Criminology is the scientific specialty dedicated to the analysis of the causes and context of crimes . This branch of social sciences is also oriented towards the study of the personality of individuals who commit crimes and the actions carried out to repress them.
Through the combination of tools from various disciplines, criminology focuses on the study of the criminal with respect to the crime itself. Its purpose is to provide information about the reasons that lead human beings to commit certain crimes so that the authorities can then proceed to apply the appropriate punishment.
In criminology, notions from psychology , sociology , anthropology and medicine appear, among other sciences. The Italian Raffaele Garofalo (1851-1934) is usually pointed out as the person responsible for coining the notion of criminology, while Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) is mentioned as the father of this specialty.
It is important to note that regardless of the emergence of criminology as a well-defined scientific specialty, there is a historical background of several centuries that contributed to its creation and development. Since ancient times there is evidence of different mechanisms that humans used to combat crime and also to study the minds of criminals and apply the appropriate punishment .
These topics were covered by Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, among other philosophers, who also attributed the commission of crimes to certain mental or physical deficiencies, as well as heredity. Other antecedents of criminology can be seen in the work Scholastica , written in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas, who collaborated with the foundations of criminal law from a philosophical point of view.
At a general level it can be said that criminology understands crime as the action that constitutes a violation of the essential values of a society , which are protected through laws. The criminal is the one who violates these values and, therefore, also violates the law.
One of the objects of study of criminology is the deviant behavior of an individual: that which deviates from the values respected by the community and that produces some type of harm or damage. The cause of deviant behavior can combine social, psychological, cultural and biological factors. To prevent and repress deviant behavior, different social control mechanisms are exercised.
Classical criminology developed with a philosophical basis associated with the Enlightenment (the European intellectual and cultural movement that emerged in England with John Locke in the mid-18th century). For this school, all human beings were rational, equal and free, so they could act as individuals in a responsible manner.
One of the characteristics of classical criminology that has been questioned throughout its evolution is the fact that it did not distinguish between the person who respects the law and the person who violates it. The interest was in the act, and not in the actor.
The movement of thought that aims to build a materialist theory of deviance is known as critical criminology . It is based largely on hypotheses, concepts and instruments that emerged in Marxist theory. The year 1968 is recognized as the moment in which it was founded, more specifically the National Deviance Conference that took place then.
Critical criminology studies deviant behavior through the opposition of two approaches, one biopsychological and the other macrosociological, in such a way that it is able to demonstrate its relationship with the social structure, which can be functional or dysfunctional, and in this way it is located above of the etiological paradigm of classical criminology.