Prof. Saviour Formosa is a well-respected academic in the field of criminology studies.  He is an expert in spatio-temporal environmental criminology, advises a number of government entities and is Head of the Department of Criminology at the Faculty for Social Wellbeing.  Prof. Formosa is another one of those academics within the Faculty who regularly link up with the rest of the community and pass on the wealth of information being gathered during their research to inform policy and hopefully entice remedial action. 

Prof. Formosa defines social wellbeing as, “The holistic approach towards ensuring survivability, resilience, safety and security within the physical, social and natural environments.” 

In other words, it is all about creating community and ensuring that the members of the community calibrate the behaviour of each other. 

When I asked him whether there is still ‘good’ in our societies he claims that, “Societal changes offer new opportunities, new dynamics and new realities, whether in the physical, virtual, augmented or mixed realities. Good needs to be understood in the context it occurs thus defining it becomes always difficult as society morphs from one state to the next. Let’s face it, for every great invention we find pseudopods of evil forming within and outside that scenario, thus evil and good are intrinsic.”

His specialisation in the area of criminology studies led me to ask him why people resort to crime even in the context that in 2018, according to the CrimeMalta Observatory he leads, there were 15,925 reported offences. Even though they show ‘a major reduction over the recent years’ crime offences’ of 7.1% on the previous year, there still is an average of 44 crime reports a day knowing well enough that so many other crimes go unreported. 

To mention some more statistics; thefts have seen a major decrease in most categories with a drop of 21%.  Pickpocketing, which seemed to be on the rise in previous years has now decreased by 46%. The same can be said about ‘theft from beaches’ which have lessened by 130 reported cases, a significant 46% drop.  There also seemed to have been an increase in ‘damages’ in 2018 up from 22% in 2017.  Bodily Harm remained essentially at the same levels noting a slight 1% increase.  On the other hand, ‘fraud’ saw an exponential increase of 31% following a similarly high 57% (287 cases) increase over the previous year.  Drug abuse reports indicate a spike of 12% in 2018 and as reported extensively in the media ‘domestic violence’ increased by 8.4% reaching a staggering 1341 cases, equivalent to an average of four reports a day.  ‘Sexual offences’ also saw an upsurge of 18% whilst ‘violence against Public Officers’ dwindled by 9%.

Following my question on ‘why people choose this behaviour’ Proif. Formosa says, “…without focusing too much on theoretical approaches, resorting to crime may reflect both the lack and the abundance of opportunities to achieve. This sounds contradictory, but in a poor society, people resort to crime as they need to find food, shelter and the other Maslowian needs.  However, with affluence comes a reality that offers ever more enticing opportunities to commit crime … As the perceived rewards become greater than the risks, then people will start taking risks, albeit falling on the wrong side of the fence.”

I try to suss out why people contemplate devious behaviour.  He says that, “You need a psychologist for that but every crime would need both the Mens Rea and the Actus Reus: the former being the process of thinking about committing a crime and the latter referring to the actualization of that crime.”

His work within the Department of Criminology at the Faculty for Social Wellbeing centres around the need to bring about improved communities, that are safer and better places to live in.  His opinion on what variables would make society function better is, “Better safety and security, better awareness, a rethinking of how our society has morphed and accept the fact that changes will keep happening. In addition, a revisiting of the PREFET structures would help as these serve as the foundations of societal integrity. Politics, Religion, Education, Family and Economy and now Technology, all serve to nurture a society and can cause it to change, whether gradually or drastically. As values, interests, beliefs, ethics and slants change so does society and in turn our perception of that society.”

He describes the challenges that are being faced by society as experiencing, “Rapid change, globalisation and those who cannot keep up with so much access to information. From a Marxian model based on ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ society has transitioned to a Dahrendorffian model based on ‘order-giving’ and ‘order-taking’.  Now-a-days modern society’s power rests on those who have access to information and those who don’t, especially through access to the internet world whether virtual, augmented or mixed realities.”

He also continues to argue about the need to have professional criminologists whose role is that of investigating society, its levels of crime, the dynamics between the offender and the victim, the relationship between the category of offence and the location it occurs in, the time and timing it occurs in, the investigation of who commits misconduct, the study of what constitutes a wrongdoing and how crimes are superseded by new offences. Formosa claims that, “As society changes. criminologists need to study how a crime is committed through its modus operandi.”

When I asked Prof Formosa why people should consider studying criminology, he said that, “In an ever changing world, crime will not go away but morph to reflect the new realities. Crime is inherently tied to the context it occurs in and as society changes and so does the type of crime. Students who until a few years ago were mainly focused on Policing and Probation, research interests have now evolved on financial crimes, insurance, environment and development, security and safety and recently in spatial forensics. Studying how crime changes, when it happens, where it is located, the time it is committed, the offender-offence dynamics, the process of how it occurs, the thinking about why it occurs, all make for interesting studies.”

Courses being offered at the Department of Criminology at the Faculty for Social Wellbeing:

·                     BA(Hons) Criminology, full-time

·                     Diploma in Policing

·                     Masters in Probation Studies

·                     Masters by Research in Criminology Studies

Reference:

http://www.crimemalta.com/docs/CrimeMalta_Report2018.pdf