Objectives Of Criminology

Objectives Of CriminologyA key aspect of criminology is the analyse of illegals and individuals who partake in savage activities. However, what has remained extraordinary is the miss of interest that has been put upon checking villainy in relation to complaisant demographic profiles, peculiarly those regarding sexual activity within traditionalistic criminology. It was not until the 1970s that a great deal(prenominal)(prenominal) issues were communicate as Feminist criminology sought to challenge traditional theoretical approaches to an agree workforcet of the relationship and record of wo men, evil and fault. As Smart (1976 2) relieves Our knowledge of the genius of female wrong-doing is still in its infancy. In comparison to the enormous documentation on all aspects of male delinquency and criminality, the amount of hunt carried out in the bea of women and crime is extremely limited.Why has such a situation occurred? What has been regarded as the general rel ationship between fetching precedence of studying male criminality over female criminality? Firstly, official statistics, such as the British Crime Survey and the savage Statistics for England and Wales, have consistently concluded that men be the disproportionate mass of criminal offenders, and that women scarce represent a really small majority. Although this does not signify that criminal offences atomic number 18 only subjected to men when women do point crimes, they are likely to be less serious in nature than those committed by men (Jones 2001). Such sides are open to upset and scrutiny, as shall be explored later on, however it is generally the sociable view on how men and women fit into such statistics analysis. For example, of all criminals that were sentenced in 2006 1.42 million, nearly 80% of these were men (National Statistics 2008). Secondly, most criminologists over the years most alone before Feminism came into mainstream criminology, were in incident men who wrote extensively slightly male criminality (Cullen and Agnew 2006). Consequently, this has illustrated criminology as a male orientated and patricentric discipline, as Britton (2000 58) notes criminology remains one of the most thoroughly masculinised of all social science fields. These have led to stereotypical views of criminals whereby the man is often pictured as being the offender, what is usually referred to as hegemonic masculinity (Newburn 2007 315), magical spell the adult female fits the image of being the victim of crime. These alone are enough reasons to forge and contemplate the status and position of women within criminology.Have women been neglected from traditional criminology then? Or have their studies merely been overshadowed the sheer dominance of men? Is this to assert that traditional criminology has failed to make a single contribution to an spirit of the nature of female criminality? What has been done in an attempt to let off such marginalisa tion and disregard for women? What implications has the emergence of Feminism had, not only on the discipline, but also in areas relating to policy making and the criminal justice system?This assignment aims to offer a critical news regarding traditional criminologys contribution towards an understanding of female criminality, the means in which women are presented, Feminisms attempt to challenge such perspectives, and their attempt to rationalise women and the issue of gender equality within mainstream criminology.Great scientific advancement during the 19th degree centigrade had a profound impact on the means in which crime and criminality was to be studied (Jones 2001). This new approach came to be cognise as Positivism a term coined by Auguste Comte to mean the scientific study of society, with the objective of establishing the relationship of causes and effects (Walliman 2006 15). It held the principle that it was possible to study the nature of all phenomena on the basis t hat a scientific order was to be applied as its methodology. It is from this discipline that traditional criminology emerged, often referred to as Positivist criminology the scientific study of crime. This perspective claims that criminal behaviour is deterministic that there are factors beyond and external to the control of the individuals, be it biological, mental or sociological factors, that influences individuals, and are thus responsible for their engagement in criminal behaviour (Newburn 2007). As a moderate, there are perspicuous and clear differences between those who commit crime, usually pathological, and those who do not (Smart 1976). quite than the criminal act itself, Positivist criminology is concerned with the very nature of individuals, predicating that this would eventually lead to a treatment of those engaging in criminal acts (White and Haines 1996). nonpareil of the very first studies on female criminality was proposed by Lombroso and Ferrero in their 189 5 work entitled The Female Offender. They were greatly influenced by Darwins theory of phylogenesis and applied a biological framework in their attempt to explain the relationship between women and crime (Jones 2001), arguing that it was biology that was the key find out factor that led women to engage in criminal offences (Newburn 2007). This was done done their concept of biological atavism (Klien 1973 183), claiming that all criminals were characterised by a lack of advanced human development, and thus were much primitive in nature than non-criminals. It was this that differentiated deviants from the ordinary citizens (Heidensohn 1996).Their study of female criminals and prostitutions through detailed examinations of their photographs, brains and hit the books as done with the aim of discovering characteristics which were more in common with the criminal type. However, there seemed to be an inconsistency between the claim that all criminals are biological throwbacks from an e arlier evolutionary stage (Smart 1976 31), and their attempt to find such atavistic traits within the population of their research. How could they explain such a form? Lombroso and Ferrero argued that there were significantly fewer innate(p) female criminals than males and that they displayed fewer signs of degeneration (Newburn 2007 301) because of their lack of evolution as opposed to men. In this sense, white men were regarded the being the most advanced form of evolution, and non-white women comprised the least advanced women are big childrentheir moral sense is deficient (Lombroso and Ferrero 151 cited in Heidensohn 1996 114). Consequently, due to their more primitive nature than men, women had greater capacity to diverge in shifty and criminal behaviour without being obviously visible or noticeable, while attempting to discover criminals within the male population was deemed as a very much easier task (Smart 1976), They observed it incontestable that female offenders seem a lmost normal when compared to the male criminal, with his wealth of anomalous features (Lombroso and Ferrero 1895 107 cited in Heidensohn 1996 113).Both had claimed that women were biologically inferior to men (Klien 1973 185) to men. Having argued that women were naturally passive and had been culturally evolved for the duty of childrearing, this was seen as a reflection of their conservatism and were regarded as being generally much more law-abiding citizens than men. Thus they were deemed highly unlikely to enter the realms of criminality (Smart 1976 32). Female offenders were thus labelled rare, an occasional rather than a born criminal. There existed greater stigma and shame on the criminal muliebrity than on the criminal man, due merely to the fact that she was female. She was perceived as being unnatural, masculine and potent who lacked her passive role and maternal instinct female offenders where going against conventional and traditional norms and values of society an up ending of all the qualities which specially distinguish the normal woman namely, reserve, docility and sexual composure (Lombroso and Ferrero 1895 297 cited in Heidensohn 1996 114).Lombroso and Ferrero concludes by arguing it is not only the biology of women that fundamentally forbids them to engage in crime, but social expectation of women and their perceived social roles, are it seems, lies as an antithesis for criminal involvement (Smart 1976).Otto Pollak, in The Criminality of Women (1961), argued that what seems to be relatively low crime rates for women are in fact a misrepresentation of the relationship between gender and crime, claiming that female crime has been vastly under-estimated (Pollak 1961 153 cited in Heidensohn 1996 118). After studying crime rates crosswise European countries, he argued that for both men and women, their crime rates were actually very similar, despite against such an assumption. Subsequently such statistical info concealed the true extent of f emale criminality and was deemed be unreliable, to which Pollak argued was the result of hidden female crimes that generally went unreported and undetected because of the nature of their physiology (Klien 1973).