criminology test 1 Flashcards
What is Deviance?
Behavior that is an unacceptable violation of a major social norm and elicits strong negative reactions by social control agents
What are the characteristics of deviance?
Behaviors we consider deviant are not fixed
Subject to: time, space, culture, and situations
What are the perceptions of deviance?
It is important to identify the party judging the behavior: victim, offender, community, criminal justice agency
What is crime?
Crime is human conduct in violation of criminal laws of the federal government, state, or local jurisdiction which has the power to make such laws
What are the forms of law?
Civil law: laws which regulate arrangements between individuals
Criminal law: laws which regulate those actions which have the potential to harm interest of the state
What are the perspectives of social behavior?
Biological/Medical: focus is on distinguishing physical features and physiological attributes, or psychological features
Sociological: Attention is given on the social environment - family life, school life
Legal: dictated by the boundary of laws - human behavior within the boundary of law
What are the concepts of law?
Natural Law Concept: Principle of right and wrong is God given
Focus is on morality
Applies to us at all times and cultures
Legalistic approach to crime: Need to criminalize the act to make it illegal
Social concept of the law: focus on the processes by which crimes are defined and criminals become labeled as such
What are the goals of criminology?
To understand how behaviors are defined as crime
The measurement of crime
To understand the root cause of human behavior
To evaluate social control response designed to prevent crime and punish criminals
What are the Crime Data and Social Policy?
Data provides a picture of crime in society
Data used to test theory
Data used to analyze and evaluate existing crime control programs
Data used to assess victimization/offender risks
What are the Major Sources of Crime Statistics?
UCR, NCVS, and self-reports
What are the Part I offenses of the UCR?
Violent crimes: forcible rape (note revised UCR definition), aggravated assault, robbery, and murder (criminal homicide)
Property Crimes: Larceny, arson, motor vehicle theft, burglary
What are the Part II Offenses?
All other offenses except traffic violations
What are the strengths of the UCR?
Provides a good picture of long term trends
Provides a good picture of the number of crimes that are reported to the police
Large police compliance
What are the limitations of the UCR?
Dark figure of crime
Recording problems: only the most serious offense is included in the UCR
Omission of data
Politics: police may want to improve their image
What are self-report studies?
To assess the extent of crime by asking people to confess about their conduct
Anonymous questionnaires
Generally given to high school students and prison inmates
What are the major findings of the self reports?
Unlawful behavior - almost everyone by their own admission has broken some criminal law
Dark figure of crime - amount of hidden crime is enormous
Continuum of crime - people more or less commit crime (they fall along this continuum)
What are the limitations of the self reports?
Range of conduct - focus is usually on the young and those without power
Sample - usually institutional populations: students, prison inmates
Survey instrument design - lack validity?
What is the NCVS?
National Crime Victimization Survey
Collected by the Bureau of Census and Bureau of Justice Statistics
Interviews individuals in elected households over the age of 12
Asks about experiences as victims during a specific time
What offenses does the NCVS include?
6 offenses from Part I excluding arson and murder
Omits Part II crimes - many are considered to be victimless crimes
What are the strengths of the NCVS?
Provides a rich source of data
Provides info on circumstances surrounding the offenses
Good source of comparison with police data
What are the limitations of the NCVS?
False reports
Ignores victimization of organizations
Doesn’t include crimes against children under 12
Like UCR only records the most serious victimization act
Why was the Classical School formed?
In reaction to a savage and inefficient criminal justice system in France, characterized by torture and the presumption of guilt
Social reformers were beginning to suggest more rational approaches to criminology
Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham laid the foundation for classical criminology
What were the CS Assumptions of human behavior?
Individuals are rational actors (free will)
Hedonism - actions are self-centered to maximize pleasure
What were the problems with existing laws and punishment?
Punishment has not been appropriate to the seriousness of the offense
Punishment has been too uncertain and too arbitrary
Theory of social contract - laws should function as social contract
Role of the government is to promote “social utilitarianism” - provide the greatest good for the greatest number
What were the Classical Principles?
Laws: minimal, no unnecessary excess of laws
Equity: like offenses should receive like treatment
No ex-post facto laws
How did the Classical School view punishments?
Should be fixed - written down, requirement of notice
Punishment must fit the crime - punishment must be in proportionate harm to society (not too excessive) (felicific calculus)
Limits of punishment - only offender should be punished to fulfill deterrence objectives
What are the principles of deterrence?
Certainty - of punishment, must follow the crime
Celerity - must be swift, crime and punishment but be associated together
Severity - in proportion to the punishment
What are the goals of sentencing?
Preventing crime is better than to punish
Deterrence (2 types)
general - to deter members of society from engaging in similar behavior
Specific (individual) - punish so the offender will not repeat the offense
Retribution - “just deserts” to impose a punishment in order to restore the balance between victim and offender
Why was the Positivist school formed?
In reaction to the failures of the Classical School
Reflected changes in beliefs about human nature
What were the assumptions of the Positivist School?
Human behavior is not a product of free will
Determinism: Human behavior is shaped by existing factors
Criminal behavior is a product of abnormalities (internal or external)
Organic society - the social unit is important. Individual rights are secondary to the protection of the social unit
Role of the government - social protection, social unit is most important
What are the principles of the Positivist School?
Problem of crime - criminals are sick, abnormal (medical model)
Scientific analysis - need to determine causal factors, and make predictions of future dangers
Principle of future dangers - identify offenders. State can intervene any time
Nature and function of trials - not to protect individual rights. Help make future predictions with the use of professionals
What are the PS goals of treatment/protection?
Rehabilitation - based on scientific analysis, diverse behaviors require diverse treatment, can go beyond individual to the source of the problem (parents)
Incapacitation - if can’t cure, must incapacitate to protect society by incarcerating dangerous individuals, reduce likelihood of committing crime in the future
What is money laundering?
Money laundering is putting illegally obtained money (from a drug deal or a type of terrorist organization) and running it through lots of bank accounts so it cannot be traced back to who had it first
What is computer crime?
Computer crime is illegal activity done in the cyberspace, such as cyber attacks that can be caused by terrorists
What is trafficking?
Illegally transporting people or objects to use them for monetary gain. There are multiple types of trafficking
What is criminology?
The scientific concern with the phenomenon of crime
What is a criminologist?
Researchers who collect data on crime and study crime itself
What is Deviance?
Behavior that violates social norms
What is crime?
Crime is any human conduct that violates a criminal law and is subject to punishment
What is terrorism?
An unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims
What are the Consensus and Conflict Models?
Consensus model - certain acts are deemed so threatening to the society’s survival that they are designated crimes. If the vast majority of a group shares this view, we can say the group has acted by consensus.
Conflict model - the criminal law expresses the values of the ruling class in a society, and the criminal justice system is a means of controlling the classes that have no power.
What is the Criminal Justice System?
A system that inputs the findings of crime research into reforming crime throughout the world
What are the 7 basic requirements of crime?
The actus reus requirement
The legality requirement
The causation requirement
The mens rea requirement
The concurrence requirement
The punishment requirement
The harm requirement
What are the typologies of crime?
Violent crimes
Crimes against property
White-collar and corporate crime
Drug, alcohol, and sex-related crimes
How do you measure crime?
Data is collected on types of crime and the ages of who commits those crimes the most.
What is theory?
A systematic set of principles that explain how two or more phenomena are related
What are the different methods of collecting data?
Survey research
Experiments
Observation
Case studies
What is primary and secondary data?
Primary: the facts and observations researchers gather for the purpose of a particular study
Secondary: Those they find in government sources, or data that were previously collected for a different investigation
What is the Aging-out Phenomenon?
Decline in criminal activities with age
Who was Jeremy Bentham?
Focused on rational crime control, was a co-founder of the classical school with Beccaria. He wanted to achieve “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”
Who was Cesare Beccaria?
Co-inventor of the classical school. Emphasized individual dignity within the criminal justice system, standing against the use of torture and capital punishment. Wrote a book called “On Crimes and Punishment”. Highlighted wanting to have a criminal justice system that was to serve the people rather than the monarchy.
What is Utilitarianism?
Assumes that human actions are calculated in accordance with their likelihood of bringing happiness or unhappiness. He proposed the idea of “felicific calculus” which means we are human calculators who put all factors into an equation to decide if a crime is worth committing.
What is Determinism?
A philosophy contending that human behavior is caused by biological and psychological factors specific to individuals and/or the structural factors that comprise one’s environment
What are Eugenics?
People inherited mental illness, criminal tendencies, and even poverty, and that these conditions could be bred out of the gene pool.
Who was Cesare Lombroso?
He founded the Italian positivist school, and argued that a criminal mind was inherited and could be identified by internal and external factors.
What is Atavistic Stigmata?
Physical features of creatures at an earlier stage of development, before they became fully human
What is the Somatotype School?
Looked for the link between physical characteristics and crime. Talked about mesomorph traits (most likely to commit crimes), also spoke about endomorph and ectomorph.
What is psychological determinism?
A fundamental belief that human behavior, consciousness, and experience are determined or explainable.
What is sociological determinism?
The theory that social interactions alone determine individual behavior
