Criminology: Core Concepts, Historical Evolution, and Classical School Principles

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Criminology: Core Concepts, Historical Evolution, and Classical School Principles

Criminology · Chapter 1: Foundations of Criminology: Classical and Neoclassical ThoughtSection 1.1 · lesson 1 of 9113 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Core concepts, the pre-scientific past, and the Enlightenment case for reform.

  • Define criminology and state what it studies.
  • Distinguish crime from deviance and sin.
  • Trace criminology from pre-scientific explanations.
  • State Classical School principles and reforms.

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,649 words). Read along, or search it.

Opening Question

Crime or Just Breaking Unwritten Rules

Picture three people on an ordinary afternoon. One rides off on a bike that isn't theirs. One shows up to work in a bright purple costume. And one drives five miles an hour over the speed limit. Which of them committed a crime, and which just broke the unwritten rules around them? Hold that thought: by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to sort all three.

Definition

Criminology as the Study of Crime

Criminology is the scientific study of crime, and of the people who violate criminal law. It also studies victims, and how society responds through law, policy, and institutions. So keep four elements in view: the act, the offender, the victim, and the response.

Core Questions

Four Connected Questions That Form One Inquiry

The discipline organizes itself around four connected questions. First: what conduct does a society treat as criminal, and why? Second: how much of that conduct occurs, and how do we measure it? Third: who is harmed by it, and in what ways? Fourth: do the responses a society adopts actually reduce crime? That last one is often skipped, yet a policy can sound tough and still change nothing. Together, they form one inquiry, not four separate topics.

Related Fields

Criminology Versus Its Close Neighbors

Criminology has close neighbors, and students often confuse them. Criminal justice studies the institutions that process crime: policing, courts, and corrections. Criminology asks the earlier questions: why conduct is criminalized, and why people engage in it. Criminal law defines offenses and defenses; criminology studies that law, rather than writing it. Sociology studies social behavior in general; criminology narrows that lens to conduct labeled criminal.

Subfields

Theory, Measurement, Victimology, and Policy Evaluation

Within the field, four recognized subfields divide the work. Theory develops and tests explanations for why crime occurs, and why it concentrates where it does. Measurement combines official records, victimization surveys, and self-report surveys, since no single method captures crime completely. Victimology studies who is victimized, the consequences, and the victim's place in the legal process. Policy evaluation asks whether a law or program actually works, not just whether it sounds plausible.

Key Distinctions

Deviance, Crime, and Sin Defined

Three categories sit close together, and keeping them apart is a core skill. Deviance is conduct that departs from a group's norms, whether or not any law addresses it. Crime is conduct a legislature has prohibited by statute, and made punishable by the state. Sin is conduct condemned by a particular religious or moral code.

Overlap

Where the Three Categories Meet and Diverge

These categories overlap a great deal, but they never fully coincide. Taking someone's property without consent is both deviant and criminal. Many traffic and regulatory offenses are crimes, yet ordinary people commit them routinely. Unusual dress may draw stares, but it breaks no statute, and no religious code. And conduct one faith calls sinful may be neither illegal nor deviant to outsiders.

Why It Matters

Crime Is a Legal Category

Why does this matter? Criminology's subject is crime: a legal category, not a moral or statistical one. An explanation that quietly swaps in deviance or sin ends up answering a different question.

Quick Check

Sorting the Bike, Costume, and Speeding

Quick check. Back to our three people: the bike, the costume, and the speeding driver. Sort each one: crime, deviance, or both? Pause here, and decide. Taking the bike is both a crime and deviant. Speeding a little is a crime, but barely deviant, since ordinary drivers do it routinely. The purple costume is deviant only: unusual, but no law forbids it.

Competing Views

Consensus Versus Conflict in Criminal Law

Why does particular conduct end up prohibited in the first place? There are two broad positions. The consensus view says criminal law reflects widely shared values: roughly, a common moral floor. The conflict view says criminal law reflects the interests of groups powerful enough to write and enforce it. On that view, less powerful groups' conduct may be criminalized more readily, while comparably harmful conduct by the powerful escapes. Both are argued seriously; this course adopts neither, and develops each in full later.

Historical Background

Spiritual Explanations Before Science

Before crime was seen as natural, with natural causes, European legal systems explained it very differently. Demonological explanations blamed wrongdoing on possession by, or influence from, evil spiritual forces. Broader spiritual explanations treated crime as a symptom of sin, or of a soul estranged from divine order. Either way, wrongdoing was a spiritual failing, not something a court could investigate with evidence.

Deciding Guilt

Trial by Ordeal and Divine Judgment

That worldview shaped how guilt was decided. In a trial by ordeal, the accused faced a dangerous or painful test. The premise: a divine power would protect the innocent, and expose the guilty. Since only a higher power truly knew guilt, appeal to that power replaced the weighing of evidence.

Old Punishment

Ad Hoc Penalties and Unpredictability

Punishment was just as ad hoc: set by custom, by the status of the parties, and by local authorities. Corporal and capital punishment were common, even for offenses later treated as minor. Reformers saw the central problem as unpredictability: the same conduct drew very different treatment in different places.

Comparison Table

Three Ways of Explaining Crime

This table compares three ways of explaining crime. Pre-scientific thinking blamed possession, sin, or spiritual corruption, and relied on confession, reputation, or an ordeal's outcome. Its punishments were corporal or capital, set by custom and status. Classical thinkers, Beccaria and Bentham, saw a free, rational choice, weighing gain against risk. They judged the act and the actor's capacity to reason, and called for fixed, proportionate, public penalties. The later positivist framework, developed in Chapter six, looks for measurable biological, psychological, or social factors. It relies on observation and statistics, and prescribes individualized treatment aimed at the cause. The pattern: change your account of the cause, and you change what counts as a fitting response.

Classical Origins

Enlightenment Critique of Arbitrary Justice

The Classical School emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century. It grew from the Enlightenment turn toward reason, natural rights, and skepticism of inherited authority. Reformers called the justice system of their day arbitrary, in three linked ways. First, judicial discretion: a judge set sentences as he saw fit, so outcomes depended on who heard the case. Second, secret proceedings: the accused often couldn't learn the charge or the evidence. Third, disproportionate punishment: minor property crimes could draw death or bodily punishment. Such a system could neither deter reliably, nor treat like cases alike.

Core Premises

Free Will and Rational Calculation

The Classical School is linked chiefly to the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria and the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Its first premise is free will: ordinary adults choose their conduct through reason. On top of that sits rational calculation, sometimes called the hedonistic calculus. A person considering an offense weighs its expected benefit against its expected cost. If people really decide that way, raising the expected cost of offending should change their choice.

Justifying Punishment

Social Contract and Deterrence Types

Classical writers also explained why the state may punish at all. Under the social contract, people trade part of their liberty for protection and orderly life. The power to punish rests on that surrendered liberty, not a ruler's will, and is legitimate only when it serves the contract's purpose. That purpose is deterrence: preventing future crime, not making offenders suffer. General deterrence discourages the public, by making an example of a punished offender. Specific deterrence discourages that same offender from offending again.

Deterrence Components

Certainty, Severity, and Celerity

Classical writers broke deterrence into three components. Certainty is the likelihood that an offense is actually detected and punished. Severity is how harsh the punishment is, once imposed. Celerity is the speed with which punishment follows the offense. Beccaria's central claim was that certainty carries the greatest deterrent weight. A moderate punishment that's nearly certain and swift beats a severe one that rarely arrives.

Figure Walkthrough

Ranking the Levers and Their Reforms

Figure one point one point one ranks them: certainty first, then celerity, then severity. The bars show theoretical weight, not data; research leans the same way, but treats the order as unsettled. Each lever points to a different reform. Believe in severity, and you pursue harsher penalties. Believe in certainty, and you invest in reliable detection and consistent enforcement. Believe in celerity, and you prioritize processing cases quickly.

Second Principle

Proportionality and Fixed Penalties

A second organizing idea is proportionality. Punishment should be scaled to the seriousness of the offense, not to the offender's status, or the mood of the moment. Classical writers used proportionality to argue for legally fixed penalties. A published schedule tied a defined punishment to a defined offense, replacing open-ended discretion. That let a rational person calculate an offense's cost in advance, and it constrained the arbitrary variation reformers attacked.

Lasting Impact

Codification, Incarceration, and Due Process

These ideas produced real change. Criminal law moved toward codification: a written, public code of offenses and penalties. Fixed-term incarceration became the ordinary response, replacing routine corporal and capital sanctions. Procedure moved toward due process: public trials, advance notice of charges and evidence, and bounded sentencing. None of this happened overnight, or in pure form, but Western law over the next century tracked it closely.

Limitation

The Uniform Reasoning Offender Problem

Yet the scheme assumed a uniform, reasoning adult offender. A child, a person with severe mental impairment, and a career offender were all treated identically. That gap is exactly where the next lesson begins.

Practice Problem

Choosing Between Two Sentencing Proposals

Let's apply the framework. A legislative committee must choose between two changes to a property offense statute. One proposal raises the maximum sentence; the other funds better detection and prosecution. Which lever does each pull, and which would Classical theory favor? Pause, and decide. Raising the maximum pulls the severity lever. Funding detection and prosecution pulls the certainty lever, and that's the one Classical theory favors.

Applied Practice

Classifying Four Policies by Lever

Now classify four policies by lever. Doubling the maximum authorized sentence targets severity. Funding more investigators, so more reported offenses are solved, targets certainty. An expedited docket that resolves cases within thirty days targets celerity. A mandatory minimum for a repeat offense targets severity. And a uniform sentencing table plus swift trial dates? The Classical School would defend it most directly: fixed, proportionate penalties, and celerity.

Key Takeaways

Lesson Recap and Practice Task

Let's recap. Criminology studies crime, offenders, victims, and responses, and crime is a legal category. Before science, crime was blamed on demons and sin, and guilt was tested by ordeal. The Classical School answered with free will, the social contract, and deterrence: certain, swift, proportionate punishment. Its fixed, uniform penalties reshaped criminal law, and created the problem the next lesson takes up. For practice, sort everyday behaviors into crime, deviance, both, or neither.

About Criminology at UPI Study

Criminology (Criminology 150) is a self-paced online course of 91 video lessons in 21 chapters, from classical criminology and crime data to theories of crime, victims, policing, courts and corrections. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

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Why take it here

Why students take Criminology with UPI Study

Understand crime and justiceCriminology explains why crime happens, how it is measured and how the justice system responds. It is a core course for criminal justice, sociology, psychology, law and policing degrees.
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130,000+students helped with college creditsACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Where the credit goes

Universities that work with NCCRS

Criminology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Criminology: Core Concepts, Historical Evolution, and Classical School Principles

What is criminology, and what does it study?
Criminology is the scientific study of crime and of the people who violate criminal law. It also examines victims and how society responds through law, policy, and institutions. Its four elements are the act, the offender, the victim, and the response, and the field asks whether those responses actually reduce crime.
What is the difference between crime, deviance, and sin?
Crime is conduct a legislature has prohibited by statute and made punishable by the state, deviance is conduct that departs from a group's norms, and sin is conduct condemned by a religious or moral code. They overlap but do not fully coincide. Stealing a bike is both crime and deviance, while a purple work costume is only deviant.
How did people explain crime before science, and how did the Classical School change that?
Before science, European legal systems blamed crime on demonic possession or sin, and guilt was often tested by ordeal. The Classical School, tied to Beccaria and Bentham, replaced this with free will and rational choice. It argued for deterrence through fixed, proportionate, public penalties instead of arbitrary, secret, and harsh punishment.
What are certainty, severity, and celerity in Classical deterrence theory?
They are the three components of deterrence. Certainty is the likelihood that an offense is detected and punished, severity is how harsh the punishment is, and celerity is how quickly it follows the offense. Beccaria argued certainty matters most, so a moderate but swift and nearly certain punishment beats a severe one that rarely arrives.

About the Criminology course

How many college credits is Criminology?
Criminology (Criminology 150) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Criminology cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 91 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Criminology take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 91 lessons total about 4 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
When the course shows 100% complete, request the official transcript from your dashboard. It is sent to the college you name, and you can send it to more than one. Check your college first with "Find my college" on this page, or ask Athena.

Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Criminology.

91 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.

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