Definitions Flashcards
What is the definition of Criminology according to Sutherland and Cressy, 1960?
“Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes within its scope the process of making laws, of breaking laws, and of reacting toward the breaking of laws”
What is the definition of Criminology?
Criminology is the scientific study of lawmaking, lawbreaking and the response to lawbreaking.
It is also the study of crime trends, the nature of crime and the theories of crime.
Criminology aims to understand crime construction, looks at the explanations for why people commit crime and also looks at the societal responses to crime
What is the definition of Criminology according to Rock and Holdaway, 1997?
Criminology is “a rendezvous” discipline”
What is the definition of the subject of Criminal Justice?
The study of Criminal Justice is closely related to the study of Criminology and involves studying the agencies related to the control of crime
What is the definition of Crime, within the criminal law?
Within the criminal law, a crime is conduct (or an act of omission which, when it results in certain consequences, may lead to prosecution and punishment in a criminal court
What is the definition of Crime according to Tappan, 1947?
“Crime is an intentional act in violation of the criminal law…committed without defence or excuse, and penalised by the state as a felony or misdemeanour. In studying the offender there can be no presumption that…persons are criminals unless they also be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a particular offence”
What is the definition of Crime according to Sutherland, 1949?
“The essential characteristic of crime is that it is behaviour which is prohibited by the state as an injury to the state and against with the state may react, at least as a last resort, by punishment. The two abstract criteria generally regarded by legal scholars as necessary elements in a definition of crime are legal description of an act as socially harmful and legal provision of a penalty for the act”
What is the definition of Witch-Hunt?
A search for witches or evidence of witchcraft often involving moral panic
What is the definition of Moral Panic?
An intense feeling expressed in a population that appears to threaten the social order
What is the definition of Moral Panic (Oxford University’s Dictionary of Sociology)?
“The process of arousing social concern over an issue - usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media”
What is the definition of deviance according to Becker, 1963?
”..is the product of a transaction that takes place between a social group as a rule breaker. Whether an act is deviant then, depends on how people react to it.. The degree to which other people will respond to a given act as deviant varies greatly. Several, kinds of variation are worth noting. First of all, there is variation over time”
What is the definition of Moral Panic according to Cohen, 1972?
“a condition, episode, person or group of persons which emerge to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests “
What is the definition of ‘sex’?
‘Sex’ refers to biological and physiological characteristics that define women and men, usually assigned at birth
What is the definition of ‘gender’?
‘Gender’ refers to socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women
What is the definition of ‘transgender’?
‘Transgender’ is a term for people whose gender identity, expression or behaviour is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth
