This is the scientific study of criminal behaviour, that is of infractions of the law, especially criminal law.
Criminology also includes the more specific discipline of penology .
While the sociology of deviance was an important development in the 1960s, various Marxist perspectives contributed in the 1970s to the emergence of a 'critical' or 'new' criminology which emphasized power, conflict and class in the explanation of crime. In more recent years, sociology, increasingly influenced by feminism , has given more attention to women as victims and perpetrators of crime. Women commit fewer serious crimes than men and are over-represented in shoplifting and minor sex offences. Addiction Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 2. Delinquency Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 3.