Criminology

The history of the development of criminological ideas can be divided into four main stages ^[3] :

• The classical period - the second half of the XVIII century - the last 1/3 of the XIX century
• Positivist period - the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century
• Pluralistic period - the first 2/3 of the XX century
• The humanitarian period - the second half of the 20th century - to the present.

In the modern history of criminology in the USSR and further in the independent states that have arisen in its space, starting from the 60s of the last century, the four stages described below are distinguished ^[4] .

The deterministic stage (1960s - first half of the 1970s) is characterized by the formation of a dialectic school, a significant outcome of which was the consideration of the contradictions of public life related to both being and consciousness as the causes of mass criminal behavior (V.N. Kudryavtsev, K. K. Goryainov, P. S. Dagel, U. S. Dzhekebaev, I. A. Ismailov, I. Ya. Kozachenko, K. V. Korsakov, L. V. Kondratyuk, P. P. Osipov and etc.).

The pluralistic stage (second half of the 1970s - 1980s) is associated with a departure from the “consensus” on the key issues of criminology, the emergence of different approaches to the definition and explanation of crime (N. F. Kuznetsova, L. I. Spiridonov, D A. Shestakov and others), and also, which was no less important, with the formation of new scientific branches ( family criminology , political criminology, mass media criminology, sacral criminology, military criminology, economic criminology) and schools (psychological school - U M. Antonyan; school n the recurrent subsystems — D. A. Shestakov, G. N. Gorshenkov, S. U. Dikayev, P. A. Kabanov, G. L. Kastorsky; the Ukrainian school of “naturalistic” criminology — A. N. Kostenko, and others; and deviantology school adjacent to criminology - Ya. I. Gilinsky and others).

The liberal stage (1980s - 1990s). The word "liberal" comes from the Latin "liber" - free. Liberalism as an ideology, political and economic movement emerged in the seventeenth century and developed especially widely in the nineteenth century, undergoing significant changes in the twentieth century (late liberalism). The core of the liberal idea is the approval of the priority of a free individual over the state, while the state is considered only as a guarantor of the economic and personal freedom of the individual. Late liberalism, however, already presupposes active state intervention in the life of society, primarily in the economy. Liberalism involves a free discussion of the activities of state power. The liberal stage of criminological thought in Russia is marked by criticism of the authorities from criminological positions. So, the institute of criminal punishment for its excessive rigidity was questioned, the question was raised about changing the goals of punishment defined by law ^[5] ]. Political criminology has raised the issue of state crime, in particular, in connection with the implementation in the USSR of the red terror in Lenin and then Stalin’s manifestations (Ya. I. Gilinsky, V. V. Luneyev, V. N. Kudryavtsev, D A. Shestakov and others).

The post-liberal stage (2000s) began and proceeds under the sign of thinking about external state and supranational, global oligarchic criminal activity (D. A. Shestakov, S. U. Dikayev, P. A. Kabanov, Yu. S. Apukhtin, A. P. Danilov and others.).

The Ukrainian scientist A.N. Kostenko develops the concept of “naturalistic criminology” - that is, criminology based on the principle of social naturalism. In accordance with this concept, crime is viewed as manifestations of the will and consciousness of people, which consist in violation of the natural laws of social life inherent in a given society and reflected in the existing criminal legislation. A criminal is a person whose will, being in a state of willfulness, and consciousness, being in a state of illusions, manifested itself in the form of a crime, that is, an act that violates the natural laws of people's public life and is therefore prohibited by criminal law. Any crime is a manifestation of a “complex of willfulness and illusions” that was formed in a person under the influence of certain life circumstances, which should be called the causes of crime. In the light of “naturalistic criminology”, A. N. Kostenko develops the main thesis of classical criminology, formulated by C. Beccaria, as follows: “It is better to prevent a crime by eliminating a complex of self-will and illusions in a person with the help of culture than to punish him for the manifestation of this complex in the form crime. "

The methodology of criminological research is a system of specific methods, techniques, means of collecting, processing, analyzing and evaluating information about crime, its causes and conditions, the identity of the criminal, measures to combat crime, criminological forecasting methods for its development and planning measures to combat it, to improve the practice of crime prevention and the ability to assess the effectiveness of this activity ^[6] .

In criminology, the following methods became prevalent:

• Statistical methods by which quantitative and qualitative indicators of crime and the identity of offenders are investigated ^[7] .
• The questionnaire method , which allows to obtain data on such indicators that cannot be established in statistical materials and, importantly, to carry out repeated verification of these data. The disadvantage of this method is in the inevitable subjectivity of information obtained by the method of questionnaire survey.
• Method of interview , which allows, under certain conditions, to obtain the necessary information faster and often more fully. Used for in-depth study of the identity of criminals, victims and public opinion.
• A testing method that is used to standardize the measurement of individual differences: to study the personality of a criminal, to motivate criminal behavior, emotional, volitional, intellectual, and other characteristics of criminals and victims, their attitudes and orientations, the nature and content of relationships with other people, attitudes towards themselves and etc.
• Sociometry , using this method, you can trace the criminological features of relationships in a group, evaluate them, reveal the nature of psychological relationships, conflict situations, groupings, leadership, etc. In criminology, this method is useful in studying the effectiveness of criminal penalties (imprisonment, correctional labor, restriction of freedom, etc.)
• The documentary method involves the study of documents containing information of interest in criminological research. In addition to criminal cases, this method is used to analyze a wide variety of other documentation: official and unofficial (legislative material, personal documents, legal, economic and other statistics, etc.).
• Observation is a process of visual perception of a situation (situation) of criminological significance.
• Expert assessment is necessary when predicting certain phenomena.
• The experiment is useful in studying artificially created changes in conditions and forms of public life in the framework of, for example, economic or socio-legal transformations (checking the effectiveness and soundness of jury trials in certain regions, etc.).

General criminological theory includes the theory of crime and the theory of combating crime.

Private criminology examines certain types of crime: mercenary crime, violent crime, political crime - and types of mass criminal behavior: organized criminal activity, corruption, environmental crimes, reckless crimes, juvenile and anti-juvenile crimes, etc.

Criminological branches investigate the criminality of the main social subsystems (institutions) and (or) the counteraction of crime by means of these social subsystems (institutions) - family criminology, economic criminology, political criminology, religious criminology, criminology of law, criminopenology, media criminology, environmental criminology. ^[8] .

The subject of the study of criminology includes four main elements:

• crime - is studied as a socio-legal, historically variable negative mass phenomenon . It is composed of the totality of crimes committed in a given period in a state (region, world), having quantitative (level, dynamics) and qualitative (structure and nature of criminality) indicators. There are different types of crime, such as violent crime, juvenile delinquency, environmental crime, etc .;

Criminology also uses the semantic definition of crime ( D. A. Shestakov ) introduced by the school of criminal subsystems (the Neva-Volga school of criminology), according to which crime is viewed as properties of a person, a social institution, a society of a particular country, a global society, to reproduce many dangerous acts, the relationship of many crimes and their causes, amenable to quantitative interpretation and predetermining the introduction of criminal law prohibitions .

There is an extensive controversy about the semantic definition of crime (A.I. Dolgova, A.P. Danilov, G.N. Gorshenkov, S.M. Inshakov, E.I. Kairzhanov, I.I. Karpets , P.A. Kabanov , T. V. Konstantinova, N. F. Kuznetsova, I. M. Matskevich, I. A. Noskova, B. K. Syzdyk, et al.).

According to the semantic approach, crime in the family sphere is studied - family criminology, economic criminality - economic criminology, political criminality - political criminology, media criminality - media criminology, and legislative criminology - criminology law.

• the identity of the offender , considered as an individual, endowed with a set of social, biological and psychological features, with features of formation and development, which allowed him to satisfy his interests and needs by committing a crime. In addition, the identity of the offender is investigated as a direct subject of prevention and prevention of new crimes (relapse);
• causes and conditions of crime ( determinants of crime ) - a set of negative economic, demographic, psychological, political, organizational and managerial phenomena and processes that generate and condition crime is studied. The causes and conditions of crime in the diversity of their content, nature and mechanism of action are studied at different levels: the causes and conditions of crime in general, for individual groups of crimes, a specific crime;
• crime prevention is understood as a system of general social and special criminological measures aimed at eliminating, neutralizing or weakening the causes and conditions of crime, deterring crimes and correcting the behavior of offenders. The preventive system is analyzed: by orientation, mechanism of action, stages, scale, content, subjects and other parameters.

• Social deviation
• Legal education
• Victimology

• Criminology: Textbook / Ed. DF Shelly. SPb .: Peter, 2003. - 860 p. ISBN 5-318-00489-X .
• Criminology: Textbook / I. Ya. Kozachenko, K. V. Korsakov. M .: NORMA-INFRA-M, 2011. - 304 p. ISBN 978-5-91768-209-9 .
• Criminology: A textbook for universities / D. A. Shestakov. SPb .: Legal Center Press, 2006. - 561 p. ISBN 5-94201-460-4 .