CRIMINOLOGY | A RACE PAST TIME

Criminology has been undergoing a new transition and a significant change. Today the areas  which criminology focused back in the 1920s like homicide, robbery, burglary and various other standard crimes  which one can think of at any instant of a societal crime but today Students of criminology are focusing on more modern issues of crime which involves exploring the areas of Cyber terrorism, human trafficking, school shootings, hate crimes, mob lynching, and a whole exquisite variety. Today's students are trailblazing an exotic section that has never been heard of and has never been on the radar, if we consider the era of 1920 and 1930s i.e., the old school of criminology. This new narrative of the constant evolution of criminology is paying off a great deal… how?

 

Let’s know -

Criminology is important because there has been always some or other crime occurring in our society a new method to counter these crimes have always been developed with the criminals always finding ways to counter it and this cycle Will go on till eternity. Criminology answers the complex question which are there outside the domain of a simple ‘police catching the criminal’ scenario especially the questions inflicting our brain when we witness a crime happening either first hand or vicariously. To study criminology and to answer the question of why people commit the crime? And is the forging of criminals a direct result of the environment or is there biology involved? These intriguing questions are debated across and somewhat give a hint of the future of criminology.

With the knowledge of criminology as a discipline, it is observed that people are able to make more accurate decisions concerning the the best interest of society and loved ones; it helps individuals to sharpen and hone their skills and apply the knowledge in the real-world context. Concepts and topics which one Learns in criminology are quite versatile and diverse, the youth today are taking up the jobs of ‘crime prevention squad’ which mainly comprised of criminologists and criminology students who are helping authorities to bring down the crime rates in a particular area of crime involvement.

A small area of debate and discussion is that the job of controlling crime can be done by the criminal justice system however it is simply not true because the criminal justice system even at the most complex level does not have the tools to prevent crime and the crime prevention circuit lies outside the purview of the criminal justice system.

Criminology like sociology is an interdisciplinary subject but with varied variables. For many decades today, the signs of crime has been guided by single phenomena that are when someone is researching for crime  looks at the environment the things, entities, factors like genes, brains, hormones  whatever seem to affect the criminal behavior is always second to the environment that is the list of social processes like educational attainment, poverty and societal pressure one of the founding pioneers of criminology ‘Cesare Lombroso’ defined crime as a study requiring both biology and environment to be studied in Cohesion. Lombroso by many aspects was ahead of his time and a simultaneous product of it the questions he asked were very pertinent but cannot be answered by the logic of Lombroso’s time as a result his thoughts were not well regarded as of then but today they can be of extreme significance.

 

The equation of criminology is to be : ( Result of addition of environment + genes of personality/character traits )

 

Studies have shown that identical twins  who were separated at birth and both raised apart in the different environments have usually same hobbies, thought processes and even the same intricacies which make us unique; contrasting this with adopted children raised in the same environment have very different hobbies, interest and goals [1] it explains that there is Virtually nothing that extends beyond genes. Another a study was done in 2014 published in the journal of criminal justice[2] pointed out to the fact that genes influence the character traits one is  interested in - it matters so much that even if a little bit of genetic influence is considered in any study the findings will have a large variability and what seemed like a cause and effect will be an illusion.

Criminologists today have amassed an incredible amount of data around the globe but that data is usually Biased to environmental factors which affect the crime and is practically obsolete unless it is redone and researched by a design function that has the capability to separate genetic from environmental influence.

 

Today criminology has encountered a fork in the road and avenues it offers is one which is the ‘status Quo’ - that we remain the same as we have been following keeping the gene factor out of the research studies but eventually, it will fail us because we fail to adapt to a 'dynamically changing landscape' and to be more precise ' dynamically changing scientific landscape' and could be an extinction-level event for this branch of Social Sciences. The Another avenue is  we adopt a method which will include gene research in the field of criminology as suggested by Cesare Lombroso which will keep fuelling the future and bridging the gap between the conventional thinking and the modern crime but this optimal solution is not entirely perceivable in the foreseeable future because there aren't many bio-social criminologist in the world because biosocial criminologists are regarded as alien to the constituency of criminal analysts and the entire criminological fraternity. But the demand of the time is such that by only the sheer tools and the methods which bio-social criminologist adopt can catapult the understanding of criminology to a new golden age of science as almost all the latest fields of scientific evolution have considered Biology as a crucial factor and are perceiving research keeping in mind this matter. Criminology must be a Bio-social science if it wants to get a new leap of faith because as we refine our knowledge and include the circuitry of biology in criminology. Our treatment will improve our prevention effects will get better and Rehabilitation strategies will become even more effective. As  well as honing on this new field factor of criminology will lead to a more humane criminal justice system.

 

As rightly pointed out by ‘Daniel Day-Lewis’ a compass can only point towards true North but it cannot in any sense advice about the deserts swamps chasms and pitfalls on the way therefore in the way of criminology moving towards north will need to be course-corrected from time to time but at least it will not be bogged down by the discrepancies on the way and will survive as an ever-emerging field as it has been since its Inception.

Many criminological scholars explore the social causes of crime while giving little consideration to the possibility that genetic factors underlie the observed associations. Indeed, the standard social science method (SSSM) assumes genetic influences do not confound the association between X and Y. Yet, a nascent stream of evidence has questioned the validity of this approach by revealing many criminological variables are at least partially affected by genetic influences. As a result, a substantial proportion of the literature may be misspecified due to uncontrolled genetic factors. No effort has been made to directly estimate the extent to which genetic confounding has biased the associations presented in criminological studies.