CRIME AND JUSTICE CONCEPTS AND KEY WORDS (ALPHABETICALLY). Flashcards
- Abolitionism
- Actuarialism
- Anti-social behaviour
- Authoritarianism
- Abolitionism
A sociological and political perspective that analyses criminal justice and penal systems as social problems that intensify rather than diminish crime and its impact. Abolitionists advocate the radical transformation of the prison and punishment system and their replacement with a reflexive and integrative strategy for dealing with crime and harm.
- Actuarialism
The classification of populations according to their assumed level of risk of future offending/reoffending.
- Anti-social behaviour
The concept of anti-social behaviour (ASB) is usually invoked to refer to such issues as youths causing ‘trouble’, noise, vandalism, abandoned vehicles, litter, graffiti and drunkenness. But definitions of ASB are highly contested and, in the eyes of many, legally quite imprecise. The definition of ASB in England and Wales is left intentionally very wide, involving, according to the Home Office ‘acting in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household (as) the defendant’. Nevertheless it is typically applied to individual (usually youthful) behaviour and rarely applied to the harmful activities, for example, of some corporate and state practices.
- Authoritarianism
The mobilisation of state power to promote regulation and secure the dominance of particular groups or nations through repressive political and criminal justice agendas.
- Biometric surveillance
- Biometric surveillance
Biometric surveillance refers to the measurement of the body to corroborate identity, for example through fingerprints, iris scans, and facial recognition.
- Carceral society
- Chicago school of sociology
- Classical school
- Commodification
- Community justice
- Corporate harm
- Crime
- Carceral society
The notion that, as systems of surveillance increase, forms of control pioneered in the nineteenth-century prison are replicated throughout the social order.
- Chicago school of sociology
A school of sociological inquiry developed in the 1930s and renowned for establishing links between environmental factors and crime. A ‘second’ Chicago school developed in the 1950’s that was more heavily influenced by symbolic interactionism.
- Classical school
An approach to the study of crime and criminality that is underpinned by the notion of rational action and free will. It was developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century by reformers who aimed to create a clear and legitimate criminal justice system based upon equality. At its core is the idea that punishment should be proportionate to the criminal act and should be viewed as a deterrent. Further assumptions include the notion of individual choice within a consensual society based upon a social contract and the common interest.
- Commodification
A term which usually refers to the placing of a monetary or market value on something which was previously assumed to constitute public or private ‘goods’. Notably, the term has been used with reference to the body, with feminists arguing that commodification of the female body can be seen in the way the latter has been sexualised, used in marketing campaigns and ‘sold’ in various ways which serve to demean women.
- Community justice
A term deployed generally to describe a range of conflict resolution strategies, usually associated with informal and restorative forms of justice.
Permalink: Community justice
Corporate crime
Offences committed by business corporations in the furtherance of profit.
- Corporate harm
Deliberate, negligent (as well as unlawful) acts by corporations that cause damage and injury to people, wildlife, and the environment with arguably far greater economic, physical and social costs than those associated with ‘conventional’ crime.
- Crime
In everyday terms, crime is a status conferred on and ascribed to certain non-approved acts legislated against and punished as specified by the criminal laws of particular nation states. However, given its variability and context-specific nature, its meaning is rarely self evident. What is defined as ‘crime’ in one society and at one particular time might not be in others. The concept of crime, then, is diverse, historically relative and as a result, what constitutes ‘crime’ can be continually contested.
- Demonisation
- Denial
- Deterrence
- Deviance
- Due process model
- Demonisation
The ascription of negative and pathological labels, epitomised by popular representations of some children as ‘feral’ or ‘evil’.
- Denial
The various processes by which individuals, social groups or states either repress or cover up certain forms of disturbing information [about wrong doing] or else evade, avoid or neutralise its consequences.
- Deterrence
A philosophy of punishment that aims to prevent criminal activity through the development and application of effective and efficient sanctions. It involves demonstrating to both the citizenry and the reasoning criminal that the pains and losses associated with apprehension and punishment will overshadow the possibility of criminal gain or profit.
- Deviance
A twentieth-century sociological concept intended to designate the aggregate of social behaviours, practices, acts, demeanours, attitudes, beliefs, styles or statuses that are culturally believed to deviate significantly from the norms, ethics, standards and expectations of society. The term first emerged in the USA in the 1930s, as a solution to the problem of how sociologists in an emergent welfare state could designate such matters as delinquency, mental and physical disability, criminal behaviour, drug abuse, cultural rebellion, and so on without being obviously dismissive.
- Due process model
An emphasis on the need to administer justice according to legal rules and procedures that are publicly known, fair and seen to be just.
Permalink: Due process model
- Early intervention
- Eco crime
- Environmental justice
- Evidence-based policy
- Early intervention
A core policy implication of the belief that crime can be anticipated in advance. For example, the belief that certain children should be targeted for crime prevention initiatives before an offence has taken place.
- Eco crime
Acts of environmental harm and ecological degradation. Illegal and/or harmful behaviour including threatening, damaging or destroying the natural environment.
- Environmental justice
Advocates of environmental justice draw attention to the unequal distribution of ‘environmental harms’ (such as pollution, famine,) around the world and seek an equitable access to ‘environmental goods’ (such as nutritious food, clean air and water). Self-determination and participation in decision-making are key elements.
- Evidence-based policy
Borrowed from medicine, this approach prioritises the pragmatic formulating of policy and practice on the basis of scientifically robust research.
- Feminist research
- Feminist research
In criminology, ‘Feminist Research’ refers to the varied analyses that use feminist or critical social theories and ask: ‘What is the place of sex/gender in crime and justice?’ and ‘What is the place of sex/gender in criminological and justice theories?’
- Globalisation
- Global justice
- Governance
- Governmentality
- Green criminology
- Globalisation
A widely, but often loosely, used term that usually implies an increasing homogeneity of national economics, politics and culture. Such convergence is assumed to be driven in the main by international flows of capital, information and people, and dominated by multi-national, neo-liberal economics and technologies.
- Global justice
The pursuit of objective ethical standards that apply to all humans regardless of culture, race, gender, religion, or nationality.
- Governance
The concept of ‘governance’, though often used in an eclectic and loose fashion, refers to any act, means or tactic of governing: whether that involves how to be governed, how to govern others, or how to govern oneself. Crucially, it draws attention to processes of governing not just through but beyond government.
- Governmentality
The proposition that social order is achieved not through a ‘disciplinary society’ or by state coercion, but through dynamic relations of power and knowledge to be found in a multitude of institutions.
- Green criminology
An emergent criminological perspective containing various perspectives on the nature of environmental crimes and harms. Green criminology is committed to the protection and conservation of environmental resources and the prevention of illegal acts that unnecessarily damage the natural environment.
Permalink: Green criminology
- Harm
- Hegemonic masculinity
- Hidden figure of crime
- Human trafficking
- Harm
Injury or damage inflicted on society, social institutions, or individuals either intentionally or unintentionally. The concept of social harm has some advantages over that of ‘crime’ as it enables the criminological gaze to go beyond legal and state definitions of injurious practices and recognises certain legal behaviours as harms in themselves.
- Hegemonic masculinity
A version of masculinity in which ‘being male’ is seen as the culturally dominant form. The term ‘hegemony’ was originally used with reference to class; later, gender theorists adapted the term in an attempt to explain how a society apparently characterised by gender inequalities continues to reproduce itself.
- Hidden figure of crime
At one level this refers to specific acts of crime that are not recorded in official crime statistics. At another level it refers to categories of crime that are significantly under-recorded or ignored. Sometimes it is also referred to as invisible crime.
- Human trafficking
Human trafficking refers to the trading and systematic movement of people by various means, potentially involving a variety of agents, institutions and intermediaries. It typically involves coercion, deception and/or exploitation of those who migrate or are moved within or across borders.
- Incapacitation
- Indigenous justice
- Informal justice
- Incapacitation
A justification for punishment that maintains that the offender’s ability to commit further crimes should be removed, either physically or geographically. In some societies, incapacitation can take the form of removing offending limbs (for instance, hands in the case of thieves), whilst in others the banishment of criminals to confined spaces, like prisons, curtails possibilities for offending behaviours. The death penalty is the starkest form of incapacitation.
- Indigenous justice
Rather than privileging the law, professionals and the state, indigenous justice prioritises exchange between offender, victim, and local community in the healing and rebuilding of relationships (though not necessarily without coercive outcomes).
- Informal justice
A variety of initiatives that are intended to either overcome the major limitations of formal criminal justice processes or replace the criminal justice system.
- Labelling
2. Localisation
- Labelling
A sociological approach to understanding crime and deviancy that refers to the social processes through which certain individuals and groups classify and categorise the behaviour of others. On this basis, labelled individuals are stereotyped to act in certain ways and are responded to accordingly. Such reactions tends to reinforce a self-conception as deviant and has the unanticipated consequence of promoting the behaviours that it is designed to prevent.
- Localisation
The antithesis to globalisation, localisation draws attention to the proliferation of ‘local solutions’ to ‘local problems’. It also infers that global transformations are always subject to negotiation, translation or resistance when put into practice ‘on the (local) ground’.
- Modernity
2. Moral panic
- Modernity
A period from industrialisation to the 1970’s in which it was assumed that social problems could be addressed through positivist science and rationality.
- Moral panic
Disproportional and hostile social reaction to a condition, person or group defined as a threat to societal values. Moral panics often involve stereotypical media representations and lead to demands for greater social control, creating a spiral of reaction.
- Nation state
- Neo-conservatism
- Neo-liberalism
- Net-widening
- Nation state
The state is a set of historically variable, macro institutions and organisations charged with the maintenance of order over a given terrain. However, it is rarely a monolithic entity. Heterogeneity within the state form - its traversing of public/private boundaries, for example - implies disunity as well as unity, and conflict as well as consensus within and between the various state agencies. States display a balance between the use of coercive and consensual means to maintain social order. State institutions are involved in constructing and maintaining, not always successfully, a popular legitimacy for the state form itself.
- Neo-conservatism
Neo-conservative criminology treats criminality as one of a group of social pathological phenomena, seeing its prevalence as due to the corrosive influence of permissive and liberal modern culture. In terms of criminal justice policy, neo-conservative criminology is oriented on the one hand to the preservation of traditional values and norms through coercive means, and on the other to the promotion of a technocratic and instrumental means of crime control that decouples the control of crime from its social and economic contexts.
- Neo-liberalism
An economic and political doctrine that gives priority to free market forces, deregulation, privatisation, and places an emphasis on minimal state intervention.
- Net-widening
The process whereby attempts to prevent crime inadvertently draw more subjects into the criminal justice system.
- OPIUM, OPIATES, and OPIODS
2. ORGANISED CRIME.
- Opium, Opiates and Opioids
Opium is a drug formed from the seed pods of opium poppies. Opiates are legal or illegal drugs that are either derived from the opium poppy, or synthetic forms that mimic the effect of an opiate. Opioids are a group of biochemicals, which relieve pain in the same way that opiates do, and include opiates; synthetic opioids that are made as drugs; and endorphins, the body’s own, naturally occurring pain killers. Morphine is a naturally occurring opioid in the opium poppy. It is primary used in clinical settings for the management of moderately severe to severe pain. Heroin is a semi-synthetic drug that is derived from morphine. Heroin was introduced commercially in 1898 by the Bayer company in Germany and is more potent than morphine. Methadone is a fully synthetic opioid.
- Organised crime
A concept emerging first in the United States in the 1920s but now used internationally - for example, by the United Nations and G8 countries - as shorthand to describe a range of serious crimes that are deemed especially difficult to control. It may be defined as the ongoing activities of those collectively engaged in production, supply and financing for illegal markets in goods and services.
- PANOPTICON
- PANOPTICON SORT
- POLITICAL CRIME
- POLICY TRANSFER
- POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGIES
- POSITIVIST SCIENCE
- POWER
- PUNITIVE TURN
- PYRRHIC DEFEAT
- Panopticon
Jeremy Bentham’s prison design of the early nineteenth century that, though never built in full, became a template for enabling the surveillance of the many by the few. The disciplinary power of visibility, inspection and observation has numerous contemporary resonances particularly in the ‘hidden eye’ of CCTV and information and communication technologies.
- Panoptic sort
Panoptic sort refers to a process whereby individuals in their daily lives as citizens, employees and consumers are continually identified, classified and assessed.
- Policy transfer
The processes whereby policies and discourse originating in one nation state flow to, and are translated and reconfigured in another.
- Political crime
Political crime has been defined in a number of different ways. Apart from a broad definition that sees all crime as political, most definitions seek to make a distinction between political crime and ‘ordinary’ crime either because of the different motivations or ideology of the individuals involved or because of the different context in which the crime takes place.
- Positivist criminologies
In criminology, positivism straddles biological, psychological and sociological disciplines in an attempt to identify key causes of crime - whether genetic, psychological, social or economic - that are thought to lie largely outside of each individual’s control. Individual Positivism views crime as being generated primarily by forces located within the individual. It usually takes one of two forms. Criminal predisposition is to be found either in biologically given constitutional factors, or in the psychological make-up of particular individuals. Sociological positivism stresses the importance of social factors - such as social disorganisation, and economic recession - as causes of crime. The broad aim is to account for the distribution of varying amounts of crime within given populations. [Compare with Critical criminology.]
- Positivist science
A theoretical approach that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century that argues that social relations and events (including crime) can be studied scientifically using methods derived from the natural sciences. Its aim is to search for, explain and predict future patterns of social behaviour.
- Power
In sociological terms, any form of constraint on human behaviour emanating from unequal social relations and structures of dominance and subordination. Power may be exercised coercively or through consensus. Criminologists are largely concerned with analysing how political and economic power is related to the protection of certain interests over others.
- Punitive turn
An extension of punishment that relies on an intolerance and a vindictive infliction of pain, originating in the main from the USA in the 1980s.
- Pyrrhic defeat
The proposition that failures in criminal justice to reduce crime recreate particular images of crime and criminals and deflect attention from the crimes of the powerful. Failure yields such benefits for those in positions of power that it amounts to a success.
- REGULATION
- REGULATORY AGENCIES
- REHABILITATION
- REPARATION
- RESPONSIBILISATION
- RESTORATION
- RISK
- RISK SOCIETY
- Regulation
In general, regulation can refer to any series of rules or restrictions on behaviour. In contrast to criminal-justice based sanctions, such restrictions depend rather more on the less coercive forms of compliance: self regulation, co-regulation, or market regulation. It is typically applied to corporate and state harms and crimes.
- Regulatory agencies
The employ of regulatory agencies , rather than formal criminal justice, in the control of business practices is based on the claim that business offences call for different forms of regulation than other kinds of law breaking. This view is reducible to the claim that business crime is not real crime, and differs substantially from ‘conventional’ crime. The distinction between compliance-oriented and punitive modes of enforcement is a key one within the literature on regulatory enforcement.
- Rehabilitation
The reform of offenders through various treatment methods whereby they can be retrained and re-educated.
- Reparation
A strategy employed in the criminal justice system whereby an offender pays compensation to, or acknowledges their wrongdoing in the presence of, the victim.
- Responsibilisation
Within criminology, responsibilisation is a strategy for holding offenders responsible for their own actions and for encouraging communities to be more active in crime control.
- Restoration
A philosophy and practice of bringing offenders, victims and communities together in order to repair harms, reconcile conflicts and heal rifts.
- Retribution
The philosophy that vengeance should be sought and offenders punished for acts they have committed.
- Risk
In criminology, risk refers to the probability of harm, the role of its calculation or assessment in making decisions about whether to perform criminal actions, and its role in criminal justice decision making.
- Risk factors
Those characteristics (such as, large family size, criminal parents, abuse) that longitudinal and quantitative research suggests will produce negative outcomes such as an increase in the likelihood of future offending.
- Risk society
The proposition that in the late twentieth century the certainties of industrialism and science have collapsed and been replaced by a series of local, global and individualised conditions of risk.
