New Crimes and New Solutions: International Journal of Criminology

Is using the humanities and social sciences (psychology, sociology, law, etc.) to understand the crime, the criminal, the victim, criminality, and society's reaction to crime a science? A crime is the unique combination of a perpetrator, a victim, and a set of circumstances. Its individual and quantitative analysis requires scientific methods and specific intellectual and technical abilities.

Emile Durkheim emphasizes that "[...] A number of acts can be observed, all with the external characteristic that once accomplished, they provoke this particular reaction from society known as punishment. We make of them a group sui generis, on which we impose a common rubric. We call any punished act a crime and make crime thus defined the focus of a dedicated science: criminology."