CRIMINOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: - Criminology in India: Definition and Its Scope

Submitted By

MOHAMMAD ZIYA ANSARI

BALLB (HONS)
SEMESTER-VII
ENROLLMENT NO- GI- 6492
FACULTY NO- 17BALLB- 72
1st GCT ASSIGNMENT

Submitted To

Dr. Md Kalimullah Sir

Professor, Faculty of Law

Aligarh Muslim University

ALIGARH-202002 (INDIA)
 Topic- Criminology In India: Definition And Its Scope

1-INTRODUCTION:

It has become nearly impossible to take a walk down the street and come back home without
overhearing at least one conversation about a crime. Especially if you are a resident of one of
those thickly populated Indian cities, it is hard to keep your ears away from news related to
crime. Yes, crimes are eating up this world. Be it your newspaper, tv or radio, you are greeted
with a new crime story every day along with your morning coffee.  But why are crime rates
increasing at such a rapid rate? Why do people commit crimes? How do criminals get punished?
If you are keen on understanding such patterns and are interested in learning more about criminal
behavior, I would suggest you take up criminology. In a world filled with crimes, this academic
discipline holds a lot of importance today. This article intends to shed some light on
‘criminology in India’.

According to the National Institute of Criminology, it is “the integrated, multidisciplinary study

of the causes, predictions, and control of crime and other harmful behavior constituting a breach
of societal norms at a local, national, or international level.” Criminology is a branch of
sociology that intends to study anti-social behavioral patterns in a society. As an academic field,
it is basically the scientific study of crime or criminal behavior. The field looks into the nature of
the crime, its extent, law enforcement, management, control, etc.

2-MEANING OF CRIMINOLOGY: -

Criminology is the scientific study of the causes and prevention of criminal behaviour, studying
crime as a social phenomenon. The scope of criminology includes perspectives on making laws,
breaking laws, and societal reactions to laws being broken. Criminology studies crime and
deviance, often within the context of other social issues, such as education, racism, poverty, and
gender. As such, study within this social science is broad. The science of criminology aims
at taking up case to case study of different crimesand suggest measures to ‘reform’ the offenders. 
Liberalizationof punishment for affording greater opportunitiesfor rehabilitation of offenders has
been accepted as the ultimate object of penal justice. It presupposes the study of the criminal
with basic assumption that no one is born criminal. It treats reformation as the ultimate object of
punishment while individualization (treatment accorded to each individual according to
his personality) the method of it. The ultimate object is to render a crimeless society so far as
possible with a view to achieving social harmony.

3-BRANCHES OF CRIMINOLOGY IN INDIA: -

Criminology is a vast field. It covers various subjects related to crimes such as criminal behavior,
genetic factors that affect crime, punishment for crime, gender and crime, criminalistics, etc. Let
me give you a brief of a few sub-topics that comes under criminology before moving forward.

a-Penology: -In India, the Indian judicial system is in charge of deciding the punishment.
Penology is the study of practices different societies use as punishment to repress crimes. This
includes the study of punishment methods, prison systems, and prison management. 

b-Bio criminology: -Bio criminology is the study of the relationship between biological factors
and crime.

c-Feminist criminology: -Feminist criminology intends to study the gender biases involved in
dealing with crime and criminal behavior.

d-Criminalistics: -Criminalistics is the application of scientific methods to collect, preserve and

analyze physical evidence from a crime scene. Let’s say its forensic science.

e-Criminal law: -This one is self-explanatory. It is the study of laws related to crime. It can be
either country-specific or global, according to your choice of university or country. 

4- DEFINITION OF CRIMINOLOGY: -

Criminology is the scientific study of crime, including its causes, responses by law enforcement,
and methods of prevention. It is a sub-group of sociology, which is the scientific study of social
behavior. There are many fields of study that are used in the field of criminology, including
biology, statistics, psychology, psychiatry, economics, and anthropology.

Criminology is the scientific study of:

*the extent and nature of crime: How much crime is there in our society? What crime types are
there?
*the causes of crime: Why do offenders commit crime?
*the consequences of crime: This includes the impact of crime on victims and on society
*reactions to crime by the criminal justice system (such as the police, courts, and prisons)
*the prevention of crime.
Criminology maybe defined as “the scientific study of the causation, correction, and
prevention of crime”. Criminology is the social science approach to the study of crime as an
individual and social phenomenon. Although contemporary definitions vary in the exact words
used, there is considerable consensus that criminology involves the application of the “scientific
method” to the study of variation in criminal law, the causes of crime, and reactions to crime.
Criminological research areas include the incidence and forms of crime as well as its causes
and consequences. They also include social and governmental regulations and reactions to
crime. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in the behavioral sciences, drawing
especially on the research of sociologists and psychologists, as well as on writings in law.
An important way to analyze data is to look at quantitative methods in criminology.

5- NATURE AND SCOPE OF CRIMINOLOGY: -

Criminology is an inter-disciplinary field of study, involving scholars and practitioners

representing a wide range of behavioral and social sciences as well as numerous natural sciences.
Sociologists played a major role in defining and developing the field of study and criminology
emerged as an academic discipline housed in sociology programs. However, with the
establishment of schools of criminology and the proliferation of academic departments and
programs concentrating specifically on crime and justice in the last half of the 20 centuries, the
criminology emerged as a distinct professional field with a broad, interdisciplinary focus and a
shared commitment to generating knowledge through systematic research.

6- EARLY EXPLANATIONS OF CRIMINOLOGY-SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT: -

Pre-Classical School of Criminology: - The period of seventeenth and eighteenth century in

Europe was dominated by the scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The dominance of
religion in State activities was the chief characteristic of that time. The concept of Divine right of
king advocating supremacy of monarch was held in great esteem. It was generally believed that a
man commits crime due to the influence of some external spirit called ‘demon’ or ‘devil’.

The Classical School: - The Classical School in criminology is usually a reference to the
eighteenth-century work during the Enlightenment by the utilitarian and social contract
philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria. Their interests lay in the system of criminal
justice and penology and, indirectly through the proposition that "man is a calculating animal", in
the causes of criminal behavior.

Neo-Classical School: - In criminology, the Neo-Classical School continues the traditions of the
Classical School. Hence, the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria remains a
relevant social philosophy in policy term for using punishment as a deterrent through law
enforcement, the courts, and imprisonment.
Positivists School/The Italian School: - The Positivist School has attempted to find scientific
objectivity for the measurement and quantification of criminal behavior. As the scientific method
became the major paradigm in the search for all knowledge, the Classical School's social
philosophy was replaced by the quest for scientific laws that would be discovered by experts.

Sociological School of Criminology/The Modern Criminology: - In recent years, there seems

to have been a transformation of criminological views regarding somewhat skeptical question of
criminal accountability. Modern critics attack the traditional criminological view on the ground
that their search for characteristic differences between the class of criminals and the class of non-
criminals ‘rests upon erroneous assumption. This false dichotomy has been based on a
misconceived characterization of criminals as ‘criminal type’.

7-CONCLUSION: - _

Criminology is the study of crime or criminal behavior. The subject looks into the causes of
crime, its effects and attempts to prevent crime. As an academic discipline, criminology is still in
its growing phase in India. Only a few reputed institutions in the country offer undergraduate
programs in criminology. Though plenty of institutions offer papers in criminology as a part of
forensic science or sociology, this growing field still lacks enough resources. For those who are
planning to continue studies in criminology even after masters, it’s recommended to look for
reputed institutions abroad. We hope the illustrated analysis has powered up your insights and
widened your perspectives about criminology courses in India. Always remember that you make
your own destiny. Make sure that you invest time and thought before making your life-changing
decisions.