Criminologists Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey used what they called the “conventional definition of crime,” which defines crime as a violation against the state. Crime is usually differentiated from delinquency, as the former is perpetrated by adults (or minors who are criminally responsible), while the latter is perpetrated by minors who can't be prosecuted as adults. In criminal law, crime is differentiated from “tort," an infraction against individual(s).

Criminology is an interdisciplinary science that studies all aspects of crimes:

1. Causes of crime: cultural, political, economic, social, demographical, socio-psychological, psychological, and biological.
2. Criminal justice system – laws, police and other law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, public defenders, laws, and penal institutions (jails, prisons, juvenile penitentiaries).
3. Demographics and statistics related to crime – types of crimes and their frequencies; criminality divided along class, gender, race, education; regional distribution.
4. Socio-cultural reaction to crime.
5. Rehabilitation of criminals.

Gabriel Tarde and Émile Durkheim are one of the founders of criminology in France.  Émile Durkheim introduced the classification of societies into those with mechanical and organic solidarity. In modern societies, that have organic solidarity, changes in social structure lead to a decrease in society's control over the individual, because the influence of religion, kinship groups, and the neighborhood is declining. Individuals are becoming too individualized and detached from any moral control of the wider society. Societal changes lead to changes in legal codes and definitions of crime and criminal behavior. He argued that some level of criminality in society is functional.  

Cesare Lombroso, together with his younger associates Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garofalo, is considered one of the founders of Italian and world criminology. Lombroso was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution and Herbert Spencer's theory of social evolution. In the book Criminal Man (1876), he concludes that free will does not have a great influence on criminal behavior, but that such behavior is a product of evolutionary atavism that creates primitive or sub-human nature in individuals. These individuals are characterized by a specific shape of the head and bone structure, a tendency towards slang, tattoos, and vices, and all these features form the basis of a criminal personality. In addition to this group of born criminals, Lombroso singled out a group of occasional or accidental criminals. There are three sub-groups of criminals in this group: random criminals, criminals who are that because of their social ties to born criminals, and "criminaloids" who are only partially biologically degenerate.

Lombroso is also the first criminologist to deal with women criminals, so in his book The Female Offender (1895) he argues that biology does not play a significant role in women, as a cause of crime. However, women whose biology influenced them to become criminals were more vicious criminals than male criminals. He believed that women have less moral sense than men, but that motherhood, lack of passion, piety, and lack of intelligence prevent them from committing crimes. In his later works, he accepted the criticism that his theory deterministically determines criminal behavior only through biological predisposition, so he introduced other factors into his criminological theory. This revised view sees gender, age, poverty, and occupation as factors that are also influencing the likelihood of individual criminal behavior.

  Crime in the Perspective of the Chicago School of Sociology

In the United States development of criminology is closely connected with the Chicago School of Sociology and its focus on urban development and urban problems. Frederick Thrasher is one of the criminologists who was a member of the Chicago School. His doctoral dissertation, mentored by Robert Park, was published as The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago (1927). This research is the first thorough study of a gang of minors in a large city. Thrasher used a large number of methods in his research: court statistics, observation, collection of personal data of members of juvenile gangs, as well as interviews. Thrasher observes juvenile gangs through an ecological paradigm developed by the Chicago School of Sociology. Gangs are the product of the structural and environmental consequences of the social disorganization that took place in Chicago. Juvenile gangs have sprung up in isolated and impoverished immigrant neighborhoods of Chicago. Gangs were part of the psychological and group processes among adolescents in these neighborhoods. Thrasher defines a juvenile gang as follows: "The gang is an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously, and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict, and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a local territory." (Thrasher, 1927). Jail time and criminal endeavors were a source of pride and prestige in gangs. Apart from criminal activities, members of juvenile gangs spent most of their time playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and harassing neighbors and shop owners. Thrasher was an advocate of social reforms and the practice of juvenile courts, as a solution to the problem of juvenile gangs. Thrasher later made sociological studies of the movies.

Edwin Sutherland, another member of the Chicago School of Sociology, wrote Principles of Criminology (1924), which was the most influential criminological book of the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. In this book, which has undergone many revised editions, Sutherland presented his sociological theory of crime. According to Sutherland, crime is exclusively related to social factors, and hereditary and biological factors do not play any role. He singled out race and ethnicity, social classes, and immigration as the most important structural factors of crime. He developed the theory of "differential association" to explain the adoption of criminal behavior by individuals. Differential association refers to the understanding that people, during their lifetime, come into contact with different types of people, who have different perceptions about the acceptability of crime. This theory is based on the view that criminal behavior is, for the most part, acquired and learned through interaction in small groups. At the same time, individuals learn the techniques used to commit a crime but also adopt the motivation to commit those crimes. Motivation, which consists of attitudes, urges, and definitions, is key to the process of learning criminal behavior. Sutherland stated that criminals do not become criminals just because they were in the company of other criminals, but because a situation arose in which the definition of the acceptability of a crime could be applied. He does not believe that criminal behavior is a product of the general needs and attitudes of the wider population, because only those who join small criminal groups actually commit crimes. Sutherland also conducted monographic biographical research, on the case of a thief, and the results of the research are presented in the book The Professional Thief (1937). In the book White Collar Crime (1949), Sutherland studies criminal acts committed in the workplace by individuals in high positions and highly paid professions. These criminal acts include bribery, corruption, violations of trade and security regulations, industrial theft and espionage, false advertising, and similar acts. He was very critical of such criminal acts and believed that they happen much more often than ordinary citizens think and that these acts and their perpetrators are punished much more leniently and less often than criminal acts of the rest of the population.

William Foote Whyte did empirical research in Boston, in a slum where Italian immigrants lived. His research method was participatory observation. He lived with an Italian family and observed the daily life of the residents of that neighborhood. This allowed him to focus more closely on the goal of his research, which was the activities of members of juvenile gangs. This research resulted in the very influential book Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum  (1943). Observing the gang members, but also the wider immigrant society, Whyte discovered a culture that had a special structure and was caused by forced isolation and poverty. In addition to scientific research, Whyte advocated for solving the problems of poverty and poor working conditions in slums.

                   Punishment of Crimes throughout History

Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish (1977, in French 1975) depicts a huge historical change in the way society monitors and punishes criminals. While, until the end of the eighteenth century, the punishment of criminals was public and very brutal - public torture, humiliation, and the death penalty using the cruelest methods - in the nineteenth century the element of the public spectacle of punishing criminals disappeared. Instead, states started building prisons in which, far away from the eyes of the public, criminals are locked and isolated. The expression of social (state) power is no longer done through a direct and open spectacle of punishing criminals, but power starts being expressed through strict supervision and isolation of criminals. Jeremy Bentham's proposal to build a perfect prison, which Bentham called a "panopticon", is, for Foucault, the best example of such a change concerning punishing criminals. In the panopticon, the surveillance of criminals was supposed to be constant and total. Although imprisoning criminals is considered a more rational and humane procedure today, Foucault believes that both ways of treating criminals are arbitrary and cruel, and are not proof of any progress. The key change that has taken place is in the techniques that the state uses to express and consolidate its power. Instead of spreading the public message with brutal public punishment, the state now emphasizes surveilling and disciplining citizens.

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Addams. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909);

    -     A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912);

    -     The Child, the Clinic and the Court (1927);

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    -     Stigma (1963);

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    -     The State: Its Historic Role (1897);

Lombroso. Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman (2004);

    -     Criminal Man (2006, in Italian 1876);

    -     Crime, Its Causes and Remedies (2009);

    -     The Female Offender (2015, in Italian 1895);

McIntosh. Deviance and Social Control (1974);

    -     The Organisation of Crime (1975);

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    -     Human Development and Criminal Behaviour (1990);

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    -     Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1931);

    -     Brothers in Crime (1938);

    -     The Natural History of a Delinquent Career (1942);

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    -     The Professional Thief (1937);

    -     White Collar Crime (1949);

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