Can Criminology ever be a value-free discipline?

Essay from the year 2000 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, grade: 2 (B), University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Law School), language: English, abstract: Criminology is not a typical law discipline. It can be referred to as an interdisciplinary subjectdealing a lot with sociology, psychology, statistics, medicine, economics, political science andgeography. It is concerned with a body of knowledge about crime as a social phenomenon. Abroad definition would be that crime is behaviour that breaks the law. The studies of crime aresupposed to include in their scope describing, analysing and explaining the behaviour of state penallaw. This seems to make criminology a rather analytical subject. But is it therefore really valuefreeand, if not, should or can it ever be? If we speak of values, we mean emotional attitudes in asubjective way of seeing things as well as moral values. This examination shall basically be focusedon the influence of emotional attitudes and if criminology can be free from opinions andsubjective views. In some way this is the personal reflection of moral values, too. Specifying thequestion it should be asked if criminology is or can be practised and used in an objective andneutral way.