This year marks 20 years that we have been offering criminology at the University of Northampton and understandably it has made us reflect and consider the direction of the discipline.  In general, criminology has always been a broad theoretical discipline that allows people to engage in various ways to talk about crime.  Since the early days when Garofalo coined the term criminology (still open to debate!) there have been 106 years of different interpretations of the term. 

Originally criminology focused on philosophical ideas around personal responsibility and free will.  Western societies at the time were rapidly evolving into something new that unsettled its citizens.  Urbanisation meant that people felt out of place in a society where industrialisation had made the pace of life fast and the demands even greater.  These societies engaged in a relentless global competition that in the 20^th century led into two wars.  The biggest regret for criminology at the time, was/is that most criminologists did not identify the inherent criminality in war and the destruction they imbued, including genocide.    

In the ashes of war in the 20^th century, criminology became more aware that criminality goes beyond individual responsibility.  Social movements identified that not all citizens are equal with half the population seeking suffrage and social rights.  It was at the time the influence of sociology that challenged the legitimacy of justice and the importance of human rights.  In pure criminological terms, a woman who throws a brick at a window for the sake of rights is a crime, but one that is arguably provoked by a society that legitimises inequality and exclusion. Under that gaze what can be regarded as the highest crime? 

Criminologists do not always agree on the parameters of their discipline and there is not always consensus about the nature of the discipline itself.  There are those who see criminology as a social science, looking at the bigger picture of crime and those who see it as a humanity, a looser collective of areas that explore crime in different guises.  Neither of these perspectives are more important than the other, but they demonstrate the interesting position criminology rests in.  The lack of rigidity allows for new areas of exploration to become part of it, like victimology did in the 1960s onwards, to the more scientific forensic and cyber types of criminology that emerged in the new millennium.   

In the last 20 years at Northampton we have managed to take onboard these big, small, individual and collective responses to crime into the curriculum.  Our reflections on the nature of criminology as balancing different perspectives providing a multi-disciplinary approach to answering (or attempting to, at least) what crime is and what criminology is all about.  One thing for certain, criminology can reflect and expand on issues in a multiplicity of ways.  For example, at the beginning of 21^st terrorism emerged as a global crime following 9/11.  This event prompted some of the current criminological debates. 

So, what is the future of criminology?  Current discourses are moving the discipline in new ways.  The environment and the need for its protection has emerge as a new criminological direction.  The movement of people and the criminalisation of refugees and other migrants is another.  Trans rights is another civil rights issue to consider.  There are also more and more calls for moving the debates more globally, away from a purely Westernised perspective.  Deconstructing what is crime, by accommodating transnational ideas and including more colleagues from non-westernised criminological traditions, seem likely to be burning issues that we shall be discussing in the next decade.  Whatever the future hold there is never a dull moment with criminology.