Retrological glance into the future of criminology as a criminal-legal science

Abstract

Objective: to reveal the essence and significance of the historical experience of interdisciplinary study of crime and its use in modern conditions of scientific support of crime prevention.Methods: dialectical method and system-synergetic approach, the method of retrospection in the study and evaluation of historical facts of the complex development of scientific directions in the legal doctrine of crime and punishment; dogmatic and empirical methods determining the specifics of scientific approaches to the general subject of research, their critical analysis; comparative historical assessment of the integration of criminal-legal sciences at various stages of accumulation and development of their scientific potential; prognostic assessment of the preventive capabilities of the criminal-legal sciences within the frameworks of 5.1.4 scientific major.Results: in modern criminal jurisprudence, there are ambiguous research approaches to the perception and evaluation of some scientific provisions. On the one hand, in retrospection, the phenomena are observed which are unproductive in relation to science or generally useless for it (due to uncriticism or formalism). On the other hand, retrospection, being methodologically justified, serves the scientific perspective, in particular, the development of associative links of criminal-legal sciences, and the activation of the historically determined general scientific function of criminology. These processes, if scientifically optimized, have the prospect of bringing the energies of criminal-legal sciences and relevant practices to a resultant effect, i.e. to a well-coordinated system of combating crime. This is what the aspirations of the founders of the new legal science of crime are aimed at.Scientific novelty: the possibilities are substantiated of developing a number of aspects of interdisciplinary (within the framework of the 5.1.4 scientific major) research of crime regularities, of developing and implementing special measures of counteraction in the parameters of criminological and political support. A retrospective analysis of some criminological provisions in their historical connections initiates a deeper understanding of the painful issues that are covered by the category of “crime” (in the individual and cumulative meanings of this term). Initially, there were three main directions of theoretical and applied legal doctrine about crime in the scientific world of criminal justice: dogmatic-legal, criminological-legal and political-legal. Analytical reflections in the parameters of retrospection lead to the comprehension of a very complex nature of the evolution of scientific thought.Practical significance: the theoretical provisions may equip practice; namely, they form a higher and more sustainable level of criminological, or rather, criminological-political thinking, without which effective criminal-legal (legislative, law enforcement) practice is impossible.