Theoretical and Applied Criminology

Criminology is an expanding discipline, which deals with the crime and criminals. It, primarily, starts with the etiology of crime. As any disease first requires diagnosis for its proper healing, similarly prevention or control of crime, if we consider it as a disease of the society, requires finding out its causes. The causes may depend on some variables, as put forward by the classical thinkers, which are very much within the domain of human free will, or the causes may be biological, psychological, or social, as theorised by the positivist thinkers, which most of the time remain beyond the control of individuals. There is hardly any society which is not beset with the problem of crime and criminals. A society, which has not encountered the problem of criminality, is a myth, as a member of the society of saints, if he deviates from the usual code of behaviour, may sustain the same scandal like a delinquent suffers in a normal human society. If a human society has no other problem, even then some people will deviate from the collective conscience, or difference of opinion will give rise to irreconcilable conflict leading to instability and crime. A human society, as a whole, is controlled by values, which are social, moral, religious, philosophical and legal. The parents, teachers, and elderly people of a society, usually, give the lesson of values and ethics, which are instrumental to control individual vices. This informal mechanism is more important than formal institutions, which include the police, court, and prison. For a less crime-prone society, society itself requires to be more homogenous and uniform, otherwise the preventing and controlling mechanism