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 share the goal of understanding the occurrence of a crime, including understanding the factors that drive the crime to occur and what appropriate actions can be taken to prevent it from reoccurring.
The Essence of Criminology
According to J. E. Sahetapy, criminology is the science of understanding crime as a social phenomenon. By understanding it, crime can be prevented at the communal level. This is driven by the existence of crime which is inseparable from social interaction.
Then, Georges Gurvitch argued that criminology is the science of studying crime using a positive review method and based on social facts. Consequently, this science confirms the impact of crime on the interactions of people in society.
To elaborate on crime, criminology consists of 3 parts. The first part is criminal biology which focuses on the 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 acts. 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 criminological studies, there are some perpetrators of crime who cannot be punished, such as children or someone with mental disorders. The study is used to create laws and regulations that cannot punish perpetrators of crime 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.
Joint Implementation of Criminal Law
Criminal law studies crime as a phenomenon regulated in laws and regulations.
Specifically, criminal law studies laws and regulations that can be the basis for demanding legal responsibility from perpetrators of crime. Originating from the principle of legality and several other relevant principles, criminal law has a repressive nature towards the existence of crime.
Criminal law is different from criminology, which focuses on the perpetrators of crime. However, this difference is not a problem because criminology is "only" a more specific science. Because the results of the study are an examination of social phenomena, criminology has a preventive nature towards the existence of crime.
Like a couple, criminal lawand criminology complement each other. In Germany, the relationship between the two sciences is known as Die gesammte Strafrechtswissenschaft. In countries with a legal system anglo-saxon, the two become one separate science called criminal science.
The majority opinion states that the implementation of criminology with criminal law is inseparable. The reason is that criminology becomes the basis for policymakers to prevent crime from arising in the future. It is not enough to only rely on criminal law, which merely imposes penalties on perpetrators of crimes.
Essentially, the unity of criminal law and criminology can be analogized to efforts to cure sick people with medicine. Here, it is not enough for sick people to be cured as criminal law restores perpetrators and victims of crime. With criminology, it can be understood what causes these people to experience illness and what efforts can be made to prevent it in the future.
Ancient doctrines view that the implementation of criminal law which stipulates the imposition of punishment is a prominent effort in tackling crime. This is based on the nature of criminal law as retributive justice, which is retribution aimed at the perpetrators of crimes so that justice in society can be restored. However, this is not accurate because the imposition of punishment does not always solve crime.
Indeed, the nature of retributive justice in criminal law cannot be ignored just like that. However, ideally, the mechanism of retribution through criminal law is only one facet to prevent crime from occurring. There is a more important facet, a facet that touches the root of a crime so that the crime can be eradicated. Here, both sciences can be used to help society achieve this more important facet.
In the end, the implementation of both sciences becomes the basis of broader knowledge in understanding crime. This is the form of collaborative goal that has been alluded to at the beginning. Concretely, understanding both sciences gives us the opportunity to not only understand how to punish those who commit crimes, but also to understand how to eradicate crime and simultaneously make the perpetrators of crime acceptable in society.
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