On more than one occasion you will have heard the words criminology and criminology, but do they mean the same? Do they deal with the same topics? Are both a science?
We can establish a clear difference between criminology and criminology; while criminology answers the question of why?, criminology answers the questions of what? who? when? where? and how?
Another quite clear difference is that criminology is a science while criminology is not, although it does have a scientific nature. I know this may sound a bit weird, but we will explain later..
We are going to try to explain, in a general way, what is criminology and what is criminology.
Criminology is a very old science. Criminals have always existed so a discipline was created that tried to understand these offenders since 1885.
García de Pablos in 1988 defines it as the “empirical and interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of crime, the personality of the offender, the victim and the social control of criminal behavior, and that tries to provide valid and verified information, on the genesis, dynamics and variables of crime, as well as on effective prevention programs and positive intervention techniques in the offender ".
What does this mean? That criminology is the science that is responsible for studying crime, the offender and all the variables that can influence.
Talking about criminology implies talking about your study objectives:
Crime study
Professionals of law and criminology have tried to establish a clear definition of what crime is, I am left with the one that defines the criminologist Jiménez de Asúa: "It is an unlawful, imputable and guilty act", that is, it is an act contrary to the norm where the person is responsible for the act they have committed.
Seeing crime from a criminological point of view implies seeing it as something dynamic and changing.
Study of grief
When criminology began to be studied, the penalty consisted of loss of life regardless of the crime committed. As the law advanced, a balance between crime and punishment.
But what is worth? In the world of law, the penalty consists of a loss of property imposed on a person as retribution for the crime committed.
To this day, we do not think that the penalty has to focus solely on retribution, we all agree that if someone commits a crime they must pay for it and compensate the victims in some way. This should not stop there, we must look further so that the crime is not repeated again and that society is able to capture the message that committing a crime implies, its consequences.
Offender Study
In this section it is important to talk about Lombrosso, a criminologist from the late 20th century who proposed a classification of the offender based on his physical characteristics: abnormal height of the skull, looped ears, low forehead, etc..
Other classifications focused on the physiology - temperament related to body chemistry - and in psychology - aggressive offenders, with a lack of social discipline, due to some kind of crisis, etc.. -.
The current trend is more focused at the group level than at the individual level and we would have criminals who commit crimes against property, crimes related to narcotics and public health or crimes against people, in addition to distinguishing between primary and repeat offenders.
Crime study
Crime tells us what criminal acts are committed at a certain time and place. It is here where we begin to study what types of criminal acts are committed in some geographical areas more than in others and where the different types of crimes begin to be classified: fraud, homicide, white-collar thief, blackmailer, organized crime, etc..
An important aspect is the call black figure or hidden figure, which, as its name indicates, are crimes that are not known to the institutions.
Study of the institutional social reaction and the socio-economic cost of crime
Do all institutions react in the same way to crime? Clearly not. While in some countries it is accepted the death penalty in other countries it is considered a penalty that goes against human rights. Here we find the different institutions that are in charge of crime: police, prison system, justice.
Another important aspect is the economic cost involved in committing a crime. It is necessary to remunerate the work of all professionals who fight to fight crime: policemen, lawyers, judges, prisons, etc., as well as more specialized services that must be created when it comes to organized crime.
We must not forget the social cost that, on many occasions, is irreversible.
Crime victim study
At first criminology was focused solely on the crime without placing emphasis on the victim. It is not until 1946 when the victim begins to have the importance he deserves in this area and it is in 1973 when the concept of victimology. The study of the victim deals, to a large extent, with aspects to prevent or mitigate criminal actions.
The criminology according to Hans gross in 1896 it can be defined as a "Heterogeneous set of knowledge taken from other sciences and usable in the investigation of crimes", that is, criminology is made up of specialists in chemistry, psychology, medicine, engineering,… Working for the judicial police. That is why we said at the beginning that it has a scientific nature, although it is not a science.
Surely series like CSI or Criminal Minds will sound familiar to you, right? The criminologists are the subjects who enter the scene to collect all the possible clues and they are usually dressed in overalls so as not to pollute. It is necessary to convert these indications into evidence so that they are suitable and legal in a court.
They try to answer questions like are there signs of violence? Are there organic fluid stains? Are there footprints?
We have mentioned the words evidence and evidence, but what are the differences between one and the other? The clue is the object, trace, signal ... that we find at the scene of the events and is called evidence when it is analyzed and there is a certainty of what it is. The proof It is the weight that the judge gives in a trial to the evidence.
There are two very important processes in criminology that we cannot ignore: eye inspection and chain of custody.
Ocular inspection
It is the process where it is observed, verified and carried out technical-police operations at the scene of the events to locate the evidence.
It is important to know that once the visual inspection is carried out, the scene is no longer the same and if this is done incorrectly, important clues for the investigation may be lost..
In the visual inspection, nothing should be touched, changed, altered or allowed to be done by another person until everything is photographed, documented and measured..
Not only criminalists intervene, but also citizen security agents to cordon off the area, identify witnesses or health services and judicial police in charge of the investigation and who will try to resolve questions such as who is the victim? where you live? Are there witnesses?
Chain of custody
The chain of custody is a documented process that allows us to corroborate that the evidence from when it is collected until it is provided as evidence in court has not been tampered with. Therefore, it is necessary to indicate at all times which person receives it and to which person the test is delivered..
Throughout the entire article we have studied the differences between criminology and criminology. Most likely, before reading it, you will think that both concepts were synonymous, but by going into each of them a bit we have been able to discover that they have nothing in common..
While criminology is a fairly broad science, criminology is not considered a science, even though scientists work on it. Here we find the first noticeable difference.
As we have already commented, criminology has different objects of study such as the crime, the offender, the penalty, the crime, the victim, the institutions and the socio-economic cost of the crime.
The object of study of criminology is to analyze the evidence found at the crime scene so that they can be used in court. This is perhaps the only similarity in these two disciplines: they act once the crime has been committed.
While criminology tries to find the person responsible for the crime from a psychological and sociological stance To understand what has led a person to commit an act classified as a crime, criminology seeks to answer what has happened, who has done it, when it has been, where and how.
We can represent in a more visual way, the differences between one and the other:
As we can see and in a somewhat repetitive way, we know that they are two very different disciplines, but both are necessary to advance in the resolution of the case..
Criminology provides the continuous study of crime and all its variables, for example, what crimes are most committed in a certain area and thus try to prevent its execution and criminalistics provide the necessary evidence so that, if the execution of the crime has been committed, the corresponding penalty can be imposed.
Without them we would only have pieces of a puzzle without fitting, but together they help the puzzle to be finished.
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