International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 9

International Journal on Criminology
The only organized institute existing outside of a university in the continental
European countries is the School of Criminology and Technical Policing of the Belgian
Ministry of Justice, which is to some extent comparable to American professional
development institutes.
Almost all of the university institutes are attached to law faculties, with the sole
exception of the Stockholm Institute, which since 1947 has been a university institute,
while remaining privately funded.
This attachment to law faculties has certain consequences. In Paris, the Institute of
Criminology is under the scientific direction of the law faculty, the head of its
administrative council is the dean of the law faculty, and the director and associate
director must be members of the current criminal law teaching body. In Rome, the
director is the professor of penal law. In Ljubljana, the director is elected by the law
faculty from among its teachers.
Such measures are significant and reveal a lingering juridical imperialism belonging
to the old view of criminology as an auxiliary science annexed to or complementing
criminal law. One might legitimately wonder whether this juridical preeminence, which
once corresponded to a certain historical state of affairs, is now outdated. Criminology
supposes a multidisciplinary approach to the individual case and, to judge by the
continental countries, its core disciplines belong to the medical and humanities faculties.
In such conditions, it appears that the exclusive attachment of criminology institutes
to law faculties might provoke criticisms or reservations from various members of the
criminological team. It would therefore be appropriate to bring teaching of criminology
within institutes onto neutral grounds, with the “university institute” model seeming
preferable to that of “institute attached to the law faculty”.
Outside of criminology institutes, the subject is taught in university faculties and
establishments linked to scientific research or professional training. 1
In the Anglo-Saxon countries, criminology is widely taught in university faculties. In
the UK, it is linked to the development of social science teaching in universities. The
University of London, the London School of Economics (not forgetting the Institute of
Psychiatry), and the social sciences faculty at Oxford University seem to have been at the
forefront of the movement, followed by numerous universities. At Cambridge, however,
criminology is taught within the criminal science department of the law faculties.
Elsewhere, it is part of the psychology department (Aberdeen) or the psychological
medicine department (Durham).
In the United States, of the 30 most important universities offering graduate training,
only five do not teach criminology. In addition to this, 607 colleges (65% of American
colleges) offer undergraduate courses in sociology, and criminology is one of the most
popular subjects in these courses. This teaching is mostly provided by the sociology or
sociology and anthropology departments. Criminology sometimes constitutes a specialist
subdivision of the social sciences, while the University of California has a separate
criminology department.
In the Anglo-Saxon countries, criminology, in the form of criminal sociology, has
thus become closely integrated into the social sciences and sociology departments. This is
not the case in continental European countries. Courses in many different faculties
undoubtedly evoke “criminological” problems in passing (psychology and sociology
courses within humanities departments, legal forensics and psychiatry courses in medical
faculties, or criminal law courses in law faculties). However, core disciplines of
criminology are rarely offered individually, exceptions including criminal anthropology
in Italy, criminal psychology at the Catholic University in Milan, and forensic psychiatry
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