About Criminology

History

After a series of meetings and work sessions involved the faculty, administrators, and students of Dhaka University including the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Dean of the Faculty of Law, many members of the Department of Sociology, the MS program in Criminology was first launched under the Department of Sociology in 2010.

As a distinct discipline, Criminology was formally introduced as a department in 2012 with the decision of Syndicate. In 2013, Professor Dr. Md. Zia Rahman was appointed as the Founding Chairman of the Department of Criminology. The department started its journey that year with only 30 students in the first batch, but currently has around 300 students in the BSS (Hons) and MS programs alone. The number is significant as the importance of the study of Criminology from a local and global context is becoming more prevalent and many oppurtunities in job sectors are created.

Mission & Vision

The department aims to study crime and criminal behavior from a scientific perspective, while also critically analyzing such events in the societal context of Bangladesh. Criminology in a developing country like Bangladesh requires the discipline to be empirical, data-driven, and policy relevant. The department of Criminology intends to provide its students with knowledge and tools that will ignite critical thinking and enable them to develop new crime theories, develop and modernize surveys on criminal victimization, analyze crime trends, understand the nature of implementation of some of the existing laws, application of the due process of law in law enforcement and the judiciary development and the methods and challenges of crime preventions.

In accomplishing the goal, the department has introduced many contemporary courses to investigate crime cause and prevent criminal activities in Bangladesh.