NCJ Number
220508
Journal
European Journal of Criminology Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Dated: October 2007 Pages: 461-482
Date Published
October 2007
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the development of criminology research in Italy and places it in the context of the broader development of Italy's criminal justice policies.
Abstract
Although Italy's criminology research enterprise continues to focus on the traditional topics of murder, property crimes, and organized crime, attention is also given to drug offenses, immigrant criminality, and white-collar crimes. Juvenile crimes and sexual offenses are also receiving attention because of growing public concern about these crime areas. Also, since criminology is studied and taught in faculties of law, medicine, psychology, and sociology, Italian studies of crime and criminal justice are embedded in sociopolitical, legal, and psychological enterprises. Criminology is not a research area in its own right. Instead, criminological issues come under several areas, namely, legal medicine, sociology, and psychology. The Positivist origin of Italian criminology and the theory of the "born criminal" led to the establishment of four postgraduate schools of "clinical" criminology in the faculties of medicine in Genoa, Milan, Modena, and Bari. Traditionally, graduates of these schools were authorized to serve as experts in prisons as well as lay judges in the juvenile courts and the supervisory penitentiary courts. Since such schools were foreign to European practice, they have been abolished. As a result, postgraduate studies in criminology are currently available in advanced courses and master's degrees offered by faculties of law, social science, psychology, and medicine. Research in criminology is supported by the Italian Society of Criminology, which has 500 members. 76 references