3.2 The Discipline of Criminology

What drives a person to become a criminologist? All scientists conduct measurements. Criminologists are no different. A criminologist examines crime in a temporal-spatial (time and space) way. In these longitudinal studies, the characteristics of crimes and those who break the laws are measured. Throughout history, writers and scholars have studied and written about how to reduce, if not completely eliminate, crime. But you might be surprised to learn that the term “criminology” is a relatively new one, developed just over 100 years ago (Schmalleger, 2006).

It is important to consider the theoretical assumptions of social policies regarding criminal deviance. Does the well-dressed person at a bus stop awaiting the arrival of a scheduled transit ride home after work raise suspicions with the police? Absent any more detail, no. This subject is in a place where they are lawfully permitted to be, lacking any apparent criminal motivation or intent. Contrast this situation with a person at that same bus stop whose manner of dress is in disarray and who is waiting for another bus one hour later. Someone flags down a police officer and reports that this person “looks out of place.” The officer approaches the individual and asks what is happening; the response is, “I’m just hanging out.” Has a crime been committed? In the days when the crime of vagrancy was on the books, then perhaps the answer would be “yes.” But in today’s world, generally no crime has been committed. In a series of cases on vagrancy (City of Seattle v. Drew, 1967; City of St. Louis v. Gloner, 1908; Pinkerton v. Verberg, 1889; State v. Caez, 1963; Territory of Hawaii v. Anduha, 1931), various states ruled that laws exhibiting such vagueness and overly broad language could conceivably give police the discretion to decide who walks the streets and potentially penalize persons who are experiencing homelessness or are otherwise unsheltered. The courts in these cases viewed such police action as an abuse of discretionary powers and implicitly unconstitutional. Prior to these cases, vagrancy laws were generally considered to be the “law of the land” and sanctioned by many communities that wanted squatting laws enforced. Today, the laws and the police who enforce them are taking different approaches in order to create solutions that will be sensitive to the needs of all parties.

One also needs to ask the question: “What is criminal deviance?” Initially, the question seems easy to answer. In fact, criminologists, depending upon their individual viewpoints, may disagree and have differing answers. Criminologist Paul Tappan (1947) believed that only criminal acts defined by a code of criminal law should be considered. Herman and Julia Schwendinger (1970) took a much broader-based approach by saying that a wide range of social injuries and injustices, not just those prohibited under written legal code, should be addressed in the study of criminology. As one can see, the two perspectives are inconsistent and even incompatible with each other. A third view from some mainstream criminologists uses a definition of the field that is less constrained than Tappan’s but not as open-ended as the Schwendingers’. For example, Thorsten Sellin (1938) opined that criminologists should study the violation of conduct norms.

Each position has its strength, yet all face scrutiny in some manner. Under Tappan’s model, the former crime of vagrancy would fall within the area of criminology when there were laws against vagrancy. However, due to case precedent declaring the crime of vagrancy “void for vagueness” and the optics created by housing shortages and resulting unsheltered conditions, vagrancy as a crime is largely nonexistent, or at least not enforced, today. For today’s criminologists, an area of greater concern might be to examine from the conflict criminology perspective the predatory practices of landlords, large corporations, and government actions that marginalize, and may even target, some members of society, while enriching others. In this way, criminologists study criminal acts by offenders to better understand motivations, consider deterrence measures, and proscribe rehabilitation strategies or mechanisms to prevent crime or catch criminals in the future. In evaluating the effectiveness of these efforts, criminologists rely largely on arrest information in their research and correlation findings. Impediments to their work can result when something was not illegal or no arrest was made, resulting in a situation where no data is available from which to conduct analysis.