Relationship of criminology with criminal law

Raju, who is 20 years old, is arrested for the crime of murdering a 15-year-old boy over the minor fight. He is booked under various sections of a criminal statute. He is governed by the top criminal lawyers in bangalore various provisions given under the Indian criminal law. But, what triggered him to commit such a heinous crime and how Mens rea (mental element to commit the crime) was developed in his mind. What were the circumstances and situations that provoked him to commit such a heinous crime? These things can only be deduced with the help of criminology.

Criminology and criminal law both are interlinked and inter-related to each other. Criminology deals with the psychology of law and criminal law deals with the crime itself.

Let’s just not dive much deeper into it and without any pause, let’s discuss the gist of the article.

Criminology and Criminal Law
Criminology is a discipline which analyses and gathers the data of crime and criminal behaviour. The word, ‘ology’ in criminology stands for study. The basic aim of criminology is to assess the very nature of the crime, statistics of crime, criminal behaviour that motivates the person to commit a crime and prevention of crimes. Criminology is a very fascinating subject that includes the scientific principles to assess criminal behaviour and psychology behind it. It also deals with the sociological aspects of crime and also explains the reason behind the occurrence of crimes in our society.

Criminology basically is specified into three further branches. These are Sociology which deals with the social aspect of the crimes, criminal aetiology which deals with the causation of crimes and penology which deals with the mechanism of prevention of crimes. The objective of criminology is to provide a codified, organised and structural subject that will try to find the cause of crimes and will ultimately provide ways and remedies on how the crimes can be reduced or eradicated.

Criminology is basically regarded as art or social science because unlike science it does not work on coded or universally defined principles. There is not any proper theory which can be given regarding criminology.

Criminal law, on the other hand, is basically a subset of principles or legally defined guidelines or code of law which are passed by the political authority of any country and which applies equally to all the members of the society without any prejudicial differences which are enforced by the punishment and which aim to prevent the criminal tendencies that are prevalent in our community. These are general penal sanctions which deter any person to commit any sort of crime. They are just systematic coding principles.

The difference between criminal law and other laws are not clear cut. Criminal law defines what can be constituted as crime and thereby prohibits such types of acts. If anyone is guilty of committing such forbidden acts then appropriate penal sanctions are given in the criminal statute. There are various sorts of punishments which are given in the criminal law. Violators of principles given in the criminal statute of any country can be compelled to give hefty fines and have to suffer appropriate punishments too. Crime is anything which is forbidden by the appropriate criminal statute of any country.

The very basic principles on which any criminal statute works is the evidence. Evidence is the source for proving any criminal offence. It is the very basic foundation to establish any criminal offence. Each state has its own criminal code and procedure in the United States of America.