Criminalist
A criminalist is someone who deals with the investigation (and prevention) of criminal offenses - often a member of the criminal police . The job title must be distinguished from that of the criminologist . The historian Peter Becker defines the term criminalist as follows:
- “Criminalists deal professionally with the investigation and prevention of criminal offenses. They act in different roles: as judges, public prosecutors, detectives and forensic technicians. ” (Becker 2005: p. 8).
This linguistic usage became common in the second half of the 20th century at the latest, the term criminologist previously had a completely different meaning: At the beginning of the 19th century, the term criminologist referred to all people who were scientists or practitioners of the entire legal field of knowledge, which was involved in related to criminal law . A criminal law scholar was a "criminalist" in that respect while a professor of civil law was a civilian. Among the civilians, on the other hand, the Romanists were experts on Roman law, the Germanists those of German law. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, criminal lawyers widely referred to themselves as “criminologists” in this original meaning of the word. The related discipline of the criminologists - criminology - also went through a parallel development .
literature
- Peter Becker: On the trail of the perpetrator. A history of criminology. Primus, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-89678-275-4 .