International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 10

The Art of Criminology in a Hostile Environment
at Stockholm University. However, many law faculties offer basic teaching more or less
complementary to criminal law, under the name “criminology”. For now, it is sufficient
to note the existence of such teaching, as seen at Innsbruck in Austria, at Rio de Janeiro
and São Paulo in Brazil, and at Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey. In France, a recent reform
introduced a semester of penal law and criminology in the second year of undergraduate
law degrees.
Comparable to this university teaching is that provided in certain establishments in
connection with scientific research. These establishments and the kinds of teaching they
offer are essentially diverse. Sometimes, the research centre complements university
teaching, as is the case in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Similarly, in Belgium, the
René Marcq Center at the Free University of Brussels provides criminological training
for researchers. In France, the School for Advanced Studies provides criminal sociology
teaching for researchers and the School of Anthropology (a private institution founded by
Broca) offers a criminology course.
Most of the countries studied also offer professional training courses in connection
with universities or the various relevant institutions. This model has allowed the
University of London and numerous other British universities to organize “extension”
teaching for police and social workers. The Home Office and Scottish Home Department
take responsibility for training civil servants working in probation, the police service, the
prison service, borstal houses, and approved schools. In Belgium, criminology is taught
in nursing and social service schools. France has a school for prison staff and schools for
police and educators, organized by the relevant administrative bodies and teaching
rudimentary criminology. This is also the case in Italy, which has a graduate scientific
policing school, as well as a school and professional development courses for social
workers. In the United States, teaching for police and penitentiary staff takes place in
universities, usually in separate divisions (such as the Berkeley school in California).
Teaching is also provided for social workers. Finally, Sweden has an institute for
social assistants in Gëteborg, offering forensic psychiatry and juvenile criminology
courses.
This overview of the structure and status of criminology teaching reveals great
disparity. Clearly, this disparity is to some extent an inevitable result of the way things
are. However, although it cannot be entirely avoided, it could at least be limited if the
model of the university criminology institute already suggested above could be
accompanied by centralization and effective coordination of teaching for criminology and
the criminological sciences.
The organization of criminology and criminological science teaching presents
numerous problems: The conditions for admission, the cost of studies, the number of
students, the teaching cycle (duration of studies, exams, and qualifications) and
employment prospects.
The access conditions for criminology and criminological science teaching display
similar disparity to the structure and status of this teaching.
In the case of criminology institutes, we know that Anglo-Saxon institutes are highly
specialist centers. As written by one of our group, their function is the “multidisciplinary
teaching of criminology to people who are already highly trained in one of the related
sciences”. The program at the Institute for the Treatment and the Study of Delinquency in
London includes courses aimed at specialists, while also providing for the learning needs
of non-specialists. In the United States, prior professional selection is used in admission
procedures for the specialist institutes, because of the limited number of places. This
explains why the model is one of professional development schools. 1 In Belgium, the
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