WHY WE NEED CRIMINOLOGY

&
IMPORTANCE OF CRIMINOLOGY
 LAW IN ANCIENT TIME
→ SACRED LAW
● Law was there when people used to live in tiny
family group taking everything that they needed.
● There was no law for property except that
everything must be shared.
● There was no law for money, because they didn’t
have any ( house, car, petrol, grog, drugs etc.)

● The only way to punish was physically.

● They could not be fined, as they had no money
or wealth to take.
● They could not be locked up, as there was no
jails.
● Everybody knew what they had to do to make
sure that everybody survived. Everybody was
taught to fight as defend oneself and family. We
had no army, no police, and no courts.
● Everybody knew how to use a weapon; women
and men both learned to fight and knew they
would have to do that sometime
 ● They also believed that our Law Man can make
magic, they can heal the sick but they can also
make people sick and die by the magic. That is
what all people believed. People kept peace by
fear of violence and magic.

→ NEW LAW & NEW WORLD

● Now we live in a world ruled by the new law that
is not sacred, that doesn't accept that magic exists.
Now we are all equal citizens with human rights.
Now we have property, houses, cars, grog, drugs,
and pornography.
● The old Law worked really well in the old days
but it was not about human rights.

● It was about unconditional loyalty to kin,

to family and following the sacred Law.
It was about capital and physical punishment.

● There is nothing in the old Law that helped in

dealing with alcohol and drugs. But we still respect
our ancestors and we still want to keep our
culture.
● The youth is caught in the middle, they are still
part of the old Law but they live in a world run
by the new law
● Lawyers are only interested in the rights of the
clients be it the perpetrator himself. They will do
whatever they can to make sure that murderers
and rapists and child abusers are protected from
the new law.
●They will only advocate acknowledging
traditional law when they think it will work
better for their clients, the perpetrators. But they
dont know how the old Law worked.
● They never worry about the victims who have
had their basic human rights ignored and trampled
on by members of their own communities, their
own families.

● Our problem is that on one hand, we want to

keep our culture. We want to respect our
ancestors and their Law but we also want to be
equal citizens and we want human rights.

● We cant do that without changing our Law

→ CRIMINOLOGY
● The last few decades have witnessed major
advances in scientific knowledge, legendary
scholarly debates and pivotal contributions to
research, policy, and practice.
● Criminology is a dynamic and evolving field of
study.
● Criminology, derived from Latin word crimen
meaning accusation; and Greek word - logia,

● Criminology is the scientific study of the nature,

extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in
both the individual and in society.
● Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in the
behavioral sciences, drawing especially upon the
research of sociologists (particularly in the
sociology of deviance), psychologists
and psychiatrists, social anthropologists as well
as on writings in law.
→ HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY
● Criminology developed in the late 18th century,
when various movements, imbued
with humanitarianism, questioned the cruelty,
arbitrariness, and inefficiency of the criminal
justice and prison systems.

● During this period reformers such as Cesare

Beccaria in Italy and Sir Samuel Romilly, John
Howard, and Jeremy Bentham in England, all
representing the so-called classical school of
criminology, sought penological and legal reform
rather than criminological knowledge.
● In the early 19th century the first annual
national crime statistics were published in
France. Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874), a Belgian
mathematician, statistician, and sociologist who
was among the first to analyze these statistics,
found considerable regularity in them (e.g., in
the number of people accused of crimes each
year, the number convicted, the ratio of men to
women, and the distribution of offenders by
age).
● Whereas Quetelet focused on the characteristics
of societies and attempted to explain their
resulting crime rates, the Italian medical
doctor Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) studied
individual criminals in order to determine why
they committed crimes. Some of his investigations
led him to conclude that people with certain
cranial, skeletal, and neurological malformations
were born criminal because they were biological
throwbacks to an earlier evolutionary stage.
→ CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY
● Criminology is the scientific study of the nonlegal
aspects of crime and delinquency, including its
causes, correction, and prevention, from the
viewpoints of such diverse disciplines as
anthropology, biology, psychology and psychiatry,
economics, sociology, and statistics.
● As a legal perspective, the term crime refers to
individual criminal actions (e.g., a burglary) and
the societal response to those actions (e.g., a
sentence of three years in prison). By comparison,
the field of criminology incorporates and examines
broader knowledge about crime and criminals. For
example, criminologists have attempted to
understand why some people are more or less
likely to engage in criminal or delinquent behavior.
→ CYBER CHALLENGES
● Nowadays we are seeing a lot of activities in the
mobile ecosystem as new companies are coming
up with new models of communication devices,
mobile phones, and tablets. As more and more
people move on to the mobile ecosystem, the use
of mobile devices and content generated there
from are likely to bring forth significant new
challenges for cyber legal jurisprudence across the
world.
● A number of jurisdictions across the world do
not have dedicated laws dealing with the use of
communication devices and mobile platforms. As
more and more people use mobile devices for
output and input activities, there will be increased
emphasis on meeting up with the legal challenges
emerging with the use of mobility devices, more so
in the context of mobile crimes, mobile data
protection, and mobile privacy.
● Already, social media is beginning to have its
social and legal impact. As per one study, Facebook
is responsible for one-third of the divorces that
have been filed in recent times. As social media
websites continue to become the fertile ground for
targeting by all relevant lawyers, law enforcement
agencies and intelligence agencies, social media
continues to become the preferred repository of
alldata.
→ CRIMINOLOGY IN INDIA
● Teaching of criminology at degree and post-
degree level is not extensively available as there
are only a very few institutions providing teaching,
research or practices in criminology. The situation
has resulted in many untoward outcomes. For
instance, the academic openings and a broad
network of academicians in criminology could not
grow in India.
● Criminology in India has not been able to foster
a clear cut beneficiary base. Linkages between
practice and profession in criminology are obscure
and unexplored. On account of being mainly
associated with their parent disciplines, the
researchers who made commendable
contributions to criminology remained indifferent
to the development of criminology in India.
 ● The basic researches in criminology India
leading to the development of theories explaining
the major problems of criminality in this country
have been almost nonexistent. Nor do the
criminologists, in most cases, have been able to
prescribe policies and programs oriented research
findings.
● Criminology in India also lacked international focus
and recognition. Combined together, criminology
is largely perceived as a discipline with restricted
avenues and limited vertical mobility in career
advancement in India.
→ CRIMINOLOGY TAKES YOU

• Law Enforcement, policing, corrections

• Community or Regional Planning
• Victim, Witness, Youth and Family
• Advocacy
• Consulting firms
• Criminal, forensic and private investigations
• Public administration, risk management
• International development agencies and organizations
• Education and academia
• Government policy analyst or researcher, Public
Service Commission of india
• Foreign Service Worker, Immigration Officer
→ RESEARCH PRIORITIES IN FUTURE
● Research priorities in the academic discipline are
relative and time specific. These need to be seen at
two levels:

First - At the international level to understand the

trends and emphasis in research.
Second- the discipline ought to address the problems
of contemporary nature with a possible
contribution to policy and planning.
● Basic research contributing to the indigenous
understanding of major forms criminality.
● Evolving database and information based on
non-governmet
● Areas like victims of kidnapping, terrorism,
organized crimes involving secondary
victimization, restitution, restorative justice,
system as victim, radical criminology, action
criminology, pragmatic criminology, social
tolerance of deviance, decriminalization,
economics of crime and justice, impact of
imprisonment, forensic psychology, Environmental
criminology, fear of crime, victimization survey,
● Focus on the strong implementation of existing
laws so as to increase peoples faith in the law. The
present law is adequate but what is required is an
effective investigation, prosecution, and speedy
trial. Fast track courts in all states are a necessity

● Existing law provides for serious punishment. It

is not always necessary that death sentence or
severe punishment would act as a deterrent. The
problem is not the law; the need is to change the
societal mindset.
 ● India follows a punishment theory which is
more Restitutive in form than Repressive.
● Restitutive laws require an offender to pay for
the harm he did to whoever was affected by his
crimes, or he is just asked to comply with the law.
In Restitutive law, the punishment focuses on
reforming the perpetrator and attacks the social
status of that person so as to make him realize his
guilt.
● A Repressive law system is one in which any
lawbreaker is severely punished for their crimes.
● But recent trends in the crime graph show an
alarming increase in the rates of crimes in the
country for the past few years. Such an increase is
a clear depiction of the fact that the existing
theory of crime prevention is not instrumental in
controlling the crime graphs. Therefore there is a
need to bring about a change in the existing
theories of punishments.
● Criminology should also take into account the
conditions of the criminals going back into society.
When after completing his punishment, the
criminal after due reformation is sent back into
society. But due to his newly gained social status
as a criminal, the person even after due payback
for his actions is not allowed to gain back is earlier
status. Moreover, he is not even allowed to be a
part of that society anymore.
● In short, the person losses his/her social life
completely. Apart from this, there is the problem
of employment. Nobody is ready to give
employment to such a person no matter what his
qualifications are. Criminology should study such
matters and direct the Government to help such
persons or make arrangements for their proper
restitution so that the interest of those who are
now remorseful and has properly paid for his
deeds is not denied of a second chance.
● The number of judges in the Indian Judiciary
should also be one of the research areas of
Criminology. There is an urgent need to increase
the strength of judges. Backlogging is a product
of Inadequate judge-population ratio and lack of
infrastructure.

● Need is also to make the criminological

literature produced in India available on the
Internet.
 ● Apart from these, there are certain crimes in
which the perpetrator is the society itself. For
example, in Dowry cases, the society itself imbibes
in the minds of the people that this is a ritual and
is not a crime. So, if a person of that society asks
for Dowry, it is because he does not consider it as a
crime. Here, the whole society is at fault and not
that particular person. Criminology should hence
take into account these matters and decide on it
that in such cases, who should be brought to trial
and who should be punished.
 ● A look at the performance of criminology and
concerned institutions abroad (viz., U.S., UK,
Australia) can provide the needed insight in
developing this subject in India as a vibrant
discipline with amazing potential.

● To grow and sustain, teaching and research in

criminology need to be made widely available like
any other social science subject.

● Conduct research of Crime Victimization

 CONCLUSION
Criminology in India is surely coming of age.
Quality and quantity of research in criminology has
shown improvement. Criminology in India has
grown to be a multidisciplinary subject in a true
sense. Despite shortcomings found and expressed
in the present Report, Criminology as a subject of
learning and research has tremendous promise
and potential for a country like India. If nurtured
and developed in a correct way and direction, it
can contribute to the larger objective of safe living
and order in society.
THANK YOU