All about criminology

The key concepts

 During a period of extensive change and expansion in British higher education the growth of university-level programmes in criminology has been a notable feature. From London to Lothian, Salford to Swansea and Birmingham to Belfast there is hardly a higher education institution that does not now offer a degree programme in criminology and criminal justice. This picture was very different less than one generation ago. In the very recent past undergraduate degrees in criminology were confined to one or two universities, alongside a small handful
of institutions offering crime-focused postgraduate degrees. The social scientific study of crime was dispersed across disciplines such as sociology, social policy, social work, psychology, and law. Students would be offered occasional modules on ‘the sociology of crime’, ‘criminal justice policy’, or ‘social work with offenders’ as part of degree programmes whose primary mission was to impart a wideranging, discipline-based education. Now, ‘crime’ has become the sole focus of dedicated degree programmes – rather than studying it in passing as part of some discipline or other, students can dedicate themselves to its study through the lenses of different disciplinary perspectives. The people who teach criminology nowadays are themselves representative of this variety – they come to the subject matter of ‘crime’ from disciplinary backgrounds that most commonly include sociology, social policy, psychology, history, anthropology, economics, law and political science. Each has a different ‘light’ to shine upon crime and its associated problems, a distinctive way of looking, explaining and understanding.