The Use and Usefulness of Criminology, 1751-2005: Enlightened Justice and Its Failures

Lawrence W. Sherman
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Lawrence W. Sherman: Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Criminology

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2005, vol. 600, issue 1, 115-135

Abstract: After a useful beginning in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as both an experimental and analytic social science, criminology sank into two centuries of torpor. Its resurrection in the late twentieth century crime wave successfully returned criminology to the forefront of discovering useful, if not always used, facts about prevailing crime patterns and responses to crime. Criminology’s failures of “use†in creating justice more enlightened by knowledge of its effects is linked to the still limited usefulness of criminology, which lacks a comprehensive body of evidence to guide sanctioning decisions. Yet that knowledge is rapidly growing, with experimental (as distinct from analytic) criminology now more prominent than at any time since Henry Fielding founded criminology while inventing the police. The future of criminology may thus soon resemble medicine more than economics.

Keywords: criminology; experimentation; history; Enlightenment; methods; deterrence; incarceration; prevention; randomized control trials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:600:y:2005:i:1:p:115-135

DOI: 10.1177/0002716205278103

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