International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 6

The Art of Criminology in a Hostile Environment
It hardly needs emphasizing that the teaching of criminological subjects and
criminology can be usefully complemented by that of related sciences such as legal
forensics, scientific policing, and forensic psychology. 1 However, these disciplines
should be clearly distinguished from the fundamental disciplines and from criminology
itself. Although they study the criminal phenomenon, they do so only to establish the
material facts and proof of the crime. They do not envisage scientific study of criminality
or seek solutions, whereas this is the precise objective of criminology and the
fundamental disciplines.
It is not necessary to insist further on the interest of teaching criminology and on its
usefulness for training professionals, students, researchers, and teaching staff.
Essentially, this teaching, as defined above, concerns human criminal activity and
aims to assist with the fight against the social ill that is crime. It can thus be perfectly
incorporated into social sciences teaching.
When reading various national reports, it is impossible not to be struck by the
multiplicity of structures involved in teaching criminology and by the diversity of
statuses assigned to it.
One might be tempted to put these differences down to the pluralisms observed in
the subject of criminology itself. These fundamental divergences undeniably have some
influence at the institutional level. There is, in particular, what can be called an annexing
tendency, in which old or traditional disciplines such as penal law consider criminology
and the criminological sciences as auxiliary disciplines. This results in an attitude that
makes a small space for these disciplines in a pre-established framework unfortunately
not designed to accommodate them. The same trend can be seen outside of penal law, and
the core disciplines are no exception. Although the situation varies between countries,
sociology, psychology, biology, and penology all display an annexationist approach to
criminology.
In fact, the principal factor in the multiplicity of structures for teaching criminology
and in the diversity of statuses attributed to it is the variation in the organization of
university studies between countries. The contrast is typically made between continental
European and Anglo-Saxon universities.
Cambridge University professor M. C. W. Guillebaud emphasized these differences
in his remarkable general report on the teaching of economic sciences, which forms the
opening to the study of these disciplines in this collection. We will not dwell on the
matter here, but it should be noted that his observations are equally applicable to
criminology.
These differences in the “structure, organization and hierarchy” of qualifications
between Anglo-Saxon and continental universities have repercussions for university
teaching of criminology. The Anglo-Saxon system is less homogeneous than the
continental European system, and the United Kingdom system differs from that of the
United States (which displays characteristics of both systems). Any brief, general
comment on these differences risks being misleading. Instead, the most important
differences for criminology are addressed in the various sections of this report. It is
nevertheless possible to make the following preliminary observations:
1. An important difference impacting on the treatment of criminology is that between
state and private universities. The tight state control over continental universities and the
resultant high uniformity in structure and organization makes for greater uniformity in
university teaching of criminology in continental Europe than in the UK. Conversely, the
autonomy of British private universities, despite the financial aid they receive, allows for
greater diversity in exams, programs, and degrees. This naturally creates variation
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