Mumbai University Solved Question Papers
Criminology
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration
Feb 2026 - ATKT Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Criminology Feb 2026 - ATKT Question Paper with Solutions
Get access to whole semester resourcesSemester Pass
MU LLM student group
Free to join
First published on munotes.in on 1 November 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
Passages from this volume may be quoted, in print, online or by an AI system, with credit: name munotes.in and link to this volume's page. The volume may not be reproduced as a whole. Full terms at munotes.in/content-license.
munotes.in is an independent study resource for students of the University of Mumbai. It is not affiliated with the University of Mumbai, and is not endorsed by it.
The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the Feb 2026 - ATKT examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at August 2026, and four points date most textbooks on this subject. Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act survived a split verdict in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 55, in January 2026 and stands referred to a larger Bench, so it remains in force. The four to ten year punishment in section 13(2) was raised not by the 2018 amendment but by the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 on 16 January 2014. Union of India v. Ganpati Dealcom was recalled on 18 October 2024 and is not citable. And the Maharashtra Lokayukta Act, 2022, which covers the Chief Minister, had assent and was still not in force at the time of writing.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the Feb 2026 - ATKT examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the Feb 2026 - ATKT examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
1)Analyse the growth and scientific development of criminology, with special reference to the classical, neo-classical, and modern schools of thought that shaped its foundation.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: criminology's growth as a sequence, from pre-scientific ideas to the modern discipline; the three schools the question names, each with its founders, its central idea, its method and its legacy in Indian law; the modern schools in enough detail to show what "modern" means; and an analysis of why each school replaced the one before it.
Before science: the pre-classical period
Before the eighteenth century, crime was explained by religion and punished by terror. It was treated as sin or as the work of evil spirits. Punishment was arbitrary, often public and cruel, and varied with the status of the offender and the will of the judge. There was no idea of studying crime as a fact with causes.
The growth of criminology is the story of replacing that view in three stages. First, the classical school made punishment rational. Second, the positivist school made the offender an object of science. Third, the modern schools made society and the system themselves objects of study.
The classical school
The classical school began with Cesare Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments), 1764. Jeremy Bentham developed its principles in England.
Its central idea is that people are rational and choose their actions. A person commits crime when the expected pleasure exceeds the expected pain. The State's task is to make punishment certain, prompt and proportionate, so that crime does not pay.
Its principles were radical for their time.
- Crimes and punishments must be fixed by law in advance, not left to judges.
- Punishment must be proportionate to the harm done, not to the status of the offender.
- Certainty and speed of punishment deter more than severity.
- Torture and the death penalty for minor offences should be abolished.
Its method was philosophical, not empirical. Beccaria reasoned from principles about human nature. He did not study offenders.
Its legacy is the rule of law in criminal justice. The principle of legality, that there is no crime and no punishment without a prior law, is in Article 20(1) of the Constitution of India. Codified offences with fixed punishments, as in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, are classical in design. The Supreme Court's emphasis on deterrence through certainty also echoes Beccaria.
Its weakness was that it treated everyone as equally rational. A child, a person of unsound mind and an adult under compulsion were treated alike.
The neo-classical school
The neo-classical school corrected that weakness in the early nineteenth century. The French Penal Code of 1810 and its revisions accepted that not everyone is equally free to choose.
Its central idea is limited free will. People choose, but some cannot choose fully. Children, the insane and those acting under compulsion have reduced responsibility.
It introduced mitigating circumstances. Judges could consider age, mental condition and circumstances in deciding punishment, within limits set by law.
Its legacy in India is direct. The general exceptions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 are neo-classical. Section 20 says nothing is an offence done by a child under seven. Section 21 extends the protection to a child between seven and twelve who lacks sufficient maturity of understanding. Section 22 excuses a person of unsound mind who is incapable of knowing the nature of the act or that it is wrong. These recognise that responsibility depends on capacity, which is the neo-classical correction.
Its weakness was that it still did not ask why people offend. It adjusted punishment, but it had no theory of causes.
The positivist school: criminology becomes a science
Positivism made criminology a science by studying the offender. Its founders were Italian. Cesare Lombroso's L'uomo delinquente, 1876, argued that many criminals were born criminals, recognisable by physical stigmata. Enrico Ferri stressed social and physical as well as individual factors. Raffaele Garofalo, whose book Criminologia, 1885, helped give the subject its name, developed the idea of "natural crime".
Its central idea is determinism. Crime has causes in the offender's body, mind or environment, which science can discover.
Its method was empirical. It measured, counted and compared offenders. Even its failures were scientific: Charles Goring's The English Convict, 1913, tested Lombroso's theory on about three thousand convicts with controls and found no born criminal type.
Its legacy is individualised treatment. If crime has causes, punishment should fit the offender and aim at reform. The Probation of Offenders Act, 1958, the juvenile justice law and the reformative theory of punishment are positivist. In Mohd. Giasuddin v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1977) 3 SCC 287, the Supreme Court said that punishment should aim at reforming the offender and that the courts should treat crime as a disease to be cured.
The cartographic school
Alongside the Italians, the cartographic or statistical school studied crime in space and time. André-Michel Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet, from the 1830s, used official statistics to show that crime rates were regular across years and differed by region, age and sex. Their work founded the quantitative study of crime that underlies modern crime mapping.
The modern schools
"Modern" criminology is not one school but several, united by empirical method and by attention to society and to the system.
1. The sociological school. The Chicago school, through Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay in the 1930s, found delinquency concentrated in particular zones of the city for decades, whoever lived there. Their explanation was social disorganisation. Robert Merton's strain theory, 1938, explained crime as a response to the gap between socially approved goals and legitimate means. Edwin Sutherland's differential association held that crime is learned in intimate groups.
2. The multiple factor approach. William Healy, Cyril Burt and the Gluecks argued that crime results from many interacting factors, not one. It became the working method of probation and juvenile justice.
3. Labelling and critical criminology. From the 1960s, criminologists asked how some people and acts come to be labelled criminal, and whose interests the definitions serve. Sutherland's earlier work on white-collar crime had already shown that crime by the powerful was neglected.
4. Control theory. Travis Hirschi and others asked not why people offend but why most do not. The answer was attachment, commitment, involvement and belief.
5. Rational choice and situational prevention. From the 1980s, Cornish and Clarke revived the classical idea of choice in a limited form, and used it to design crime out of places.
6. Victimology. The study of victims, their needs and their place in the process, led to victim compensation schemes. Section 396 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 requires every State to prepare a victim compensation scheme.
Why each school replaced the last
The classical school replaced arbitrary punishment because the Enlightenment demanded reason and equality. The neo-classical school corrected it because equal treatment of the unequal was unjust. Positivism replaced both because the nineteenth century believed in science and found that punishment alone did not reduce crime. The modern schools replaced positivism's focus on the individual because research showed the importance of family, neighbourhood, opportunity and the system's own labelling. Each school kept what worked in the last.
The schools in Indian law today
Indian criminal justice carries all three schools at once. It is classical in its codified offences and fixed maximum punishments. It is neo-classical in its general exceptions. It is positivist in probation, juvenile justice and individualised sentencing. In Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 684, the Supreme Court required courts to weigh mitigating circumstances relating to the criminal before imposing death, which combines the classical concern with the offence and the positivist concern with the offender. In Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2023) 2 SCC 353, it required material on the accused's psychological state, social background and conduct in prison to be placed before the sentencing court, which is modern criminology in procedural form.
Conclusion. Criminology grew from religious and arbitrary ideas of crime into a science in three movements. The classical school of Beccaria made punishment rational, certain and proportionate. The neo-classical school recognised that children, the insane and the compelled are not fully free, and introduced mitigation. The positivist school of Lombroso, Ferri and Garofalo made the offender an object of scientific study, and the cartographic school counted crime. The modern schools, sociological, multiple factor, labelling, control, rational choice and victimological, turned attention to society and to the system. Indian law today carries all of them, from the principle of legality in Article 20(1) and the general exceptions of the Sanhita to the individualised sentencing of Bachan Singh and Manoj.
The rest of the answers
The first answer is free. The rest come with the LL.M. Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Semester 2 solved papers.
You have read the question paper and its first answer in full. Buy the solved papers once and you can read every answer of every solved paper in this semester.
Notes + Solved papers: ₹798 Already bought it? Sign in
Or solved papers only: ₹499
Or notes only: ₹499
The question paper itself stays free, and so does the syllabus.
Found an error in this volume? Report it and we will check it against the paper.