The Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice is a newly established department in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and to-date, the one and only department of this nature, in Sri Lanka. Nearly three decades ago, with the initiative and guidance of our late senior professor Nandasena Ratnapala, the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Degree in Criminology was introduced to students by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

During the mid-1980s, the late Senior Professor Nandasena Ratnapala, the Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, was the key figure in introducing this novel subject to the Sri Lankan University curriculum. As young behavioral and empirical social science, Criminology and Criminal Justice mainly focus on crime and crime related social and legal settings. The prime objective of this multi-disciplinary field of study is to prevent and control crime in order to uplift the quality of individuals’ social lives.

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice – Documentary 01

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice – Documentary 02

Cultural Criminology E journal

ISSN – 2961-5097 | Pages – 189

Human society and culture are inextricably linked; they are two sides of the same coin. Observation reveals how the value system, which comprises the individual emotions known as culture, acts as a tool of social control. In this approach, distinct orientations relating to the culture of a person’s life have been formed, in which culture plays a central role in driving individual action and opening or closing the individual to society. In addition to other areas, cultural criminology was brought to the science of criminology in the era following the Second World War to study the individual criminality connected with culture, its causes, and the control and prevention of these conditions. Adding definitions to our culture, here we will study the cultural aspects that continue to exist as well as the new and vanishing elements that join the globalized society that is constantly evolving.  The study of cultural criminology, which is still acknowledged as a related area, has begun to fill the gap in the sources of literature