Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The scientific study of crime, criminals, criminal behavior, and corrections.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The science of crime.
  • noun The science of crime.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A treatise on crime or the criminal population.
  • noun The branch of sociology which studies crime and criminals.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The study of crime and criminals, especially their behaviour.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the scientific study of crime and criminal behavior and law enforcement

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Italian criminologia : Latin crīmen, crīmin-, accusation; see crime + Latin -logia, -logy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

criminal +‎ -logy

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