The Criminologist’s responsibility

By Dr. Miroslav Scheinost, Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention, Prague

The question about the responsibility of a criminologist does not belong in general among the matters discussed too often. This question may even be considered as very academic, indeed, and pretty far from our daily work duties. Having in mind our responsibility we normally do not go beyond the deadlines of our projects that should be submitted, of research reports that should be delivered and of accounts for received grants. But this kind of responsibility, however important, is not the matter of the fact. What is then the matter of the fact and why for goodness sake to ask about the responsibility of a criminologist as a representative of a specific scientific profession?

The first reason is that in our domain as an empirical science we deal fairly concretely with very sensitive part of a social life and social phenomena; we deal with phenomena that affect not only the society as a whole but also very substantially the personal life of significant number of individuals, citizens and their families.

Victimological surveys show, that e.g. in the Czech Republic at least one third of the Czech citizens has a personal experience with crime in the sense of being the victims[1]. Taking into account that the victimisation of an individual usually affects somehow also his or her family and relatives, we are facing the apparent fact, that the object of our professional interest is definitely not the academic one but it is a component of life experience - mostly unpleasant life experience - of a substantial part of people from any country and society.

Maybe we do not realize this fact day by day, but we address problems that affect very sorely the concrete human deals and not namely the lives of victims and their families but after all even the perpetrators and, furthermore, they have to do with social losses and enormous costs spent for the crime control.

Doing our job we look into these human deals. Therefore our position of so-called independent researchers in comparison with other scientific disciplines has been only seemingly independent and uncommitted, because the results of our work should have act as an active element in solution of inquired problems and phenomena that we are interested in.

I cannot and I do not want to overestimate the capability and influence of criminology. But the truth is that we usually do not execute our job, i.e. research on crime, sociopathological phenomena, crime policy and criminogenic factors, only for enjoying ourselves but because we are expected to offer something for the positive solution of problems under the eye of criminology. Hence, the responsibility of criminologist is not a marginal category and it is maybe even more burdensome compared to some other disciplines.

The nature of criminologist’s responsibility is of course multi-faceted. We may make a difference between the general responsibility of a criminologist as a scientist and his specific responsibility derived from the character of his work.

We may start this consideration from the responsibility that stems from the ethics of the scientific work in general. It means the scientific work as a faithful effort to obtain new valid knowledge by the reliable and verifiable methods and techniques, as a serious and well-founded interpretation of findings. To respect and to keep these rules differentiate the scientist from a charlatan. It is the general responsibility.

Criminologist from this general point of view is responsible for the quality of his work, for mastering his domain and its methodology, for the continual effort to keep the high level of qualification and contact with the development of criminology, for respecting the criteria of scientific work as such. He (she) is obliged not to present half-documented knowledge and not to adapt his professional practices and statements to the “purchase orders” if the facts are different.

Speaking on the general responsibility of a scientist, a question of the responsibility for the effect of published results, for their use, exploit and perhaps even misuse also arises. The criminologist is not so often, if so ever, in the position of Albert Einstein that has been said to conceal his last discovery having experience with the use of atomic bomb; the fate of mankind is not directly dependent from our work. But we may hypothetically imagine the situation that the criminologist creates a tool which enables to predict at a very high level of probability the future criminal career of any youngster at age of twelve, it means to point out the offender before he/she starts the delinquent way. I am afraid that in such a case his responsibility for enforcing such a tool into common use would be very oppressive and he should extremely carefully consider both positive and negative impacts. What I want to say is that the criminologist, especially because his work impacts the human deals, must very carefully rethink also the unwanted and unintended effects of his surely well-thought results and recommendation regardless to the fact that it is usually not himself who is directly responsible for their fulfilling. Surely we may say that responsible are the decision-makers and the criminologist is not usually in this position, but it is another story and I think that the criminologists cannot slip so easily from the responsibility for their professional meanings and recommendations.

In this context we cannot put aside the question of values; I mean the general ethic values and their ideological foundations appreciated and respected by a criminologist. These values may act as a fundamental foothold in case of temptation to meet some political, power, economic or any other expectations or interests without being convicted on the correctness of presented results and opinions or even if the criminologist clearly knows that the reality is different. On the other side the respected values may sometimes actuate as a straitjacket which narrows the perception of reality and which may this perception and interpretation even unintentionally distort. I do not mean that it would be possible to sequester oneself totally from these internalised values performing the profession of criminologist or social scientist in general and moreover I do not think that it would be the coveted goal, but the criminologist should be fair to himself, be aware of his thought foundations and he should make effort not to change these thought principles into apriori conclusions or even prejudices.

This personal aspect of respected and internalised values coincides with a general question of an ancient discussion on values and evaluation in the science. Simply said, the matter is whether any science (and especially social science) should only find the facts or also to evaluate them.

The position of criminology is in this sense easier; though criminology is an empirical science, it is also an evaluative science because it is based on the premise that something is good and something is wrong for the society and for its members.

Even if we would want to relativise these concepts of “good” and “wrong” in a maximal extent, it is obvious that all existing societies have created norms of behaviour that define what is good or wrong behaviour, what kind of behaviour is still tolerable and what is beyond the norms, cannot be tolerated and should be sanctioned.

Certainly in all societies, in all cultural areas and historical periods these norms have not been identical but in all cases it holds that the flagrant breaking of actual norms is considered to be wrong and it is always sanctioned by some way. Law breaking, i.e. crime represents such a flagrant breaking of norms.

An evaluative and tendentious standpoint of criminologist is consequently determined by the position of criminology on the “positive side” of the norm and its instrumental role for the protection against trespassers. Thus, thanks to this objective fact criminologist is not only a registrar of social events and his work is rightful in so far as it serves to the protection of society and its members (this does not exclude the possibility and even the competence of criminologist to call attention on the fact that some norm might be doubtful end even dysfunctional). This may be considered as a responsibility of a discipline, of a criminological science. If it would not be so, we could not be entitled by an access to the very personal data and materials.

This implies another substantial characteristic of criminology – it is distinctly critical science because it focuses on the negative social phenomena; due to its character it deals with the problems and situation in which society or individual fails. Searching for the reasons of problems it must refer to these failures, mistakes and defects if it wishes to be truthful. Sometimes it is not very popular and comfortable role but the need of such a criticism is also a part of criminologist’s responsibility.

A question arises with regard to these characteristics of criminological science in what extent may the criminologist choose his research topic in accordance only with his professional interest or if he should his topics choose in accordance let’s say with the “objective needs”. This is the responsibility for the choice of the object of research attention that should take into consideration the quality of crime problems and their impact on the society and prefer the serious problems to the marginal ones. In this sense, the criminologist should adapt his research interest to the social demand (which is not the same as the political one). In the optimal case – and I do not think that it happens so rarely in the criminological profession – the criminologist’s interest and the social demand meet. Nevertheless, the situation may arise that the criminologist must carefully consider criteria and exigency of such a demand and he looks for priorities. The choice of a research topic according to “social exigency” is more an evaluative than the methodological matter and it is often up to the criminologist and his responsibility what criteria he prefers; however he should be able to justify his choice clearly and cogently.

Only for illustration: what is more important for the society and its members? Should the criminologist examine the most widespread criminal phenomena within the given country and period (e.g. common property crimes) or the most dangerous criminal phenomena (and there is a question about the criteria of dangerousness – organised crime, financial crime, terrorism etc.)? Is it more important to pay attention to the crimes that causes the biggest damage (there is a similar problem of criteria of measuring the damage – financial criteria, social criteria?) or the criminal phenomena typical for the given period and society (are they typical from the qualitative point of view or are they simply most frequented in the media?)? Is it more important to sacrifice our interest to the offenders, sanctions or to the victims?

Questions posed by this way sounds of course fairly academically but the criminologist finds himself sometimes in the position when he must choose among topics that are nearly all evidently worthy enough to examine, they fit into his professional interest but he is not able to comprehend them all. It is often the situation of criminologists in countries where the criminological research institutions are not very numerous and their capacity is simply not sufficient to involve all demands and tasks that should be reflected. The question of choice (if the criminologist may choose) is then very closely connected with the matter of responsibility.

The last aspect of the responsibility of criminologist I would like to contemplate over is the responsibility for the factual benefit of our findings. Criminology arose and should function as a science for “correction of some human things”. Since the epoch of Cesare Beccaria we nevertheless passed from the correction to the control of crime and this shift is probably not only the terminological one. There is a question whether it is a result and expression of well informed scepticism, partial resignation or real self-criticism of our discipline in the sense of being aware of its capability and limits.

After all it is still truth that we are awaited to provide the answers to the problems of crime and sanction policy and conjoint matters. What answers are provided? James Austin in his article “Why criminology is irrelevant” radically criticises the recommendations provided by criminology during last decades to the American criminal policy and he even writes that the core of the problem is that criminology and criminologists have only very small amount of real scientific knowledge to offer to the criminal policy makers. His critique focuses on the methods, approaches, values, and organisation of criminology, ambiguity and dissension of outcomes that do not bring the convincing arguments. It is very fundamental and hard critique but after all I do not believe that it is only the criminology that should be responsible for the failures or unsatisfactory results of criminal policy. And I do not mean as well that all criminological recommendations given during last decades were deceptive. Nevertheless, there is the fact that the answers on the problems of crime, sociopathological phenomena and sanction policy are awaited from us at least in the extent in which the social sciences are capable such answers provide. Our responsibility involves also our capability to provide such adequate answers based on valid findings.

This enunciation closed the circle and we return back to the general responsibility of a criminologist as a professional and of criminology as a scientific discipline. I rather tried to indicate several aspect of this responsibility than to analyse them; if it would be find as a basis for discussion, the goal was fulfilled.

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[1] Martinkova,M. Oběti některých kriminálních deliktů v CR v roce 2004 /Victims of some criminal delicts in the CR in 2004/. ICSP, Prague 2006