Chapter 6 Crimes Flashcards
Definition of deviance:
any behaviour, trait, or belief that departs from a social norm and generates a negative reaction in a particular group.
Definition of crime:
Crime is any deviant act that violates the criminal law–a formally stated set of social norms.
Why do we say that criminal laws are weightier than other laws?
Bc they are more consequential than other laws, since they are often matters of life and death, and freedom or imprisonment.
What are laws?
They are rules of conduct specifying what a society’s members may and may not do and that punish violators.
How does media portrays crime?
Media portrays crimes in ways that make people think there is a large “crime problem” for society to handle.
What is do moral panics occur?
It occurs when a condition, episode, person, or group of people, emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.
What are the 5 criteria to identify a moral panic?
- Concern for an issue that people see as a threat.
- Hostility toward a certain group of people associated with the issue.
- A consensus the threat is seen to be legitimate.
- A disproportionate reaction to the threat.
- Volatile shifts in the public mood about this matter.
Most crimes in Canada are?
Crimes against property or crimes against persons.
Property includes: theft, robbery, shoplifting, vandalism, fraud, and embezzlement.
Person includes: homicide, manslaughter, kidnapping, assault, sexual assault, extortion, threatening.
What is the Crime Funnel?
- Criminology concept.
- Illustrates how the number of crimes decreases at each stage of the criminal justice process.
- Many crimes are committed, but only a small fraction result in convictions and punishments.
Why does the Crime Funnel exist?
Because justice systems tend to prosecute certain kinds of crimes and certain kinds of criminals, while ignoring others.
Who is overrepresented in the correctional system?
- First Nations
- Métis
- Inuit people
- Indigenous adults accounted for 31% of admissions to provincial/territorial custody and 29% to federal custody.
What is self-reporting?
The victim reports to authorities that a crime has occurred. This is them ost direct method of measuring crime rates.
But it is not always accurate, because changes in the crime rate reflect changes in victims’ willingness to report.
What are Victimization Surveys?
Samples of people are asked how many times within a given time period they have been victim of specific crimes.
What is the Crime Severity Index (CSI)?
It tracks changes in the severity of police-reported crime and assigns each offence a weight.
What is the most serious crime and what’s the definition of it?
Homicide:
The killing of one human being by another. This category includes murder and manslaughter.
What are White-Collar crimes?
- Non violent crimes committed by office workers, managers, and executives while doing their jobs. These crimes are performed during normal work and occur in reputable organizations.
What are crimes are considered to be White-collar crimes?
- fraud, bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, computer crime, forgery.
- the damage done can amount to anywhere from hundreds to millions of dollars.
What are corporate crimes?
- A subcategory of white-collar crime, corporate crime refers to offenses committed by or on behalf of corporations rather than individuals acting alone.
- These crimes prioritize the company’s financial interests over ethics or legality.
What is Canada’s tax gap?
The taxes uncollected because of criminal tax evasion.
The tax gap represents the difference between the total amount of taxes that would be paid if every Canadian individual and corporation fully reported all their income properly.
Definition of Organized crimes:
The organization of people who practise criminal activities professionally and coordinate their activities through a system of bosses.
Organized crime rings that exist in Canada include:
- Sicilian Mafia
- Chinese Triads
- The Big Circle Boys (Chinese)
- Columbian Mafia
- Russian Mafia
Organized crime activities includes?
drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion, bribery, money laundering, pornography, assaults, homicides, contract killing, kidnapping, human trafficking, forgetting, insurance fraud, auto theft, truck hijacking, illegal arms trade.
What does organized crime shows us?
crime can be a learned, organized social activity with deep historical and cultural roots. It is often grounded in traditional notions, such as those of kinship and friendship, honour, and duty.
What are cybercrimes?
Involves a perpetrator stealing someone’s identity for a criminal purpose.
Cybercrime is any criminal act in which a perpetrator hacks into a computer network to illegally gain sensitive information or spread destructive software.
