Criminology Exam 1 Flashcards
Practice Exam Questions
An argument that drug laws are a tool for the wealthy to control the dangerous classes is consistent with the _____ view of crime.
A. purist legal
B. Consensus
C. Metaphysical
D. Conflict
D. Conflict
A criminologist wants to learn about the rate of shoplifting and other delinquent behavior among adolescents. To do this, the criminologist would be best-served by referencing which of the following sources?
A. UCR
B. Self-report surveys
C. Case studies
D. NCVS
B. Self-report surveys
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a resource for a criminal justice researchers to uncover _____.
A. Official crime statistics as presented by law enforcement agencies.
B. A compendium of information about how to prevent crime for police departments.
C. Decades of questions asked to the general public about crime.
D. Rates of crime victimization in certain U.S. cities.
C. Decades of questions asked to the general public about crime
What is the key question behind the “age/crime” debate?
A. Whether there is a relationship between age and crime.
B. Whether “maturing out” of crime is a phenomenon true of all people and all types of crime.
C. The cause of a recent spike in violent crime committed by the elderly.
D. The age at which most individuals first become involved in criminal behavior.
B. Whether “maturing out” of crime is a phenomenon true of all people and all types of crime.
A criminologist decides to study the way in which violent crime is portrayed in newspaper headlines. This type of research is known as _____.
A. Content analysis
B. Simulation
C. Tertiary analysis
D. Media survey
A. Content anaylsis
Deviance refers to a broad range of activities that the majority in society my view as eccentric, dangerous, annoying, bizarre, outlandish, gross, abhorrent, etc.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Which of these was the primary basis of social control, other than kinship organization, prior to the emergence of modern criminal law in the eighteenth century?
A. Education
B. Religion
C. Science
D. Politics
B. Religion
Which of Sumner’s three types of norms is best represented as a formal mode of social control?
A. Mores
B. Rules
C. Laws
D. Folkways
C. Laws
cWhy is it important to establish mens rea in the U.S. criminal system?
A. Mens rea refers to the fact that the law was written before the supposed violation of the law.
B. Without mens rea, there is no connection from the offending acts to directly caused harm.
C. It is required to show that actual harm has been done to a certain victim.
D. Without it, one cannot state that the person performed an act intentionally with a “guilty mind”.
D. Without it, one cannot state that the person performed an act intentionally with a “guilty mind”
According to the text, which of the following involves attempts to develop reasonable explanations of reality?
A. Theories
B. Observations
C. Surveys
D. Methodology
A. Theories
While not explicitly a category on the UCR, most people arrested or labeled as criminal tend to be members of ______.
A. More educated groups
B. Lower social classes
C. Higher income brackets
D. The political left
B. Lower social classes
The three elements of classical experimental design are equivalence, pretests and posttests, and experimental and control groups.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Which choice is the best example of a social institution?
A. Church
B. Campsite
C. A textbook
D. Jargon
A. Church
The _____ rule was the practice in the UCR of only recording the most serious offense per incident.
A. “hierarchy”
B. “resource dependency”
C. “election choice”
D. “official status”
A. “hierarchy”
Which of the following is the central truth behind participant observation n the field of criminology?
A. Participant observation is a good way of obtaining statistical data on various criminal phenomena.
B. Participant observation is a valuable methodology for studying groups that have historically been little-understood.
C. Participant observation methods allow researchers to study hundreds or even thousands of people at one time.
D. The researcher should carefully conceal their real identity and pretend to be part of the group being studied to ensure good results.
B. Participant observation is a valuable methodology for studying groups that have historically been little-understood.
Today, most of those arrested are ______.
A. Suffering from sociopathic tendencies
B. Older than the average populations
C. Younger than the average populations
D. Educated at higher rates than average
C. Younger than the average population
If a criminologist conducts a study of an issue that they feel strongly about, there may be issues with the researcher remaining ______.
A. Objective
B. Reliable
C. Operationalized
D. Triangulated
A. Objective
(unknown)
_____ involves a system of mutual trust and obligation between the researcher and the subject.
A. Validity
B. Triangulation
C. Reciprocity
D. Reliability
C. Reciprocity
The region of the United States of America with the lowest overall crime rate, except for robbery, is the ______.
A. West
B. South
C. Midwest
D. Northeast
D. Northeast
The field that attempts to define, explain, and predict criminal behavior is known as ______.
A. Applied criminology
B. Theology
C. Criminalistics
D. Criminology
D. Criminology
Deviance could be considered as violating _____, which is something that all societies have.
A. Institutional objectives
B. Cultural values
C. Reflexivity
D. Public consensus
B. Cultural values
Prohibition had the unintended effect of increasing corruption, disobedience, and public disrespect for the law. the unintended effect is an example of ____.
A. Mala in se
B. A manifest function of law
C. A latent function of law
D. Mens rea
C. A latent function of law
_____ are more appropriate when using statistics and numbers to help answer a research question.
A. Real-world analyses
B. Quantitative techniques
C. Qualitative techniques
D. Case studies
B. Quantitative techniques
Criminology had been considered a sub-discipline of _______ until about the 1960s.
A. Biology
B. Sociology
C. Psychology
D. Theology
B. Sociology
Triangulation assists in providing multiple assessments of criminal subject matter, which is particularly helpful for cross-national research.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Intended, planned, or anticipated consequences of introduced changes or of existing social arrangements are referred to as _______.
A. Mores
B. Norms
C. Manifest functions
D. Latent functions
C. Manifest functions
The belief that criminal law originates from an agreement among members of society is consistent with the _____ perspective of crime.
A. Consensus
B. Functionalist
C. Conflict
D. Interactionist
A. Consensus
As society becomes increasingly complex and heterogeneous, which of the following is typically true of society’s efforts to maintain order?
A. Society becomes more reliant on religious organizations.
B. Society becomes increasingly reliant on information methods of social control.
C. Society becomes entirely reliant upon police and the criminal justice system.
D. Society becomes increasingly reliant on formal, codified laws.
D. Society becomes increasingly reliant on formal, codified laws.
Latent functions entail unintended or unanticipated consequences, ones that may have either positive or negative outcomes.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Committing murder is an example of an act that is ______.
A. Mala prohibita
B. Over criminalized
C. Mala in se
D. Undercriminalized
C. Mala in se
Urban recorded crime rates are generally lower than rural crime rates.
A. True
B. False
B. False
More than half of Americans believe that the media distorts the public perception of crime and potentially causes violence and aggression according to a poll by ABC.
A. True
B. False
A. True
According to the Criminal Justice Information System Committee, ______ inflated the number of index crimes reported by the FBI.
A. White-collar crime
B. Vandalism and trespassing
C. Larceny and theft
D. Simple assault
C. Larceny and theft
In which of the following places would you expect a subculture of violence to exist?
A. Rural Mississippi
B. Suburban California
C. Central Delaware
D. Urban Michigan
A. Rural Mississippi
In general, for which of these crimes is a 16-year-old most likely to be arrested?
A. Assault
B. Statutory rape
C. Sex work
D. Burglary
D. Burglary
A 14-nation international study of television violence found that _______ has the most violent programming.
A. Russia
B. Japan
C. The United States
D. China
B. Japan
During the 1960s, there was an unexpected rise in crime in the United States and other _____ countries.
A. Individualistic
B. Capitalist
C. Industrialized
D. Democratic
C. Industrialized
The more traditional the gender roles in a society are, the greater the gap in male and female criminality.
A. True
B. False
A. True
The reason that official crime rates are higher in urban rather than rural areas is that most crimes in rural areas go unreported.
A. True
B. False
B. False
Kendra believes that divorce is the cause of delinquency. In her own family, her parents got divorced and her father left. Her mother had to work two jobs, apply for state benefits, and move them to a less expensive apartment. Her father had a drinking problem and was later arrested for driving under the influence. Kendra’s brother was arrested for vandalism when he was 15, which Kendra blames on the divorce. By failing to consider the social context of her family, Kendra has committed a _______.
A. Myopic deception
B. Confirmation bias
C. Fallacy of autonomy
D. Self-fulfilling prophecy
C. Fallacy of autonomy
Which of the following crimes would a traveler to Eastern Europe be most likely to experience?
A. Robbery
B. Simple assault
C. Sex trafficking
D. Pickpocketing
D. Pickpocketing
The relationship between social class and criminality remains ______.
A. irrelevant to current crime research
B. Stronger in rural areas than urban ones
C. Stable throughout time
D. A subject of debate
D. A subject of debate
The advent of modern ______ has effectively erased many of the distinctions between rural and urban lifestyles.
A. Medicine
B. Transportation
C. Education
D. Agriculture
B. Transportation
Which of the following demographic groups is most likely to have increased rates of criminality during war?
A. Juveniles
B. Whites
C. Women
D. Immigrants
C. Women
Only the work of researchers who are completely vale free should be trusted.
A. True
B. False
B. False
According to gottfredson and Hirschi, the single best predictor of a person’s desistance from crime is age.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Serena has been on a college admissions committee for 20 years. She has found that those students who have high scores on a certain admissions test have high GPAs in college, while those with low test scores have low GPAs. Serena believes that the test is a ______ way to predict college GPA.
A. Reliable and Valid
B. Not reliable or valid
C. Valid but not reliable
D. Reliable but not valid
A. Reliable and valid
The number of ______ is considered the best measure of the amount of crime that actually occurs.
A. Persons sentenced to prison
B. Crimes reported to the police
C. Cases prosecuted
D. number of people on probation or parole.
B. Crimes reported to police
In a classical experiment, any changes between the pretest and posttest can be attributed to the treatment.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Candice believes that people convicted of sex offenses are evil and cannot be changed. She is conducting an evaluation of a new treatment program for those convicted of sex offenses. Candace sees some change in the participants’ behavior, but she dismisses it as a fluke and concludes in the report that the program is ineffective and should not be funded. Candace has shown a lack of ______ in her research.
A. Confidentiality
B. Reliability
C. Objectivity
D. Validity
C. Objectivity
One of the oldest forms of criminological research is the use of network analysis.
A. True
B. False
B. False
_____ involves the use of multiple methods in measuring the same entity.
A. Triangulation
B. treatment
C. Replication
D. Equivalence
A. Triangulation
In the classical experiment, the control group and the experimental group should be composed of people who are different in multiple ways.
A. True
B. False
B. False
based on victim surveys conducted in the 1960s, about half of all crime was reported to the police.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Researchers need to be able to observe and record behaviors, even those that they find morally wrong, without judgement.
A. True
B. False
A. True
______ is a fanatical adherence to a particular research method, often at the expense of a concern for substance.
A. Methodological narcissism
B. Academic arrogance
C. Quantitative bias
D. Research overexposure
A. Methodological narcissism
According to Zimring, which of the following led to the dramatic drop in crime in New York City from 1990 to 2000?
A. Street policing
B. Mass incarceration
C. Zero tolerance drug policies
D. Problem solving courts
A. Street policing
There is a general agreement that some behaviors are acceptable and others are unacceptable. Maplewood citizens decide that it might be a good idea to formalize some of their norms so that there is no confusion for anyone, so they work to pass laws. What model best explains the development of laws in Maplewood?
A. Interactionist
B. Reactionist
C. Consensus
D. Conflict
C. Consensus
Based on estimates from the National Center for Victims of Crime, violent crime in the United States costs over a billion dollars a year.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Which of these crimes was a major problem in the United States in the past but is rarely an issue today?
A. Grave robbery
B. Kidnapping
C. Rape
D. Larceny
A. Grave Robbery
Criminologists agree that laws represent the formalization of the mores agreed upon by society.
A. True
B. False
B. False
Kidnappings in the United States were frequent in the 1930s, but are rare today.
A. True
B. False
B. False
Which of the following is one of the manifest functions of the criminal justice system?
A. Uphold the status quo
B. Provide aid to victims
C. Prevent overcriminalization
D. Arrest Criminals
D. Arrest criminals
The failure of the grand jury to indict Officer Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was viewed by many as an example of the _____ of deviant acts by the police, leading to nationwide protests.
A. Latent function
B. Undercriminalization
C. Overcriminalization
D. Manifest function
B. Undercriminalization
Which of the following is an example of an act that is mala prohibita but not deviant?
A. Speeding
B. Vagrancy
C. Burglary
D. Incest
A. speeding
Western societies have undergone a long-term evolutionary development from sacred, or Gemeinschaft, societies to _____ societies.
A. Homogeneous
B. Secular
C. Agricultural
D. Religious
B. Secular
In the _____ stage, philosophy looked to secular events to provide understanding through a spirit of rationality and logical argumnet.
A. Scientific
B. Theological
C. Metaphysical
D. Secular
C. Metaphysical
Which of the following is a characteristic of a culture that uses folkways and mores as informal social control and does not need formal laws?
A. Advanced technology
B. Homogeneity
C. Conflict
D. Industrialization
B. Homogeneity
In the United States, many crimes, such as murder and robbery, are seem as crimes against the victim or family of the victim.
A. True
B. False
B. False - against society
In Carlisle, there is a problem with teenage drinking. The teenagers living in the wealthy area of tow drink at their homes while the teenagers living in the poorer area drink in the park. Citizens in Carlisle press for a new law specifically criminalizing underage drinking in public areas. This leads to teenagers from poorer families being arrested while teenagers from wealthy families go unnoticed. What model explains the origin of the new law?
A. Conflict
B. Consensus
C. Latent outcome
D. Interactionist
A. Conflict
Armored car robberies are a modern form of stagecoach robberies from the past.
A. True
B. False
A. True
When citizens protest pollution of a local waterway by a nearby corporation, the corporation’s CEO responds that the government fines for pollution are so low that polluting is worth it, even if some people get sick from it or cannot drink the water. Citizens begin to criticize the _____ of pollution that is allowing the corporation to ruin the water supply.
A. Environmental racism
B. Consensus model
C. Status quo bias
D. Undercriminalization
D. Undercriminalization
