2.1 Criminology, deviance and crime notes

1. 2.1.1Criminology: meaning, scope, history and schools

   Criminology is the scientific study of crime, criminals, the making of criminal laws and society's reaction to crime; it moved from demonological ideas (crime as sin) to the classical school (Beccaria, 1764: free will, fixed punishment), the neo-classical compromise, the positivist (Italian) school (Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo: crime has causes), the cartographic school (Quetelet, Guerry: crime maps and statistics) and the sociological school (crime is a product of society).

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2. 2.1.2Crime: definitions, elements, classification and principles of criminal liability

   A crime is an act or omission that the law forbids and punishes on behalf of society; it needs a guilty act (actus reus) and, as a rule, a guilty mind (mens rea), passes through intention, preparation, attempt and commission, and is judged under the principles of legality, presumption of innocence and general exceptions such as insanity (M'Naghten rules; IPC 84, now BNS 22). Since 1 July 2024 the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) has replaced the IPC.

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3. 2.1.3Biological and psychological theories of crime

   Biological and psychological theories look for the cause of crime inside the offender: in body build, heredity or the brain (Lombroso and his successors) or in the mind and personality (Freud, Eysenck); they began with the positive (Italian) school of Lombroso, Ferri and Garofalo, which replaced free will with determinism and punishment with treatment and social defence.

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4. 2.1.4Sociological theories of crime: anomie, differential association, subculture, labelling and control

   Sociological theories find the causes of crime in society, not in the individual's body or mind: strain (Durkheim's and Merton's anomie), learning (Sutherland's differential association, Akers' social learning), subculture (Cohen, Cloward–Ohlin, Miller), labelling (Tannenbaum, Lemert, Becker) and control (Reckless, Hirschi), which asks not why people offend but why most do not.

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5. 2.1.5Deviance, social control, drug abuse and crime prevention

   Deviance is behaviour that breaks a group's norms beyond its tolerance limit (crime is only the part forbidden by law); society checks it through informal and formal control; drug and alcohol abuse is handled in India mainly by the NDPS Act, 1985; and modern crime prevention tries to make crime harder through design (CPTED, Jeffery 1971; defensible space, Newman 1972; broken windows, Wilson and Kelling 1982).

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