NCJ Number
161536
Date Published
1996
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This essay focuses on the earlier work (prior to 1935) which helped prepare a social and institutional role for criminology in Great Britain.
Abstract
This historical review of criminology in Great Britain focuses on the institutionally linked psychiatric tradition, which can be viewed as the key influence that fostered the concept of a scientific approach to criminals becoming a part, however marginally, in penal practice, in the courts, and in the policy thinking of governmental authorities. To some extent, this can be seen as the "official criminology" of the period. It did not involve a general theory of crime or even a comprehensive research program that might produce one; it would later become unpopular with academics for this reason. The goal of this tradition was not general theory but rather the development of practical knowledge that inevitably would conflict with the intellectual ambitions of academic criminology in the 1950's, just as it had done with the continental work of the 1880's. Criminologists in Great Britain, before the development of a university-based profession, were characteristically practitioners. Their expertise was a detailed knowledge of the institutional environment and its requirements, together with a general training in medicine or psychiatry, and later, psychology. This largely accounts for the individualized, policy- based, and theoretically limited criminology characteristic of Britain before 1935. 19 references