Study On The Concept Of Crime In The View Of Criminology

Criminology can be considered as a discipline which is about the crime acts and the criminals, about the nature and the reasons of crime phenomena, about all other social morbid phenomena that connected with the crime phenomena and about how to eliminate these phenomena. The concept of crime is the most basic and essential factor in the criminology ontology. Through the ages, scholars have defined crime in many aspects, but still have different opinions. Even in US, which has the most developed criminology, also has no unified concept of crime. The crime which is studied in criminology is mostly consistent with the crime studied in sociology. Many criminologists are sociologists. They all define crime in sociology aspect. It is so in China. The dispute about what is crime is never stopped until now. It leads to the condition that the nature of criminology discipline is ambiguous and unclear.This article aims at constructing the independent character of the criminology, and holds the opinion that criminology is a discipline that has relationship with sociology and criminal law but also different from the two. The immediate cause which helps making this kind of judgment is the object studied in criminology and criminal law and sociology is different, and the three disciplines are using the word"crime"in different meanings.This article is divided into three sections, namely the introduction, the main text and the conclusion.The introduction mainly introduces the significance in researching the concept of crime in criminology, pointing out that for achieving some kind of mutual recognition to construct the specialized trough of criminology discipline, it is necessary for us to study the concept of crime in criminology.In the main text, we discuss the historical evolution of the concept of crime, the necessity and the possibility of researching the concept of crime in criminology, the definition of concept of crime in criminology and the difference from other close discipline.The first part of this section is the historical evolution of the concept of crime. Scholars before modern times regarded the crime phenomenon in the view of absolute cognition. They extracted some theories either from the theology or from ethics and attempted to take it as the strict criterion to classify criminal act and the normal behavior. In modern times, Bourgeoisie scholars thought the crime is not only violating social contract, but also infringing social public interest according the idea of the people having sovereignty. After 18th century, for judicial need, the jurists began to formulate stricter and standard crime definition, thus founded the beginning of stipulating crime in law. After 19th century, the positivism emerged and this school criticized the formed concept of crime severely. Italian criminologist Garofalo created the concept of"natural crime". The ending of the First World War directed human walking into contemporary. With the appearance of the different forms of society, the ideology became the basis of classifying different concepts of crime. Socialist countries such as Soviet Union persisted that crime is the acts that has serious social hazardous nature so should be punished by penalty. While in capitalist country more and more people started to challenge the predecessor's work about crime, so various "general theory" appeared. Different theories define crime from respective standpoint, so formed concepts of crime, substantive concepts and mixed concepts appeared.The second part of this section is the necessity and the possibility of researching the concept of crime in criminology. In researching necessity, this part makes a conclusion that it is necessary for criminology to construct its concept of crime in ontology meaning. It is mainly because of the request of establishing the independent character of criminology discipline and the present unsatisfactory research situation. We refute the viewpoint which doesn't regard criminology as an independent discipline, and criminology should not have its own concept of crime. In researching possibility, we refute the viewpoint that the criminology is a positive discipline so it is impossible to have its own concept of crime. From the task of criminology for preventing and reducing crime, we persist that criminology is possible to have its own concept of crime. Because the crime should be prevented in criminology is not only the crime stipulating in criminal law. It is sure that those has serious social hazardous nature and should be corrected by social methods should be contained.The third part of this section is the definition of the crime concept in criminology. Firstly, we discuss the request of defining crime concept in criminology. That is the request of philosophy and the request of the task of criminology discipline. Concept is an important factor in philosophy. It is the reflection of the nature. And there is only one nature for every thing. So there is only one concept for every thing. However, we can classify crime concept in criminology, in criminal law and in sociology in three different views. Besides, defining the concept of crime in criminology requests us to put focus on society culture background of crime. At the same time, we should also give attention to the task and the goal of criminology discipline. Secondly, in this part, we study how to define crime concept from extension and connation. In the view of extension, concept of crime in criminology includes three parts, namely, most statute crime, crime waiting for stipulation and quasi-crime. In the view of connation, crime in criminology refers to the acts which have some social hazardous nature and should be punished or corrected by criminal law or other laws. Some scholars called this functional crime concept.In the last section, we study different concepts from different view by comparing crime concepts in criminology and in criminal law and in sociology. I think that crime concept in criminology has relationship with crime concept in criminal law but there is some difference between the two. The difference is that crime concept in criminology is"invisible", and the extension and connation is a summary of the social potential crime"material". But crime concept in criminal law is"visible", and it is a summary of the social crime product. The blends of the two concepts are: first, the crime concept in criminal law is contained in the concept in criminology. Second, there is some kind of interaction between the two concepts. In one side, the crime concept in criminal law is based on the concept in criminology. In another side, the view of crime based on crime concept in criminology plays a positive role in the development of criminal law. In comparing with crime concept in sociology, I think the relationship between the two is that the extension and the connotation of crime concept in sociology is wider than those in criminology and the crime concept in criminology is extracted from sociology.The conclusion points out that only we make clear the difference between crime concept in criminology and crime concept in criminal law, between crime concept in criminology and in sociology, can we define crime concept in criminology correctly.