Importance of Criminology

The need for study of criminal science (which includes criminology, penology, and criminal law) essentially emanates out of the psychological apprehension about insecurity of life, liberty and property of the people. It is the lust for wealth, satisfaction of baser urges, hatred or suspicion for one another that tends people to follow criminal behaviour and leads them to commit crime.

The science of criminology therefore, aims at taking up case to case study of different crimes and suggest measures so as to infuse the feeling of mutual confidence, respect and co-operation among the offenders. The recent penological reforms have achieved considerable success in this direction.

The criminal law has been adequately modified to adapt itself to the modem reformative policies. Liberalisation of punishment for affording greater opportunities for rehabilitation of offenders through intensive after-care programmes has been accepted as the ultimate object of penal justice. Some of the significant attributes of criminology are noted below:

(i) The most significant aspect of criminology is its concern for crime and criminals. It presupposes the study of criminal with basic assumption that no one is born criminal. It treats reformation as the ultimate object of punishment while individualisation the method of it. Most criminologists and penologists generally agree that every criminal is corrigible if offered adequate opportunities through treatment methods.

(ii) As Donald Taft rightly puts it, the study of criminology also offers a background for profession and an opportunity for social workers. The police, the lawyers, attorneys, judges, jurors, probation officers, detectives and other specialists such as psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists, etc., need perfect knowledge of criminology and administrative machinery for criminal justice system for their professional pursuits.

(iii) Criminology also seeks to create conditions conducive to social solidarity inasmuch as it tries to point out what behaviours are obnoxious and anti-social. It tries to convince the offenders through punitive sanction that anti-social conduct on their part is bound to entail them punishment, misery, misfortune and dis-repute in society.

The reformative treatment offered to first offenders, juvenile delinquents and insane criminals is intended to reform them as law-abiding members of society. Various correctional methods are devised to achieve this purpose. The ultimate object is to render a crime-free society as far as possible with a view to attaining social harmony.

(iv) It is further to be noted that with the advance of scientific knowledge and technology the complexities of life have also considerably multiplied. This has led to an enormous increase in crime rate and many new crimes which were hitherto altogether unknown, have emerged. Thus, thefts of automobiles, shop-lifting, smuggling, cheating, financial scams, bank robberies, scandals, terrorist activities etc., have become too common these days.

Again, white collar crimes have attracted the attention of criminologists in recent years. This in turn, has led criminal law administrators to devise new methods and techniques to tackle these problems through intensive scientific researches. The modern computer related crimes have thrown new challenges before criminal law administrators throughout the world.

Besides internet gambling, on-line pornography, the menace of drug-trafficking through computer-shopping and illegal downloading of money in transit are some of the cyber-crimes which are coming to light in recent years. Thus, modem criminologists keep themselves acquainted with the new criminological developments and work out strategies to tackle these intricate problems for the protection of society.