There can be no question that sociology has been “the major parent discipline of criminology for perhaps fifty years” (Hirschi and Rudisill, 1976, p. 15) and remains so today. Yet … “The allocation of the field of criminology to the more general area of sociology has been as much a matter of professional turf-taking as it has been a rational division of intellectual labor … If a boy is humiliated by his teacher, that is “social class” and admissible in criminological theory, but if he is humiliated by his father, that is child psychology and inadmissible (Bordua, 1962, p. 247). We detract nothing from the sociological pioneers of modern criminology in pointing out that some of what they did is more properly construed as psychology. (Monahan and Splane 1980, p. 18).

Criminology became a coherent body of thought in the eighteenth century when enlightened men on both sides of the Atlantic began rational analyses of the harsh and oppressive systems of justice then in being, including the common use of the death penalty for trivial offences. The nature of criminal law, the causes of crime and the treatment of criminals were all examined. A key figure in this movement was Cesara Beccaria (1738–1794) a young Italian aristocrat. His brief essay On Crimes and Punishments evoked immediate acclaim and controversy. The system, he asserted was savage, stupid and corrupt. It should and could be rationalized. Punishment should be prompt, public and the least possible amount proportionate to the crime. Beccaria's ideas influenced first the English and then the American legal systems.