HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW MANAGING BOARD OF SPECIAL TRAINING PROGRAM ------ ----- BACHELOR THESIS REGULAR EDUCATION COURSE 35 (2010 – 2014) THE STUDY OF CRIMINALS IN CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIME PREVENTION STUDENT: NGUYEN LUU TUONG AN STUDENT CODE: 1055050002 CLASS: ADVANCE CLASS 35th COURSE SUPERVISOR: Dr. NGUYEN THI PHUONG HOA HO CHI MINH CITY, July 2014 Acknowledgments In this thesis, thanks are given to my family and friends, who have supported and encouraged me during my study. Moreover, I emotionally appreciate our university lecturers for their teaching and enthusiasm. Specially thanks to Dr.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa for being my supervisor and helping me throughout this course with valuable comments and important amendments. Finally, I would like to thanks to Prof. Mai Hong Quy, our university principal, who promotes this advance program and gives many students like me a chance to participate in. Commitment I hereby commit that the thesis “The study of criminals in criminology and crime prevention” is my own research under Dr.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa‟s supervisor. I would bear full responsibility for my commitment. 15 July 2014 The thesis‟s author signature TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. The study of criminals in criminology.
Overview on the study of criminals in criminology. Purpose and scope of the study of criminals in criminology. Overview of schools of thought about criminals throughout history. The study of criminals in classical theories.
Rational decision theory. Theory of utilitarianism. Classical theories – pros and cons. The study of criminals in biological theories.
Physiognomy and phrenology. The study of people‟s skull. Other biological studies. Biological theories – pros and cons.
The study of criminals in psychological theories. Theories based on psychoanalysis. Theories based on behavior theorists‟ viewpoint. Psychological traits and criminality.
Personality and crime. Personality disorder and crime. Intelligence and crime. Psychological theories – pros and cons.
The study of criminals in social theories. Social structure theories. Social process theories. Social theories – pros and cons.
Crime prevention based on the study of criminals. Definition and implication of crime prevention. Prevention of crime based on the study of theories about criminals. Prevention of crime based on the study of classical theories.
Prevention of crime based on the study of psychological theories. Preventing crime based on the study of social theories. Research background “Criminals” - how much do we know about this word? We hear this word everyday, everywhere: on the trains, in newspapers, on television, internet, via facebook, in the coffee shop, while shopping in a mall or having dinner with friends, etc… We talk about it at first like a strange phenomenon. However, day by day, it became so familiar that we accepted it as a part of our life which we can not get rid of in decades.
We talk about „criminals‟ with a dim awareness about bad people who are living beside us, like a dark shadow. They stand there, in the corner of the dark, silently watching us, and attacking us when we think we‟re safe and sound. In fact, we do can catch criminals because they are just normal people like us. Criminals come from our usual life, maybe our mother, maybe our boyfriend/girlfriend, maybe they are our beloved teacher or the leaders of the government.
Nevertheless, the matter is, were they born criminals? Or they chose to be so? As Hamlet said to Ophelia in the Hamlet tragedy of Shakespeare: “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another” [51], the battle between these two halves of identity: who we are and who we pretend to be is unwinnable. Maybe as Shakespeare‟s hypothesis, people can control what they do and what they are going to do, by choices. But besides that, will there be any other reasons that can explain why a so-angel-person turned into a devil? Do they willing to commit crimes? And how could we know what kind of people can engage in criminal behaviors? Therefore, before planning crime prevention programs, we have to understand clearly about the reasons why criminal behaviors are conducted. By approaching viewpoints and theories of criminologists all over the world throughout history, we can learn from advantage and disadvantage points in those theories.
When we have solid knowledge about what we are studying, the solutions we (then) make to solve 2 problems is going to be reasonable and practical than making suggestions based on useless sources. In Viet Nam, there are many books, articles and journals maintain this sector to synthesize scholars‟ viewpoints about criminals from different countries, and most of these books are written in Vietnamese. Besides that, some books contain several theories, other books contain other different theories, there‟s no relation between them for readers to have a general overview of criminals and crime causation. With the purpose to summarize those theories by researching each theory throughout history and planning crime preventing program, the author chooses to study the topic: “The study of criminals in criminology and crime prevention”.
Literature review According to the author research, there are many books, journal articles or theses related to international civil judicial assistance in Vietnam. Remarkable documents as follows: - „Contemporary criminology‟, 2013 by Associate Professor Duong Tuyet Mien. This document provides general review on the schools of thoughts all over the world about crime causation. - „Modern criminology and crime prevention‟, 2001 by Professor Nguyen Xuan Yem.
This book focuses on finding solutions to prevent crime as well as solving problems which can be caused by criminal behaviors. - „About the social control and criminals control‟, 2012 by Associate Professor Le Thi Son. This research mentions the role of social elements in criminal behavior and the correlation between maintaining social order and crime prevention. In Vietnam, although there have been a great amount of researches on criminals, there are few detailed research on the prevention based on all theories of crime.
Most of these documents only concentrate on crime prevention based on one school of thought of criminals without the application of all viewpoints to make a general recommendation for the prevention of crime. In other countries, to verify 3 the role of social factors, environmental factors, biological factors and psychological factors in crime causation, there are some remarkable articles: - Larry Siegel, „Criminology‟, 1992. This books shows a comparative analysis of viewpoints about crime and criminals from the classical criminology to the modern criminology; proposal for improvement of public policy. - Freda Adler, Gerhard O.
Mueller and William S. This researching concentrates on the explaining of criminal behavior. Bernard and Jeffrey B. Snipes, „Theoretical Criminology‟, 1998.
This is the review of all theories in the developmental history and the concentration on the theory of social criminology and its effect in improving public policy. In general, these foreign researches mainly examine the role of biological, psychological and social factors in criminal behavior. This thesis serves as a combination of these researches about theoretical basic of crime causation. In addition, the thesis presents detailed analysis of the causes of crime and then contributing suggestions for crime prevention.
The scope of the thesis Due to limitation of time, this thesis just concentrates on research the following points: Firstly, it is to provide the concept and characteristic of crime causation; the importance of crime prevention; and the reciprocal relationship between them. How ever, it does not aim to the details of all theories about criminal or listing every study and experiment relates to each theory. Secondly, the thesis does not intend to re-define the concept of criminals and criminology as well as pointing out the differences between the concept of criminals 4 in criminal science and the concept of criminals in criminology. This thesis gives a general review on scholars‟ thoughts of criminal behavior and causes of crime.
Thirdly, with regard to crime prevention based on crime causation understanding, the thesis will suggest all potential methods to prevent crime without concentrating on only one type of solution which is based on only one theory of criminals. Finally, the prevention can be applied for suitable countries depending on the status of each area. This thesis will not aim to find crime prevention for only society in Viet Nam or any specific country. Therefore, there will be neither analysis nor survey on a crime rate in particular area.
Methodology For the purpose of this thesis, the author will combine different legal methods in the ground of Marxist-Leninist methodology as follows - Description: is used mainly in Chapter I to present definitions, concepts and provisions of law. - Comparison: clarifying and comparing the similarities and differences of theories and solution in both Chapter I and Chapter II. - Synthetic method: collecting relevant information from different sources such as books, journal articles, etc. - Inductive method: used in Chapter I and Chapter II to present the concept of crime causation; concept and characteristics of crime prevention; the reciprocal relationship between them.
- Analysis: used in all chapters, to withdraw conclusions and recommendations. Significance Firstly, the thesis provides a general understanding of some scholarly viewpoints around the world about criminals. 5 Secondly, the thesis provides analyses of each theory from the early age of history till the present day in order to point out its ineffectiveness and the reasons. Finally, based on the understanding of factors which can impact a person to behave illegally, the author recommends some methods to help reduce the crime rates.
This thesis is hoped to become a useful document for the researchers who conduct researches on criminals and any law student who have interested in studying the criminals. Structure This thesis is divided into two chapters: CHAPTER 1: THE STUDY OF CRIMINALS IN CRIMINOLOGY – the general view of schools of thought of criminals throughout history; definition and characteristic of each criminology theory; advantage and disadvantage of applying each theory in crime explanation. CHAPTER 2: CRIME PREVENTION BASED ON THE STUDY OF CRIMINALS - concentrates on providing as many solutions as possible for the government, the polish and the citizen to eliminate chances for criminals to conduct deviant behavior. The study of criminals in criminology 1.
Overview on the study of criminals in criminology 1. Purpose and scope of the study of criminals in criminology The term „criminals‟ has many complex and enormous concepts. Nonetheless, the most popular definition concentrates on individuals who do wrongful acts that are considered as „illegal‟ by the communities and the Court. The one that has committed or been legally convicted of a crime is a criminal.
However, criminologists do not study about criminals only. Unlike criminalists whose jobs focus on crime scene investigation such as interprets and analyze evidence to assess which pieces are relevant to the case and develops written reports of the findings [48], criminologists mainly research the nature and extent of crime and the causes and prevention of criminality. While doing so, criminologists pose a lot of questions. For example: Why do people behave the way they do? Why do they commit crimes? Was that wrongful behavior the result of a diseased mind or antisocial personality? How many crimes are there and what are the trends and patterns in the crime rate? [25-p.18] In the process of finding the answers for such questions, criminologists tend to go back to the origin of criminality: criminals – the object that disturbs the social order, causes damage and breaks the law.
By testing and doing research on criminals and the factors around them, criminologists can figure out which elements directing a person in the road of crimes. However, during the process of exploring the causes of crime, many theories were made by criminologists to answer the core question: “Why do people commit crimes?” Some view criminals as society‟s victims who are forced to violate the law because of poverty and lack of opportunity.