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Understanding the International Crime Falls; a Secondary Analysis of ICVS-Based Data

Stockholm Prizewinners Lecture 2012

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Jan Van Dijk
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In 1905 a young Dutch sociologist, Willem Bonger, defended his PhD thesis on the economic conditions of crime at the University of Amsterdam. He was shortly thereafter appointed as the first professor of criminology in The Netherlands. His thesis was translated into English and other languages and has become a classic in sociological criminology. In Bonger's view criminologists should study not the personal pathologies of offenders but the societal causes of crime. He studied the macro determinants of crime by analyzing inter-country differences and trends in official criminal statistics. His work stands in the 19 century epidemiological tradition of Quetelet, Guerry, Von Mayr and Lacassagne. Bonger's criminology was strongly policy-oriented. Criminology should, in his words “before anything else show mankind the way how crime can be effectively combated and, most of all, prevented” (Bonger, 1932). He used to underline his preference for policy-oriented criminology with a quote from the French, positivist philosopher Auguste Comte: “Savoir pour prevoir et prevoir pour prevenir. Loosely translated as ”Knowledge with the aim of prediction and prediction with the aim of preventing“. In other words, Bonger preached and practiced evidence-based crime prevention avant la lettre.

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Research Article
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International Annals of Criminology , Volume 50 , Issue 1-2 , 2012 , pp. 11 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 International Society for Criminology

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References

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