Criminology Essay

This essay would look at ways that criminology has helped to the society to understand the causes of crime and its consequence is the causes. It would also show different theories that criminologist use to explain crime and what they believed to be the causes of crime.

It can be argued that criminology has helped improved the understanding of crime in the 20th century through the knowledge of preventing criminal behaviour and how society responds to crime after it has been committed. Although, criminologist do not blame people for crimes committed but try to understand why people commits that crime and explain it, instead of blaming them.

First, the biological theory of Lombroso, he believed that criminals are inborn and that it is a hereditary behaviour. Lombroso theory was developed because of the observation he carried out in prison with the criminal prisoners, and which he compared them with soldiers. In this research he found out that criminals has some certain feature, which could be used to know them. He argued that criminals could be identified through how they look and their bodily qualities, such as their big face and head, large ears, large lips, a twisted nose, huge cheekbones, long arms, and too much wrinkles on their skin. Also, that men with five or more of these features are criminals and women with three features are born criminals. Although, it could argued that Lombroso theory helped to developed scientific and biological theory which are used today. However, he was criticised for using only prisoners and soliders in his research; without considering they mentally ill and disable individuals. Also, that he did not research women who were criminals, but (Crossman, 2014)

Then looking at Classical...

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... the crime people commit and do not recognise the inequality in the society. In addition he ignores that the rich commits crime, but not on the same strain as the poor.

Sub-cultural theories argued that some individuals have different ways of doing things from the rest of the people in the community. They believed that these sets of people commits crime because they follow their own gang group ways and that the crimes which these people commit is not due to that they do not socialise within the society, but they hang out with the wrong people who were criminals and they end up committing crime with them. These groups of people have different values and belief than most of us; also they are under a lot of strain from their gang team and the society. This pushes them to commit crime; because when they do commit crime within their gang group they earn respect.