The Importance Of Criminology

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Criminology Assessment
Learning Outcome 1
Explain how crime and criminal justice have been theorised.
Modern day criminology has been heavily influenced by the research and theories of many influencers from the 18th to 20th centuries. These theories and ideas have had a massive impact on how crime and punishment is dealt with in today’s society and come from many different important theorists such as Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria.
Early on in the modern stages of the analysis of crime, many different explanations have been given for reasons as to why humans may take part in crime. It has been shown through records that the first methods of punishment would be to take part in private revenge cases where family and friends would have each other killed, this would more …show more content…

“the mission of such positivistic criminology was the creation of a better society through the application of scientific processes” (Criminology 2nd Edition, Tim Newburn, 2013, page 121). This shows that the aim of the positivist school was a achieved and still relevant in today’s study of criminology as the science behind crime is still heavily researched and applied to most crime cases.
Emile Durkheim was a theorist who believed that crime could be categorised into normal and pathological. Durkheim calculated that there is a conscience collective and this is another way to describe the moral code that most humans follow; when a crime is committed it goes against the conscience collective. Normal crime was seen by Durkheim by crime that happens in every society to bring about change. An example of this would be the work of the suffragettes who would take part in violent crimes to bring about political change; giving women the vote. Durkheim sees this normal crime as it is used for a reason and brings about

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