THE PLACE OF NATIONAL CRIMINOLOGY IN THE SYSTEM OF SCIENCES

The article substantiates the approach of domestic criminology to social and legal sciences. The authors analyze other approaches, according to which criminology is a part of criminal law and is the result of the application of sociological methods in criminal-legal research, or is a branch of knowledge beyond the legal sciences. The difference in the subject of criminal law and criminology is stated. It lies primarily in the fact that criminal law does not study crime, and the study of crime is carried out mainly as a legal phenomenon; criminal law examines the prevention of crimes carried out by the measures of criminal-legal policy (punishment, probationary conviction, etc.). Criminology studies mainly criminality but crime is studied as a social phenomenon and as a private expression of criminality; criminology examines crime prevention by measures that make up the content of criminological policy (control, assistance, educational impact, etc.). It is noted that despite the use of basically unified terminology both in criminal law and criminology, the content of the same terms e.g. "crime", "criminal identity," "prevention," "criminal group" etc. is different. The authors believe that the use of methods and approaches developed by other sciences e.g. sociology, social psychology, etc. in criminological studies does not turn criminology into the branch of knowledge beyond the legal sciences. Using the borrowed methods and approaches criminology studies criminality as not only a social phenomenon, but a criminal-legal one, consisting of acts recognized as crimes in criminal law. The socio-legal nature of criminality, which is the main subject of criminology, the use in criminological research of methods of other social sciences and approaches developed by them, enable the authors to conclude that criminology is a complex social and legal science.