology laid emphasis on crime as behaviour and on a criminal as a law-violator, liberal criminology of the 1960s and the 1970s laid stress on crime as status and on the process of making and enforcing criminal laws.

According to the new liberal criminology, society is characterised by conflict and criminality is the product of power differentials and of struggle to defend individual interests. Criminals in society are those who are lacking in power and who are unsuccessful in the struggle to defend their interests. Police and courts are viewed as failures in living up to the ideals of justice.

Radical criminology rejects liberal reformism like probation, parole, juvenile court system, Borstal schools, and correctional reformatories because all these "strengthen the power of the state over the poor".

The main thrust of radical criminology is: (1) a relatively small number of politicians, bureaucrats, and military men (what C. Wright Mills has called the 'power elite') comprise a close-knit power structure bent upon exploiting people; (2) laws have been created as devices for compelling the masses to remain docile; (3) the police are the mercenaries of oppression, serving the interests of the 'power elite'; (4) criminals are held captive as innocent victims of a corrupt, capitalistic and exploitative society; and (5) unless the present political-economic structure of (capitalistic) society is changed, criminality will remain and the legal machinery will continue to undermine the interests of people (Barlow, 1978: 28).