Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the indivudual and in society. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in the behavioral sciences, drawing especially upon the research of sociologists (particularly in the sociology of deviance), social anthropologists and psychologists, as well as on writings in law.
Areas of research in criminology include the incidence, forms, causes and consequences of crime, as well as social and govermental regulations and reaction to crime. For studying the distribution and causes of crime, criminology mainly relies upon quantitative methods. The term criminology was coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as criminologia. Around the same time, but later, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous French term criminologie.
