As a science, criminal law does not stand alone. Criminal law is also closely related to many other branches of science. One of them is criminology.

Collaboratively, the two sciences have the goal of understanding the occurrence of a crime, including understanding the factors that encourage crime to occur and what appropriate actions to prevent it from recurring.

The Essence of Criminology

According to J. E. Sahetapy, criminology is the science to understand crime as a social phenomenon. By understanding it, crime can be prevented at the communal level. This is driven by the existence of crime that is inseparable from social interaction.

Then, Georges Gurvitch argued that criminology is the science to study crime with a method of review in a positive way and based on social facts. Consequently, this science confirms the impact of crime on the interaction of people in the community.

To elaborate on crime, criminology consists of 3 parts. The first part is criminal biology which focuses on internal factors of the perpetrators of crime both physically and spiritually. The second part is criminal sociology which focuses on factors in society that encourage criminals to commit their actions. The third part is criminal policy which focuses on the study of policies to overcome criminals.

Note that criminology views crime as a social phenomenon. Therefore, research on crime through this science generally produces policy formulations that seek to overcome it.

For example, in the study of criminology, there are some criminals who cannot be punished, such as children or someone with mental disorders. The study is used to make laws and regulations that cannot punish criminals of this type, such as references for judges in sentencing criminal acts by children or laws that exempt people with mental disorders from being held legally responsible.