ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the contributions of Professor Wolfgang to criminology. Two major approaches to crime and criminals dominate criminology, the classical legal approach and the scientific positivistic approach. In order to replace punishment and rehabilitation with prevention criminology must become interdisciplinary, based on biology, neuropsychiatry, psychology, sociology, and urban planning, in interaction with the legal profession. The new ecology is interdisciplinary and includes the physical environment as well as the social, and is a part of biology. Law enforcement efforts to control the supply side of the drug problem have not been successful, and people need a new psychopharmacological approach based on neural chemistry. The focus of his challenge is the foundation of criminal law upon revenge, retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation, and free will, rationality, and moral condemnation. The failure of the criminal justice system is matched by the failure of criminology to become a science.