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.
The term criminology was coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as Criminologia. Later, the French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous term Criminologie [en]. Paul Topinard's major work appeared in 1879. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, criminology focused on reforming criminal law and not on the causes of crime. Academics such as Beccaria and Bentham were more concerned with the humanitarian aspects of the treatment of criminals and the reform of several criminal lawsuits. The 20th century of the first quarter after the Great Progress was made in criminology. The first American textbook of criminology was criminalized in 1920 by the sociologist Maurice Parmalee under the title Criminology.
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