Criminology in the context of "Choice under uncertainty"

Applied science is the application of the scientific method and scientific knowledge to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines, such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted with basic science, which is focused on advancing scientific theories and laws that explain and predict natural or other phenomena.

There are applied natural sciences, as well as applied formal and social sciences. Applied science examples include genetic epidemiology which applies statistics and probability theory, and applied psychology, including criminology.

Social control is the regulations, sanctions, mechanisms, and systems that restrict the behaviour of individuals in accordance with social norms and orders. Through both informal and formal means, individuals and groups exercise social control both internally and externally. As an area of social science, social control is studied by researchers of various fields, including anthropology, criminology, law, political science, and sociology.

Social control is considered one of the foundations of social order. Sociologists identify two basic forms of social control. Informal means of control refer to the internalization of norms and values through socialization. Formal means comprise external sanctions enforced by government to prevent the establishment of chaos or anomie in society. Some theorists, such as Émile Durkheim, refer to formal control as regulation.

Rational choice modeling refers to the use of decision theory (the theory of rational choice) as a set of guidelines to help understand economic and social behavior. The theory tries to approximate, predict, or mathematically model human behavior by analyzing the behavior of a rational actor facing the same costs and benefits.

Rational choice models are most closely associated with economics, where mathematical analysis of behavior is standard. However, they are widely used throughout the social sciences, and are commonly applied to cognitive science, criminology, political science, and sociology.

Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term sexology does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism.

Sexologists apply tools from several academic fields, such as anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, epidemiology, sociology, and criminology. Topics of study include sexual development (puberty), sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual relationships, sexual activities, paraphilias, and atypical sexual interests. It also includes the study of sexuality across the lifespan, including child sexuality, puberty, adolescent sexuality, and sexuality among the elderly. Sexology also spans sexuality among those with mental or physical disabilities. The sexological study of sexual dysfunctions and disorders, including erectile dysfunction and anorgasmia, are also mainstays.

Voluntary action is an anticipated goal-oriented movement. The concept of voluntary action arises in many areas of study, including cognitive psychology, operant conditioning, philosophy, neurology, criminology, and others. Additionally, voluntary action has various meanings depending on the context in which it is used. For example, operant psychology uses the term to refer to the actions that are modifiable by their consequences. A more cognitive account may refer to voluntary action as involving the identification of a desired outcome together with the action necessary to achieve that outcome. Voluntary action is often associated with consciousness and will. For example, Psychologist Charles Nuckolls holds that we control our voluntary behavior, and that it is not known how we come to plan what actions will be executed. Many psychologists, notably Tolman, apply the concept of voluntary action to both animal and human behavior, raising the issue of animal consciousness and its role in voluntary action.

The sociology of law, legal sociology, or law and society, is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, but others tend to consider it a field of research caught up between the disciplines of law and sociology. Still others regard it as neither a subdiscipline of sociology nor a branch of legal studies but as a field of research on its own right within the broader social science tradition. Accordingly, it may be described without reference to mainstream sociology as "the systematic, theoretically grounded, empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of social experience". It has been seen as treating law and justice as fundamental institutions of the basic structure of society mediating "between political and economic interests, between culture and the normative order of society, establishing and maintaining interdependence, and constituting themselves as sources of consensus, coercion and social control".

Irrespective of whether sociology of law is defined as a sub-discipline of sociology, an approach within legal studies or a field of research in its own right, it remains intellectually dependent mainly on the traditions, methods and theories of sociology proper, criminology, administration of justice, and processes that define the criminal justice system, as well as to a lesser extent, on other social sciences such as social anthropology, political science, social policy, psychology, and geography. As such, it reflects social theories and employs social scientific methods to study law, legal institutions and legal behavior. The sociological study of law, therefore, understands jurisprudence from differing perspectives. Those perspectives are analytical or positive, historical, and theoretical.

Paul-Michel Foucault (UK: /ˈfuːkoʊ/ FOO-koh, US: /fuːˈkoʊ/ foo-KOH; French: [pɔl miʃɛl fuko]; 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French historian of ideas and philosopher, who was also an author, literary critic, political activist, and teacher. Foucault's theories primarily addressed the relationships between power versus knowledge and liberty, and he analyzed how they are used as a form of social control through multiple institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels and sought to critique authority without limits on himself. His thought has influenced academics within a large number of contrasting areas of study, with this especially including those working in anthropology, communication studies, criminology, cultural studies, feminism, literary theory, psychology, and sociology. His efforts against homophobia and racial prejudice as well as against other ideological doctrines have also shaped research into critical theory and Marxism–Leninism alongside other topics.

Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing, which he called "archaeology".