Agency and Will

Abstract

It is a very rare person indeed that is not interested in what they assume to be the subject matter of criminology. Thus I am sure that it is a rare criminologist who has not been asked to explain to others what criminology is: people I might meet in the pub, friends, family, spouse, neighbours, all inevitably want to know what a criminologist does. This is because when people ask ‘what is criminology?’ I suspect the reply they expect is that it seeks to answer the question: ‘why do people commit crime?’ And this is a question that appears to fascinate virtually everybody in the West. Within the criminological community, we tend to lose track of the simplicity of the implications of this question. We tend to think one of several things: either it is a meaningless question because the answer is too complex: ‘the causes of any particular crime are too numerous to comprehend or identify’. Otherwise we suggest that it is a meaningless question because the answer is too simple: ‘people commit crime because they are wicked, or because it is human nature to do so’. Criminologists sometimes think, ‘well, we can’t answer that question until we answer the question: “what is crime”?’ What we tend to do is to ask the subtly different question: ‘what causes crime?’