Criminology is the study of the law enforcement and criminal justice system. A person looking for a career in criminal justice will likely first seek to earn a criminology degree. While criminal justice and criminology are certainly related fields, they are not identical.
Criminology is the scientific study of the causation, correction, and prevention of crime. It is most often associated with the study of the law enforcement and criminal justice system. Criminology is a branch of sociology and has, in effect, been studied in one way or another for thousands of years. It has only been relatively recently, though, that it has been recognized as a scientific discipline in its own right. High-impact journals are those considered to be highly influential in their respective fields. The impact factor of journal provides quantitative assessment tool for grading, evaluating, sorting and comparing journals of similar kind. It reflects the average number of citations to recent articles published in science and social science journals in a particular year or period, and is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field. It is first devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information.
The interests of criminologists include the study of nature of crime and criminals, origins of criminal law, etiology of crime, social reaction to crime, and the functioning of law enforcement agencies and the penal institutions. It can be broadly said that criminology directs its enquiries along three lines: first, it investigates the nature of criminal law and its administration and conditions under which it develops, second, it analyses the causation of crime and the personality of criminals; and third, it studies the control of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders. Thus, criminology includes within its scope the activities of legislative bodies, law-enforcement agencies, judicial institutions, correctional institutions and educational, private and public social agencies.