Aspects of Criminology

Criminology is defined as an interdisciplinary profession built around the scientific study of crime and criminal behavior including their forms, causes, legal aspects, and control. There are many aspects in the field of criminology. These aspects include the areas of research involved, the criminology schools of thought, theoretical developments and the people involved in creating and developing the theories.

What role do criminologists play in the field of criminology? The term criminologist is used to describe any individual who is employed in the criminal justice field regardless of formal training. (Schmalleger) These individuals study crime, criminals, and criminal behavior. Those responsible for collecting and examining physical evidence of crime are referred to as criminalists. Criminologists perform a variety of activities such as data gathering, data analysis, theory construction, hypothesis testing, social policy creation, public advocacy and public service, analysis of crime patterns and trends, education and training, and threat assessment and risk analysis.

Criminology is categorized into three schools of thought: Classical, Positivist, and Chicago. These three schools fit into three different theoretical developments in criminology. However, there are six categories that fit into the theoretical developments. The first development is the Classical School which consists of classical and neoclassical criminology. The classical school of criminological thought developed as a result of the Enlightenment or Age of Reason, a highly significant social movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Enlightenments encouraged people to think for themselves rather obeying orders given by the State or Church. (W...

... middle of paper ...

...nology. Many different jobs are available in this field such as local, state, and federal corrections, criminal investigation, forensic science, law enforcement, private investigation, research and policy studies, social worker, attorney, law clerk, administrator, paralegal investigator, and law librarian as well as many other job opportunities.

Works Cited

Lilly, Robert J, Francis T Cullen and Richard A Ball. Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences. SAGE, 2010.

Pease-Watkin, Catherine. "Bentham's Panopticon and Dumont's Panoptique." Journal of Bentham Studies (2003): 8.

Schmalleger, Frank. Criminology Today. Prentice Hall, 2012.

Vito, Gennaro F, Jeffrey R Maahs and Ronald M Holmes. Criminology: Theory, Research, and Policy. Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2005.

Williams, Katherine S. Textbook on Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.