A RESEARCH STUDY ON ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRIMINOLOGY: SCIENTIFIC FAILURE AND SOCIETAL HARM

Abstract
This research examines the enduring impact of colonial-era anthropological criminology on the policing and social marginalization of Denotified Tribes (DNTs) in post-independence India. While the repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 in 1952 marked a formal rejection of hereditary criminality and collective guilt, the study argues that the underlying logic of suspicion and surveillance persisted through administrative practices, policing culture, and social stigma. By analyzing the transition from “criminal tribes” to “denotified tribes,” and the subsequent introduction of Habitual Offenders legislation, the research highlights how legal reform altered terminology without fully dismantling structural bias. Drawing on sociological and criminological studies, the paper demonstrates that DNT communities continue to face disproportionate surveillance, overrepresentation in arrest patterns, economic marginalization, and barriers to social integration. It further explores how informal institutional knowledge—embedded in police practices such as history sheets and routine suspicion—sustains colonial-era prejudices despite constitutional guarantees of
equality and dignity. The research also identifies policy gaps in rehabilitation and welfare implementation, emphasizing the consequences of administrative ambiguity and inconsistent state response. The study ultimately argues that pseudo-scientific theories, once codified into law and institutionalized through governance, acquire a structural longevity that outlives their formal abolition. The persistence of stigma and systemic bias against Denotified Tribes illustrates the limitations of legal reform in the absence of deeper institutional and societal transformation. By situating the experience of DNTs within broader debates on criminology, law, and social justice, this research underscores the need to critically reassess the legacy of “scientific” classifications and their continuing influence on contemporary systems of control and marginalization