THE EMERGENCE OF THE SCIENCE OF CRIMINOLOGY, ACTUAL TASKS AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS

Abstract

This article analyzes the social necessity for the emergence of criminology as a science, its prospects for development, and its current pressing tasks. Criminology, in its aim, studies crime, its causes and conditions, the personality of the criminal, the victim of the crime, the nature, features, and regularities of crime prevention, provides criminological descriptions of specific types and directions of crime, develops measures to improve the effectiveness of crime prevention, and supplies the practice of crime prevention with scientific proposals and recommendations. Although this science is relatively “young” compared to other legal sciences, it is of particular importance in providing the practice of combating crime with necessary information due to its connection with both social and legal sciences. The emergence of criminology as an independent science dates back to the mid-19th century. Some researchers link the emergence of criminology to the publication of Italian Cesare Beccaria’s book “On crimes and punishments” in 1764, but the term “criminology” was first used by the Frenchman Paul Topinard in 1879 during his anthropological research. The article examines the existence of criminology as a science based on three different approaches. Additionally, the article analyzes how criminology fulfills its tasks through identifying, collecting, predicting, and informing the public. Suggestions are made regarding the need to conduct research on topics such as “Digital criminology,” “The role of artificial intelligence in predicting crimes,” “The role of artificial intelligence in preventing crimes in the field of information technology,” and “The role of artificial intelligence in preventing crimes in the field of information technology.”