Nature of Crimes and Criminological Research
Crimes can be dated since the early period where there was no electricity, and the world had few people. With the increasing population and the advancement of technology, there were more cases of crimes and new methods of committing these crimes. The mind of human beings works in a manner to seek solutions for every problem and ways of making their work easier. This paper seeks to establish the impact of the nature of crimes on criminology and the effect of criminological research on social policy.
The nature of a crime is essential to criminologists, as this is what defines a crime. The nature of crimes varies from state to state, what comprises a crime and methods used in the commission of crimes. There are also emerging crimes, and for that reason, the law enforcement agencies and criminologists need to work hard so as to catch up with these new trends. For example, cyberbullying was not a crime during the analog days, but due to technological advancement, it was essential to recognize it as a crime. In the United States, there is a new trend where traditional crimes are done using new methods due to the advancement of technology.
The impact of the ever-changing nature of crimes impacts criminology in various ways. Firstly, the police, as well as the criminologists, are not aware of these new schemes to commit a crime, and this makes investigations to be challenging (Bosworth, 2017). Drug dealing is not being done the same way where the transactions are manual, everything is automated, and the money laundered automatically leading to no evidence linking the suspects. Secondly, criminology expands in its study; this is due to the invention of new ways to manage and prevent criminal behavior among individuals and poses a challenge to the police to come up with new investigatory methods in order to curb these new crimes.
Criminals are coming up with new ideas to get rid of the mechanisms in place to prevent these crimes. An example of such an incidence is most cars currently have chips in car keys that have made it impossible for a thief to start the engine and get away with the motor vehicle (Laub & Sampson, 2019). To counter this mechanism, criminals developed a key-fob jamming device that disrupts the signal when a car owner locks the car. The car owner is not aware that the car is unlocked and at the risk of being stolen, as nothing seems different. When the owner is out of sight, the thief enters the car and may steal the car or any valuable items in the car or documents that can be used to commit identity theft
Criminological research affects social policy in several ways. Firstly, criminology and social policy relate in a certain way; criminologists carry extensive researches in order to understand the nature of a crime and the reason for the rise in crimes. Based on the criminologists’ research, policymakers come up with guidelines on how to address the crime problems found. A notable instance where criminological research has had an impact was observed in Minneapolis where, Lawrence Sherman did research on domestic violence on its nature and rampancy that led to policymakers making a policy that police departments are obligated to answer to domestic violence calls (Jo, 2019). Secondly, criminological research impacts social policy in explaining patterns of organized crimes and its effect on society or the place where such crimes occurred.
The nature of crimes changes every day from how they are carried out to who are involved as more people who were not inclined to commit crimes is now committing crimes as they deem it secure and entirely untraceable ( Hope,2019). The nature of crimes as affected the criminological department in some ways as there is more research carried out on how to curb these new methods. This paper has established that the nature of crimes affects our daily life activities, and also it has shown the interconnection between social policy and criminological research.
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