Sociological direction in the study of crime (from the history of political and legal thought)

Abstract

The ideas of supporters of the sociological direction in criminal law and criminology on the causes of crime are considered; their significance for the present is determined.
 It is stated that crime has existed at all times and has changed in different eras and in different countries under the influence of the circumstances of a particular society. The sociological direction in criminal law and criminology was formed in the late XIX – early XX centuries. The outstanding theorists of the sociological direction were A.J. Kettle, A. Lacassan, F. Liszt, E. Durkheim, P.O. Sorokin, M.P. Chubynskii, E.Kh. Sutherland, D. Cressy, G. Van Hamel, A. Prince, R.K. Merton, T. Sellin and others.
 The basic provisions on the dependence of crime on the conditions of the social environment, the stability of the basic parameters of crime and the possibility of its prediction were formulated by representatives of the sociological school. It has been proven that it would be futile to try to influence crime without changing the social conditions that give rise to crime. However, sociological theories do not explain why different people exhibit fundamentally different behaviors under the same social conditions.
 The determinants of crime are mainly related to society itself, to its acute contradictions, to social injustice and social inequality, which are insurmountable in the current social space. Some contradictions are historically overcome or minimized, but new criminologically significant antagonisms are emerging that determine crime.
 It is argued that a synthetic approach based on a combination of different methodologies and allows the consideration of all known crime factors in interrelation and interaction can be the methodological basis for crime research.
 Today the main initial positions of the sociological direction, its philosophical and sociological bases are preserved in criminology: positivism in its various versions; recognition of social and individual factors in a series of actions; the concept of crime as an eternal phenomenon inherent in any social system.