New Frontiers in Criminology

Criminology owes a great deal as a discipline to the eighteenth century social philosophers, particularly those like Cesare Beccaria who partly built some of their arguments on social contract theory. Certainly some of the aspects of the debate over free will date from then. The publishing of Beccaria's Dei Delitti e Della Pane in 1764 began a not yet concluded controversy over protecting society while redeeming the perpetrator.

Inevitably interdisciplinary in nature, criminology has not always been welcome in the university. Despite the prominence of Pierre Paul Broca, Paul Topinard, and Emile Durkheim in laying foundations that helped to inspire the development of the theory of the discipline, France has been surprisingly slow in providing tertiary support.