Introduction to Criminology

What is Criminology?

Criminology studies crime and social control. Criminology draws knowledge and perspectives from a range of disciplines such as law, sociology, psychology, psychiatry and history. Initially, criminology had a strong practical focus: its role was to advise governments on issues such as policing, the management of prisons, sentencing and offender treatment.

Concern with policy and practice remains, but criminologists now work in a much wider range of fields including crime prevention, corporate and white-collar crime, business regulation, drug policy and consumer and environmental protection.

Criminology doesn’t take crime and criminal law for granted. As an academic discipline it continually questions why societies define and respond to crime in different ways, and why approaches to punishment and other forms of social control have varied so much from era to era. Increasingly, criminologists also study the ways cultures tend to depict crime: whether in newspapers, television and other mass media or in films, novels and art.

Criminology helps students develop deeper understanding of the society in which they live, and introduces them to a broad range of political, social, cultural and economic theories. It also aims to provide them with the research, analytical and problem solving skills that contemporary employers require.   

• Undergraduate Criminology homepage
• Postgraduate Criminology homepage

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Recent projects by our staff

Recent projects include an Australia-wide assessment of drug law enforcement strategies: a national review of closed circuit television systems; research into ways judges respond to the challenge of sentencing; management programs on graffiti art; comparative research into crime and violence; a study into progressions from juvenile to adult custody; research into indigenous Australians and the criminal justice system; and a study of the ways sensitive locations such as airports, sea ports and petro-chemical refineries deal with the risk of terrorist attack and other disasters.

• Find out more about research in criminology

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Where does criminology lead?

Graduates have enjoyed employment in a wide range of interesting fields. Some have entered the public service to work as researchers, analysts and project managers in important areas such as illicit drug policy, ethical standards in policing, the treatment of offenders in the community and in correctional institutions, and crime prevention. Criminology graduates also join other state and non government institutions which are concerned with the delivery of social and legal justice programs to the community.

• Find out more about careers in criminology
• Graduate profiles
• Alumni

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How to enrol?

Visit our future students page to find out about studying criminology or socio-legal studies whether you're a secondary school student or new to university study, a graduate, or just interested in taking a single subject for your own interest.

• Future students
• Secondary school students and teachers