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Criminology and the Criminologist Marvin E Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 54 Article 3 Issue 2 June Summer 1963 Criminology and the Criminologist Marvin E. Wolfgang Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons Recommended Citation Marvin E. Wolfgang, Criminology and the Criminologist, 54 J. Crim. L. Criminology & Police Sci. 155 (1963) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. CRIMINOLOGY AND THE CRIMINOLOGIST MARVIN E. WOLFGANG The author is Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is also Director of a basic research project entitled "The Measurement of Delinquency." Dr. Wolfgang is the author of Patterns in Criminal Homicide, for which he received the August Vollmer Research Award in 1960, and is President of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. As a former Guggen- heim Fellow in Italy, he collected material for an historical analysis of crime and punishment in the Renaissance. In this article Dr. Wolfgang explores the meaning of the terms "criminology" and "criminol- ogist." Recognizing that these terms have been used with great varieties of meaning since Lombroso, and that in the United States criminology has had primarily a sociological orientation, the author poses the question whether criminology can be considered an autonomous, separate discipline of knowledge. He examines the interrelationships between criminology and other fields, and the di- versity of present-day approaches to the study of crime and criminals. Presenting his conclusions as to the meaning of the terms "criminology" and "criminologist," Dr. Wolfgang finds an important distinction between the art of influencing human behavior and the science of studying crime, crimi- nals, and criminal behavior.-EDITOR. THE MEANING OF CRIMINOLOGY nomenon, of criminal investigation, of criminals, 4 and of penal treatment." The term "criminology" has been defined by It is the position of this paper that the term almost every author who has written a text in "criminology" should be used to designate a body the field. The variegated content of criminology, of scientific knowledge about crime. This is es- as conceived by Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, sentially the basis for Thorsten Sellin's introduc- Aschaffenburg, and other pioneers,' has permitted tory chapter of Cidture Conflict and Crime,5 which use of this term for the many subdivisions of the remains as the most pervasive and precise state- field. Textbooks generally refer to a mixture of ment about the content area and theoretical data on science, law, public administration, and structure of criminology in the literature. morality, and the commonplace dichotomy of This conceptualism of criminology is neither "criminology" and "penology" has been with us narrow nor confining. A scientific approach to at least since the days of Parmelee.2 Sutherland's understanding the etiology of crime may include definition has been standard for many years: the statistical, historical, clinical, or case-study "Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding tools of analysis. Moreover, there is nothing crime as a social phenomenon. It includes within inherently quantitative in scientific methodology, its scope the processes of making laws, of breaking albeit the most convincing evidence, data, and laws, and of reacting toward the breaking of presentation in general sociological replications of laws.... The objective of criminology is the propositions appear to be quantitative.8 Probably development of a body of general and verified the most fruitful source of analysis of empiric principles and of other types of knowledge re- uniformity, regularity, and systems of patterned garding this process of law, crime, and treat- relationships can be found in the statistical studies ment."3 Webster's unabridged edition of the of causation and prediction. However, interpretive American dictionary appears to have incorporated analyses that may occasionally go beyond the part of Sutherland's perspective, for we read that limits of empirically correlated and organized criminology (L. crinien, criminis, crime +-logy) 4 WEBSTER'S NEW is "the scientific study of crime as a social phe- LeTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY or TE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (2d ed., unabridged, G. and C. Merriam Co., 1959). I See PIONEERS IN CRIMINOLOGY (Mannheim ed., 'SELLIN, CULTURE CONFLICT AND CRIM 1-16 London2 1960). (Social Science Research Council, Bulletin 41, 1938). PARMELEE, CRIMINOLOGY 6Hanson, Evidence and 3 (1923). .Procedure Characteristics of SUTaERwknAN & CaESSEY, PRINcrPLES OF CRMI- "Reliable" Propositions in Social Science, 63 Am. J. NOLOGY 3 (6th ed. 1960). SOCIOOGY 357 (1958). MARVIN E. WOLFGANG [Vol. 54 data (but not beyond empiric reality) can be milieu, so does the criminologist need and use useful and enlightening. If description of the related scientific information. phenomena of crime is performed within a mean- The argument may be made that presently ingful theoretical system, the methods and the there is no such special separateness to criminology goals of science are not necessarily discarded in as exists in other disciplines, and that this fact the process but may be retained with all the delays the recognition of criminology as a distinct vigor commonly attributed to sophisticated sta- field. The histories of most scientific specialisms tistical manipulation. follow similar developmental trends," i.e., a We are contending that criminology should be branching off from a larger, more inclusive area considered as an autonomous, separate discipline of investigation; next, an increasingly narrow, of knowledge because it has accumulated its refined, and detailed analysis along "idiographic" own set of organized data and theoretical con- lines in order to legitimize devoted and disciplined ceptualisms that use the scientific method, ap- concern with the special subject; and then a proach to understanding, and attitude in research. return to the "nomothetic" and more enveloping This contention has recently been supported or universe of investigation that can embrace a at least examined by Vassali 7 Bianchi,8 Grass- variety of scientific specialties."2 Thus, it appears berger,9 and Pinatel.10 Such a position does not that separate disciplines merge and develop in a negate the mutual interdependence existing in the way that is sympodial rather than unilinear. 3 contributions to this discipline by a variety of The early writings of Della Porta and Lavater other field specializations. Thus, sociology, psy- on physiognomy and of Gall, Spurzheim, and chology, psychiatry, the law, history, and biology, others in phrenology were not principally con- with such allied fields as endocrinology, may cerned with criminal behavior, although references individually or collectively make substantial con- to the criminal occasionally appeared in their tributions to criminology without detracting from studies. Some historical continuity can be traced the idiosyncratic significance of criminology as an in medical literature from these writings on independent subject matter of scientific investi- physiognomy and on craniology and from those gation and concern. One need not adhere to a of Pinel, Esquirol, and Rush, to Prichard, Ray, Comtian hierarchy of the sciences to realize the and Maudsley on moral insanity; from Despine unity of all knowledge, or, especially, to appreciate and Morel on moral degeneracy to Lombroso on that a higher order of complexity of phenomena the born criminal and criminal type. Lombroso such as human behavior requires the use of disci- was primarily a physician and professor of psy- plines devoted to specific aspects of this order. As chiatry before acquiring a reputation as a criminal the biochemist must use and rely upon research anthropologist. It was German materialism and both in biology and chemistry in order to under- French positivism, synthesized through the prism stand the functional interrelationship of physi- of Lombroso's medical training, that led to L' Uomw ological processes, and as the sociologist employs Delinquente in 1876 and to the shift of emphasis data from biology, psychology, and other disci- from the crime to the offender, from the Classical plines to analyze the dynamic aspects of per- to the Italian School. The new emphasis gave sonality formation within a particular cultural birth to the concentrated scientific study of crimogenesis that had long before been in em- 7 Vassalli, Criminologiae giustizia penale, 1 QUADERNI 4 DI CRIMINOLOGIA CLrNicA 27, 32-33 (gennaio-marzo, bryonic state. 1959). 8BIANCHI, POSITION AND SUBJECT-MATTER OF CRIM- " For an excellent sociological analysis of the history INOLOGY (Amsterdam 1956). For example, Bianchi of science, see Merton, Science, Technology and Society says, "The problems of method and subject-matter in Seventeenth Century England, 4 Osnus 360 (1938). are of extreme importance to criminology, particularly 1 For a general description of the important differ- because this science is still on the very threshold ences between "idiographic" (pertaining to the descrip- of becoming an independent science." Id. at 15. It is tion of the unique) and "nomothetic" (pertaining to our belief that criminology has now
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