Criminological Thoughts and the African Contribution to its Development

Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, grade: 4.0, University of Lagos, course: Law, language: English, abstract: This paper sets out to look at the African society before the influx of imperial powers and how their crime and punishment equation had emerged and was implemented in the society before it was eventually swept away by her New Masters. Criminological ideas are often credited as western creation. This is a position held by many criminology writers and students alike globally, which by so doing denies Africa of a well-deserved acknowledgment of her contributions to criminological ideas. The African ideas have been erroneously regarded as “new ideas” by western nations. It is sad to observe that Africans themselves are contributors to this lack of recognition of their ideas. Africans considered their ideas as belonging to the trash bin of history, as they embrace the criminological ideas of Imperial powers. Unfortunately, the ideas which they rejected were refined by Europeans and sold to them as new wisdom.