CRIM Midterm Review 1 Flashcards
According to Edwin Sutherland, what is his definition of Criminology?
Criminology is the study of the making of laws, the breaking of laws, and of society’s reaction to the breaking of laws
What are the 3 areas of focus for Criminology according to Sutherland?
the process of making laws, of breaking laws and of reacting towards the breaking of laws”
According to Garland, what are the two initial streams of work that criminology is the product of?
The governmental project and Lombrosian project
What is “the Governmental project”
empirical studies of the administration of justice; the working of prisons, police and the measurement of crime
What is the Lombrosian project?
studies which sought to examine the characteristics of criminals and ‘non-criminals’ with a view to being able to distinguish the groups, thereby developing an understanding of the causes of crime
Lacey suggest that criminology concerns itself with?
social and individual antecedents of crime and with the nature of crime as a social phenomenon
Lacey suggest that criminal justice deals with?
speficically instituitional aspects of the social construction of crime. (Such as, policing, prosecution, punishment
What is the legal definiton of crime, according to Tappan (1947)
Crime is an Intentional act in violation of the criminal law
What are the three great tributaries that make up the subject of crime?
The study of crime, the study of whose who commit crime, the study of the criminal justice and penal systems
According to Sutherland, what is the objective of Criminology
development of a body of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding the process of law, crime, and treatment or prevention
What is critical criminology?
Critique associated with criminology
What are the 4 major lines of criticism in critical criminology
- Crime has no ontological reality: the belief that crime has no reality beyond the application of the term to particular acts.
- Criminology perpetuates the myth of crime
- Crime consists of many petty events
- Crime excludes many serious harms
What is white- collar crime?
is a nonviolent crime often characterized by deceit or concealment to obtain or avoid losing money or property, or to gain a personal or business advantage
Harm based definition
Enables criminologist to better captured harms that are not dealt with. Very well via, the criminal law, such as many forms of corporate and white collar crime.
How does the labeling perspective view crime
The labelling perspective views crime as relative to time, place and audience.
What is the essential characteristic of Crime?
behaviour which is probhibted by the state as an injury to the state and against white the state may react, as a last resort, by punishment
Crime as a social construct means
illustrates that the use of power by the state of groups of people to define people in particulars
Social constructionism
the idea that crime like other social phenomena is the outcome or product of interaction and negotiation between people living in complex social groups
Criminislisation refers to?
the process of labelling acts and people as criminal
Crime as a social construct views morality as what?
as notions of right and wrong as socially constructed and subject to crime.
What are the 3 sources of crime Data?
Official Statistics, victimization surveys and self-reporting surveys
What are the limitations of Official Statistics?
- Only captured a fraction of the so called “dark figure of crime” crime that remains unreported, unrecorded and largely unknown
- Are generally offense- rather than offender or victim- focused
- Only cover a limited range of crimes
- Not all LEAs participate; it voluntary
- Variation between police departments in recording and enforcement practices (ex. Seriousness rule. They may focus at certain times at the expense of others- impaired driving)
- Police apartments manipulating and falsifying data
What must happen for a crime to be counted as an official statistic?
1) A criminal event occurs
2) Decision to call the police
3)Police decides to respond
4) Even if police decided to respond, they decided to report
What is the definition of the crime funnel?
a model indicating that the actual total quantity of crime is much higher than the decreasing proportion that is detached , reported, prosecuted and punished
What are the most common reasons, one might not report to the police?
Violent
Not important enough
Personal matter
Fear of revenge
Did not want to bring shame to their family
Non-violent crime
Police won’t consider it important
Lack of evidence
Police won’t identify perpetrator or find the portoper
Lack of meaningful evidence for police action
No one was harmed
Crime was minor
What is the most underreported crime?
Sexual assault, 8 percent of victims of sexual assault in Canada report the crime to the police meaning that 87 per were woman
What are the common reason that sexual assault is an underreported crime?
- Re-victimization in court
- Out in the open for friends and family
- Lack of evidence
- He said/she said case
- Pay legal fees if lose
- Feeling of life being on hole until trial
- Perpetrator is powerful in stats, low likelihood of succeeding
- People doubting the testimony
- Women are often confronted with skeptism, doubtl outright blame for provoking or at least not resisting. Seen as responsible for attack. Concern about the claims being taken seriously
- One consequence of changing social attitudes towards violence against woman has been increases in reporting rates.
why might police not report a crime (5 reasons)
- May consider their discretion and simply issue a warning, confiscate illicit goods, or interrupt some escalating activity
- May find insufficient evidence to confirm that an offense has take place
- May judge that the matter has been resolved
- Victim May refuse to press charges
How does the Criminal Justice System operate
as a funnel (crime funnel)
Crime Mapping
is technology trying to predict when and where a crime may occur.
Uses official stat to generate maps that usually rep the spatial distribution of crime
- BASED on premise that crime has an inherent geographical quality
- hotspot ; geographic locations of high crime concentration
- Popular among LEAS to determine how best to target and deploy resources
What are the problems with crime mapping?
- Only street crime are reported to police are represented
- Impact on privacy of victims
- Can lead to increases in home insurance premiums falling residential and commercial property prices and business abandonment
What is Spatial labeling
refers to the idea as an area is associated to high crime there is a stigma attached
What are victimization surveys
Interviews a sample of a population and ask them questions about their experiences of criminal victimization
- Typical survey will ask whether participants have been a victim of a crime and if so, to:
Describe the nature and consequences if the experience
Indicates whether they or others brought the incidents to official attention
Describe the criminal justice response
Describes how they were affected by the experience
How many times has statistics Canada conducted a victimization survey?
About every 5 years. For the 2014 survey, telephone interviews were conducted with a random sample around 3300 people aged 15 and older.
What are the strengths of the victimization surveys
- Largely overcomes the non-reporting and non-recording problems associated with official statistics
- Helps estimate the size of the gap between reported and unreported crime
- Generally captures 3-5 times more crimes than captured by official means
- According to the 2014 statistics Canada survey, 31per of criminal incidents were reported to the police that year.
- Directs attention to the experiences of victims
- Less subject to political and police biases
What are the limitations of Victimization surveys?
- Not all types of crimes are captured
- Murder victims cannot participate
- Victimless crimes cannot be included
- Does not cover business and therefore commercial industrial victimazation are excluded
What corporate and environment crimes are excluded from victimization surveys?
- Sexual assault
- Robbery
- Assault
- Break and enter
- Motor vehicle theft
- Theft of household property
- Theft of personal property
- Vandalism
- Does not includes under 15s
- Excludes people not living in a household
- Fallibility memory
- Memory decay, telescoping (not accurately remembering the time scale)
- if there is any reluctance to answer honestly
- Incidents seems too trivial to report as a victimization experience
Self-reporting surveys
Typical finding that is often replicated in self reporting surveys is that participating in delinquent behavior is much more widespread than indicated in official statistic
Most adolescents from all socio backgrounds, classes have committed some behaviour for which they could have been arrested for
What are self-reporting surveys
- Interview a sample of a population and ask them a series of questions about their involvement in committing criminal or delinquent acts
- Common with high school students to examine trends over time in delinquent behaviours
What are the strengths of Self- reporting surveys
- Avoids problems of non- reporting and non-recording associated with official stats.
- Provides insight into offenders’ motivation for committing crimes and techniques they use.
- Reveals levels of involvement in Crime according to sex, age and race
- Useful exploring changes in patterns of offending over the life course
What are the limitations of self-reporting surveys?
- Sampling problems
- Difficult to get hardcore criminals in sample
- Types of crimes included;
- Focus on low level crimes and legal but delinquent behaviours
- Cannot be assumed participants are entirely truthful
- Memory decay, telescoping
- Unwilling to disclose due to fear, embarrassment, shame
What is Classical Criminology in historical context?
- The execution of jean calas(1762)
- Executed for the murder of his son
- Allegedly killed him because he had converted to catholicism
- Later discovered that the son had in fact committed suicide due to gambling debts
- Critics and reformers called for an end to such cruel and barbaric ways of delivering justice
Pre- Enlightenment systems of punishment
carries a demonic perspective that;
Crime is the product of evil
Crime is equated with sin: Transgressions against the will of God
Criminals are either tempted or possessed by the devil
Classicism (4 components)
- Emerged in response to arbitrary and cruel systems of punishment
- Sought to move away from the dark age of superstitious and inhumane social control
- Strived for predictability and proportionality in the infliction of pain on offenders
- Was the product of the enlightenment