@article {358031,
	title = {The Word Criminology: A Philology and a Definition},
	journal = {Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law \& Society},
	volume = {16},
	number = {3},
	year = {2015},
	pages = {61-82},
	abstract = {This essay looks into the past of criminology as a way to think about its future. I take a philological approach to the word\&nbsp;criminology, looking at the etymology and history of that word, to argue for a new definition of the field: Criminology is\&nbsp;the systematic study of crime, criminals, criminal law, criminal justice, and criminalization. I expand and explain this\&nbsp;definition with respect to some common and (I argue) misguided dictates of criminology as it is traditionally understood.\&nbsp;Specifically, I argue that criminology is usually\&nbsp;but not necessarily\&nbsp;academic and scientific, which means that\&nbsp;criminology can be public and/or humanistic. I arrive at these thoughts by presenting some early English instances of the\&nbsp;word\&nbsp;criminology\&nbsp;which predate the attempt to theorize a field of criminology in Italy and France in the 1880s, and I\&nbsp;offer some new readings of those Italian and French texts. These philological analyses then come into conversation with\&nbsp;some twentieth-century attempts to define the field and some twenty-first-century innovations in an effort to generate a\&nbsp;definition of criminology that is responsive to the diversity of criminology in both its original formation and its ongoing\&nbsp;transformations. Thus, the virtue of this new understanding of criminology is its inclusiveness: It normalizes unorthodox\&nbsp;criminological research, which opens up new possibilities for jobs and funding in the name of criminology, which holds\&nbsp;the promise of new perspectives on crime, new theories of criminology, and new policies for prevention and treatment.},
	url = {https://submissions.scholasticahq.com/reader/criminology-criminal-justice-law-society/405-the-word-criminology-a-philology-and-a-definition},
	author = {Jeffrey R. Wilson}
}
