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Early History of Criminology Theory and its Application to Crime Control

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Introduction

Criminology is a multidisciplinary study that tries to learn, interpret, and understand the phenomenal features of criminal behavior by both an individual and the multitude. The study comprises of social science disciplines such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology among others, all aiming at discerning the nature, consequence and possible preventive measures of criminal activities. Criminology concept arose back in the mid-18^th century coming along with three major schools: classical, Positive, and Chicago. Other models of criminology such as feminist criminology, labeling, cultural, and postmodern criminology, however, has superseded the ideologies of the early concept of criminology (Bosworth, 2011).

Positivist school vs Classical School

To begin with, the positivist school outcropped because of advances in criminology study. The ideology of this school is based on scientific study of what influences human criminal behavior. The school attributes the major causes of crime to uncontrollable internal and external factors that surround the offender. The positivist school comprises of three pillars of study; biology, psychology, and sociological positivism. Psychologists have sought correlations between personal traits of a person with certain crimes and past experience that may induce law-breaking behavior to different offenders. In addition to that, empirical research from positivist sociology relates the causes of crime to ulterior situational factors such as poverty, neglect, growth in population, and induced digressive subcultures. Generally, the positivist school seeks to explain the inevitability of crimes (Vito, 2015).

Unlike the positivist school, the classical school seeks to explain why crime is preventable by humans. It advocates for individual’s choice as the major propellant to criminal doings. The school is based on a philosophy that people have the intuition to guide them make informed decisions on whether to follow or violate the law. Its assumption is that offenders gain a certain level of pleasure and satisfaction through defiance of the law. Therefore, the school argues that incorporating punishments of equal magnitude to the pleasure and satisfaction generated from criminal wrongdoing automatically censors the probability of criminal activities among individuals.

Comparing the two major schools of criminology, classical appears to be more appealing since the crime is consequential of the choice made by the offender. Classical theory highly embraces deterrence theory that argues that people are likely to refrain from criminal acts when they are aware of a definite set punishment. Today, criminal justice borrows significant ideas from classical school and deterrence theory of criminology in the execution of justice to the offenders and the offended. For instance, setting up long-term imprisonment for particular crimes alleviates possible desires of criminal offenses among individuals who wish to fulfill certain desires such as theft, rape, or even murder (Clarke, 2014).

Relationship between Gender and Crime

Gender plays a significant role in criminological thinking today. According to Andersen (2015), gender greatly influences the perception of the law and the society on particular crimes. Belknap (2014) asserts that great discrepancies exist in the way men and women are perceived on their offense pattern and levels of victimization. Gender stereotyping in law and the society seems to bias against men. In most cases, men are more likely to be victimized by various crime than women are. This takes us back to the practical application of the positivistic ideology (Belknap, 2014).

Relationship between Class and Crime

Social class and crime correlate to the nature and extent of the crime.  The consensus theory relates elevated levels of crime among the working class to the disparity in the access of the legitimate opportunity structure between the working individuals and their counterparts. This disparity to accessing opportunities generates different cultural differences. However, interactionism theory invalidates the consensus theory suggesting that the exalted rates of crimes in the working class link to a social construction (Muncie, 2014).

Relationship between Race and Crime

In most cases, the minority groups are deemed more likely to be active criminals. Perhaps out of plain discrimination, racial stereotyping will relates blacks to be more susceptible to committing crimes as compared to the whites.

When criminal justice inclines its favor to a certain race or ethnicity the resultant phenomenon is racial profiling. Racial profiling is a broader version of ethnic discrimination that digresses the efforts to foster impartial administration of criminal justice.

Drawing back to what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States, where 19 Arabic men who were suspected al-Qaeda militants took down four planes, claiming about 3000 lives in a suicide mission; we can justify racial profiling to some extent. However, it should be clear that not all Arab men embrace terrorism, but with the 9/11 thought it would not be advisable to take chances with lives of innocent people. However, to the downside of this idea, people of the Middle East decent might retaliate into worse crime from this stereotyping (Agnew, 2016).

Conclusion

It is evident that the descent of huge percentage of modern justice system borrows highly on the early criminal theory. However, other paradigms of criminology such as feminist criminology that favor women in crime limit the effectiveness of criminal justice administration. From the debate, it is also clear that racial profiling does not guarantee justification, though stricter methods of administering criminal justice are recommendable without showing favor to people of a particular descent.

References

Agnew, R. (2016). Race and youth crime: Why isn’t the relationship stronger?. Race and Justice, 6(3), 195-221.

Andersen, M., & Collins, P. H. (2015). Race, class, & gender: An anthology. Nelson Education.

Belknap, J. (2014). The invisible woman: Gender, crime, and justice. Nelson Education.

Bosworth, M., & Hoyle, C. (Eds.). (2011). What is criminology?. Oxford University Press.

Muncie, J. (2014). Youth and crime. Sage.

Vito, G. F., & Maahs, J. R. (2015). Criminology. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.