Module 5 Crime, Criminal, Criminology and Juvenile Delinquency

NPTEL – Humanities and Social Sciences – Indian Society : Issues and Problems
Module 5 Crime, Criminal, Criminology and Juvenile

Delinquency
Lecture 28
Crime, Criminal, Criminology
Crime
A crime is held to be an offence which goes beyond the personal and into the public
sphere, breaking prohibitory rules or laws, to legitimate punishments or sanctions are
attached, and which requires the intervention of a public authority(the state or local
body)). Ideally, the later administers a formal system for dealing with crime, and employs
representative officers (for example a police force) to act on its behalf. In terms of law
and jurisprudence, being guilty of the committing of a criminal act usually involves evil
intent or conscious intent can be shown to be missing (as, for example, in the cases of
children or the insane) then the offence is not a crime and will not attract the usual
punishment (although some form of detention or therapeutic treatment may follow).All
official statistics are based on the legal definition, as the system of criminal justice is
perceive from legal approach and all the empirical studies on criminals focus on crime
defined by law. Tappan (1960) has defined crime as “an intentional act or omission in
violation of criminal law committed without defense or justification”. Thus, this legal
definition of crime postulates that if the act is proved to be in self-defence, or committed
in insanity, it will not be considered a crime even if it causes harm or injury to others.
Ignorance of law is usually not a defence. According to Hall Jerome (1974) has defined
crime as “legally forbidden and intentional action, which has harmful impact on social
interests, which has a criminal intent, and which has legally prescribed punishment for
it”.
For crime to be known as such it must come to the notice of , and be processed through,
an administrative system or enforcement agency. It must be reported and recorded by the
police (or other investigator); it may then become part of the criminal statistics; may or
may not be investigated; and may or may not result in a court case. Thus recorded crime-
rates are socially constructed, and also leave out hidden crime. The latter can include, for
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example, unreported instances of domestic violence, of attacks on ethnic minorities,

indecent assault, and rape. Self-report studies of those involved in delinquency and
criminality have confirmed that a large proportion of such behavior is not officially
recorded. A more recent wave of studies of victims of crime has also supported the view
that the hidden crime figure is very large. One could include various forms of economic
crime but, from workplace theft to large-scale fraud, industrial pollution, and
contravention of heath and safety legislation, all of which may not be officially recorded
as crime but, according to some criminologists, contribute significantly to the hidden
crime that affects society. What some have termed victimless crime or crimes without
victims (for example those involving drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling) may break
laws but go unreported because those involved enter into a form of agreement and
support the transaction. A legal definition of crime may therefore not be sufficient. Crime
has also been defined in non-legal or social terms. Caldwell (1956) has defined crime as
“those acts or failures to act that are considered to be so detrimental to the well-being of a
society, as judged by its prevailing standards, that action regarding them cannot be
entrusted to private initiative or to haphazard methods but must be taken by an organized
society in accordance with tested procedures”. According to Thorsten Sellin (1970) crime
is a “violation of conduct norms of the normative groups”. According to Clinard (1957)
all deviations from norms are not crimes. He talk of three types of deviations, tolerated
deviations, deviation which is midly disapproved, and deviation which is strongly
disapproved. He perceives third type of deviation as crime. Criminologist with a
sociological perspective have not claimed that there is no place for the legal definition of
crime in criminology. They have only drawn attention to situations I which people who
engage in criminal behavior are either not caught or are not acquitted by courts because
of inadequate evidence or legal loopholes or pressures. However, Social definition of
crime is also cross-questioned on the ground that it is socially constructed and highly
relative. Its definition and accepted etiology (or cause) can be influenced by ideas of
morality (in relation to responsibility), and by religious faith (the sinful nature of crime),
as well as competing scientific claims as to its origins. Taking the reconciliatory position
between legal and social definitions of crime, Reid (1975) has said that “the legal

definition may be used for compiling statistics on crime and for assigning the label
criminal, but the studies undertaken for studying causation of crime should include such
persons also in their sample of criminals who admit their crime but are not convicted by
court”. The perpetration of crime can be an individual act or be talked of in
organizational terms. The concept can also be loosely applied to actions which offend
against a set of principles but which do not necessarily involve the breaking of a law such
as, crimes of the powerful and the crimes of the state. State ca, of course, use the category
crime and criminal law for their own political purposes. Exceptions to and expansions of
the law can quickly be introduced in times of national emergency or in the interest of
state.
Criminology
In simple words criminology can be defined as the study of crime, its perpetrators, and its
cases; and related, an interest in its prevention, and in the deterrence, treatment, and
punishment of offenders. Approaches and theoretical traditions are diverse. Thus,
criminology as the study of crime will be interested in the distribution of crime, and in
the techniques and organization of crime. Criminology as the study of criminals might
seek explanations for criminal beahaviour in biology, psychology, or in the political
economy of the society. The related sociology of law may be interested in the process of
making and breaking laws and in issues such as proportionally making the punishment fit
the crime. During the 1960s and 1970s, a sociology of deviance developed as a source of
sociological opposition to the law-enforcement and establishment orientation or
traditional criminology, and as an epistemological critique of unquestioned assumptions
about what constitutes crime or deviance. In 1970and 1980s external and internal
influences on criminology encouraged the development of critical criminology and
feminist criminology. The latter drew attention to the near invisibility of women in
criminological work and gave significant impetus to rectifying the past neglect of victims
of crime. Critical criminology is also termed as radical criminology, this perspective
viewed and explained crime as a product of the social and the historical processes related
to capitalism. It is based on conflict perspective of Marx and focuses upon the oppressive
power of the state, its control over the definition and the prosecution of crime, and the

exploitation of the powerless by capital. Feminist criminology is a self-conscious

corrective to mainstream criminology and deviance theories and one with the triple goals
of critique, research, and reformulation of the field of inquiry. It emerged in 1970s partly
as an outgrowth of both the women’s movement and feminism, but also as a response to
the s0-called new deviance theory and critical criminology, which, whilst aiming to be
radical and innovative, had continued to ignore women. Sometimes seen as sub-field of
sociology, sometimes as a discipline in itself, criminology is clearly mixed but dynamic
enterprise, drawing on sociology, economics, history, psychology, and anthropology.
Some commentators have suggested that its principal concern ought to be the study of the
production and distribution of order, in other words, control rather than crime. Over the
past two centuries, various schools of criminology have flourished. A school of
criminology is a system of thought that consists of a theory of crime causation integrated
with policies implied in the theory. One of the first schools of criminology was the
classical school which developed in Europe during the eighteenth century through the
efforts of Cesare Beccaria and Jermy Bentham. The classical school views crime as a
rational means for maximizing self-interest. It maintains that individual will choose to
engage in crime when they determine that crime offers the most pleasure and least pain
relative to other course of action. It also follows that to control crime, the state need only
convince the people that crime will entail more pain than pleasure, and it can accomplish
this by increasing the punishment of crime. When people realize that crime is less
pleasurable, they will choose to engage in more satisfying action. The positive school of
criminology developed during the nineteenth century largely through the work of Cesare
Lomborso and his followers. Grounded in physical science, the positive school of thought
views crime as the product of personal defects or disorder. It maintains that the physical
constitution influences behavior and that defects in biological structure or process
engender criminal behavior. The positive school insists that punishment will not control
the crime, because criminals do not calculate the pleasure and pain of alternative actions
and chose those that maximize pleasure. Rather, it contends that the only reasonable way
to control crime is to discover and manipulate its causes. It follows that best way to
control crime is to treat personal defect or disorder. This school fell from favour in the

early twentieth century with the rise of the sociological school, which views crime as the
function of social environment. The sociological school has evolved over the course of
the twentieth century, and it has come to dominate scholarly efforts to explain crime. The
sociological school was developed primarily in the United States. In the late nineteenth
century, criminology was accepted as a field of study by the growing university
department of sociology, and since that time systematic studies of crime and criminals
have been made mostly by sociologists.
References
Caldwell, Robert A; Criminology, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1956.
Clinard, Marshall, B; Sociology of Deviant Behavior, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc;
New York, 1957.
Reid, Sue Titus, Crime and Criminolgy, Thy Drydon Press, Hinsdale, Illionois,1976.
Tappan, Paul, Crime, Justice and Correction, McGraw Hill, New York, 1960.

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NPTEL – Humanities and Social Sciences – Indian Society : Issues and Problems

Module 5 Crime, Criminal, Criminology and Juvenile

Joint initiative of IITs and IISc – Funded by MHRD Page 1 of 5

example, unreported instances of domestic violence, of attacks on ethnic minorities,

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Joint initiative of IITs and IISc – Funded by MHRD Page 3 of 5

exploitation of the powerless by capital. Feminist criminology is a self-conscious

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Joint initiative of IITs and IISc – Funded by MHRD Page 5 of 5

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