Chapter 1: What is Crime?

Question 1

What is criminology, and what is its objective?

Answer 1

Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as as a social phenomenon. It looks at:
1. The process of making laws
2. Breaking laws
3. The reaction to breaking laws
The objective of criminology is to develop a set of principles regarding the process of law, crime, and treatment

Question 2

What are the consequences of bad media?

Answer 2

Media does not have the goal of accurately reporting crime. Rather, it wants to get good ratings, and lots of them.

1. It causes unnecessary public fear
2. It presents a distorted view of offenders due to racism and other biases
3. Other criminals watch it in order to get ideas
4. It just misses stuff! How about all them indigenous women, hey?

Question 3

What are the six areas of Criminology?

Answer 3

1. It defines crime and criminals - just because something is socially harmful, doesn’t mean it’s criminal
2. Origin and role of law: Why are some things criminal? What does law do about hat?
3. Social distribution of Crime: Which people commit crime and are victims of crime. Where? When?
4. Causation of Crime: Why do people commit crime?
5. Patters of criminal behaviour: Who is committing which crimes lately and why?
6. Social Reactins to crime

Question 4

What are the differences between provincial and federal government and court?

Answer 4

Federal court: Deals with high offences and provincial appeals
Provincial court: Deals with minor offences and appoints judges
Federal government: Makes the law
Provincial government: administers the law

Question 5

Discuss John Hagan and his Theory of Deviance

Answer 5

John Hagan creates a continuum of crime, with three factors:

1. The degree of nonsensus that the act is wrong
2. The severity of society’s response to the act
3. The assessment of the degree of harm

The pyramid: Looks at these factors (plus occurrences) and how they are combined to make different types of crime

1. Consensus crime: Big harm to society, Everyone agrees that it’s real bad, and will react STRONGLY to it
2. Conflict crime: Somewhat harmful to society, people really don’t know what to think about it, so will react somewhat to it
3. Social Deviation: Somewhat harmful to society, people disagreement about it, so react moderately to it.
4. Social Diversion: It’s relatively harmless, no one really care
   * keep in mind that crime is changeable based on society

Question 6

Compare and contract Conflict theory and Consensus Theory

Answer 6

Consensus Theory: States that the law is based off a consensus of the values of the people, and reflects how people want their society to look.
Class/Group conflict theory:
1. Class conflict theory: Government is run by privileged people, and they make laws that allow them to maintain their privileged position.
2. Group conflict theory: Laws are made through political process, which means different groups of values will clash over what should be law (e.g. abortion)

Question 7

What are the three new branches of criminology?

Answer 7

1. Green Criminology: The issue of environmental destruction! Focuses on the concept of ecological citizenship - morality applies to nature!t
2. Terrorism: The illegal use of force to achieve a political objective by targeting innocent people. Tricky because it is a socially constructed term, and will change based on who committed the crime. Citizens rights are often violated to fight this
3. Surveillance Studies: A focus on personal information in order to control those who are being surveyed. The downside is social sorting, where the nudges from surveillance can cause us to make potentially negative decisions about our lives. Lots of social media sites will sell your information for targeted marketing