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Criminology and the Criminal Justice System > Exam I > Flashcards

Exam I Flashcards

1
Q

Mala in se crimes

A
  • Crimes that are morally wrong

- Often more serious crimes

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2
Q

Mala prohibita crimes

A
  • Or statutory crimes, are acts that are criminal because they are prohibited by law
  • Reflect public opinion at that given time

(Ex: Gay marriage, speeding)

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3
Q

The consensus perspective

A

-A perspective that sees laws defining crime as the product of social agreement or consensus about what criminal behavior is

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4
Q

The conflict perspective

A
  • A perspective that views the definition of crime as one outcome of a struggle among different groups competing for resources in society
  • Holds that laws are influenced and created by those who control the political and/or economic power
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5
Q

The wedding cake model

A

Layer 1: Celebrated cases (Ex: Rare special cases, Ex: OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony)

Layer 2: The serious felonies (Ex: robbery, rape)

Layer 3: The lesser felonies (Ex: Drug felonies)

Layer 4: The misdemeanor (Ex: Misdemeanors)

-Goes down layers from rare to common, severe to mild

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6
Q

Due Process Model

A
  • A Criminal justice value system that emphasizes individual rights at all stages of the justice process
  • Argues that it is better to let guilty people go free than convict the innocent
  • Likely saw its height in the 1960’s when the Supreme Court was extending constitutional due processes requirement
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7
Q

Crime Control Model

A
  • A criminal justice value system that emphasizes the efficient arrest and processing of alleged criminal defense
  • Considers repression of criminal conducts as the most important function of criminal justice
  • Resists strong procedurals protections
  • Has dominated the public debate over how the criminal justice system should work since the 1980’s
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8
Q

Moral Panic

A
  • A feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society
  • U.S residents believe that there is more crime than in reality
  • Women carry misperceptions about which people and situations are the most dangerous
  • Fear of crime has lessened somewhat in the last decade, but still significant
  • Many demographic factors affect fear of crime
  • A moderate level of fear may be beneficial to a citizen
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9
Q

Interest groups

A
  • Individuals who seek to influence the administration of justice form interest groups
  • Focus either on the overall administration of justice or on one particular aspect of the systems or law to forward their interests
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10
Q

How can the legislature influence the criminal justice system

A

Decides:

  • What actions are legitimate for the CJ professionals
  • How much money the country will spend on prisons, policing, the court system, and victim services
  • Influence on the priorities that local justice agencies establish
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11
Q

Uniform crime report (UCR)

A
  • Committee on Uniform crime records formed in 1980’s to bring uniform process to crime measurements
  • Part 1 offenses, the most serious offenses, were called called the Crime Index
  • FBI began to collect and publish crime statistics from all state law enforcement agencies in the form of the Uniform Crime Reports
  • Use of Crime Index as a measure of criminality discontinued in 2004 because it was skewed toward property crimes
  • UCR data can be confusing for several reasons including different state definition of crime
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12
Q

NIBRS

A
  • Created to enhance the UCR systems with more informative data
  • Collects much more detailed info about individual crimes
  • Only 44% of nation’s law enforcement participates, due to limited resources (Drawback)
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13
Q

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

A
  • Created to get more accurate pictures of crime, including those crimes not reported by victims
  • Interviews both victims and non-victims
  • Includes both reported and non-reported crimes
  • Does not include several serious crimes that the UCR includes
  • Focuses mainly on victims and their victimizations
  • Demonstrates that many crimes are not measured under UCR
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14
Q

Self-Report surveys

A
  • Important sources of info about offenders and their offenses
  • Self-reports tell us about crimes committed by people who were never caught
  • Anonymity protections of reporting allows offenders to reveal undiscovered incidents of crime
  • Very good for research purposes
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15
Q

Dark Figures of crime

A

-Group of unreported and unrecorded crimes

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16
Q

Crime against persons (General knowledge)

A
  • Attacks or threats of an attack on a person’s body
  • NCVS reports far more incidents of crimes against persons than UCR
  • Both NCVS and UCR data shows general rise until a peak in the early 1980’s, then a decline
  • Crimes against persons constitute a relatively small proportion of all crime
  • Crimes against persons have the most potential for causing greater damage to individuals
  • Age and gender are important determinants of rate and type of victimization
17
Q

Homicide:

First-degree murder

Second-degree murder

Voluntary Manslaughter

Involuntary manslaughter

A

First-degree murder:
-Offender must have purposely killed his victim and must have planned to do so at least a short time in advance

Second-degree murder:
-Intentional killing, “Heat of passion”, unplanned murder

Voluntary Manslaughter:
-An offender is provoked and loses control, killing his victim in the heat of passion

Involuntary manslaughter:
-The killing results from an offender’s careless actions

18
Q

Spree killers

Mass murderers

Serial murderers

A

Spree killers:

  • Victims are killed within a fairly narrow time span, from several hours to a few days
  • Less of a cooling off period than mass murders

Mass murderers:
-Multiple murders that occur at one place and time

Serial murderers:
-Killing of 3 or more people over an extended period

19
Q

Robbery

Burglary

A

Robbery:
-While taking personal property from the victim, the robber either uses or threatens to use force

Burglary:

  • Entering another person’s property w/ the intent to commit a felony such as larceny (taking cash/property)
  • The most common serious victimization perpetrated on those living in the U.S.
  • Regardless of the value of the stolen property, can still inflict psychological trauma
20
Q

Most drug users in the U.S (Race)

A

White

21
Q

Most individuals serving time for drug use (Race)

A

African Americans

22
Q

Types of Crime against persons:

Homicide

Assault and Battery

Sexual violence

A

Homicide:
-First degree murder, second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter

Assault and Battery:

  • Harmful or offensive physical attack by one person upon another
  • Usually start w/ interpersonal conflict and escalate to violence

Sexual violence:

  • Encompasses a range of crimes involving sexual intercourse by force
  • Sexual victimization means “forced or coerced sexual intimacy”
  • Victims are likely to know their assailant
  • Victimization research suggests that only 1/4 sexual assaults is reported to the police
  • The closer the relationship between offender and victim, the less likely the victim will contact police
  • Many rapes occur when the perpetrator and/or the victim uses alcohol or other substances
23
Q

Positivist and classical schools

A

Positivist:

  • Replaced the classical school concept of free will and rational choice with the concept of determinism
  • Determinism: the idea that criminal behavior is a product of biological, psychological, and/or social forces that are beyond a person’s control
  • Treatment of convicted offenders prevents them from committing crime

Classical:

  • Choosing to be a criminal
  • Views the criminal as having free will and freedom of individual choice to deliberately choose a criminal path
  • The presence of punishment in the general population prevents crime

-Both have a limited ability to predict criminal behavior

24
Q

Psychopathy

A
  • A disorder of personality revealed by a lifelong pattern of antisocial behavior about which the individual has no remorse
  • In touch w/ reality and appear to be quite normal on the surface, but manipulate, are superficial, self-centered, and lack empathy
25
Q

Social Learning Theory

A
  • We learn behavior, which is then maintained or extinguished by the rewards or punishment we associate it with (wrong)
  • How a behavior is also influenced by his experiences w/ the behavior of others
26
Q

Strain theory

A
  • Proposes that extraordinary pressured (Ex: Father killed in a car crash’s family) increase the likelihood to commit a crime
  • Strain factors can come from variety of sources (individuals, groups, and social institutions)
27
Q

Labeling Theory

A
  • Attempts to explain the route a person takes in becoming a criminal
  • Gradual stages of criminality
  • The role that society plays in defining a person as a criminal (Eg: Ex Con)
  • When people have these labels it is sort of a “self-fulfilling” prophecy
28
Q

Crips and Bloods: Made in America

A
  • Occurs after police brutality civil rights case (Excessive force against African Americans was the catalyst to revolt)
  • Cycle of hopelessness continues
  • Shitty police and Lack of father figure=problem
29
Q

_____ law is the foundation of the legal system in the United States

A

Common Law

english law, relies on judge’s interpretations of previous cases, or precedent

30
Q

Civil vs. Criminal Law:

Differences

Similarities

Standard of proof

A

Civil:

  • Cases brought by injured party
  • Civil law operates under the assumption that individual has been injured by the defendant’s actions
  • Civil defendants (pay damages, no incarceration/death penalty)
  • A lot of control for victim

Criminal Law:

  • Cases brought by government
  • Criminal defendants have more severe sanctions (Ex: incarceration, death, fines, etc)
  • Criminal defendants found guilty
  • Criminal law operates under the assumption that society has been injured by the defendant’s actions
  • Very little control for victim

Standard of proof:
Civil: Preponderance of the evidence
Criminal: Beyond a reasonable doubt

31
Q

Corpus Delicti

A
  • Proof that a crime has been committed
  • The state must prove that a crime has been committed
  • The prosecutor must show that a defendant’s criminal action was the product of his criminal intent and that this intended action (or failure to act) resulted in harm or injury to the victim
32
Q

Inchoate crime

A
  • A crime in which the person has mens rea and takes steps to commit the actus reaus, but is unable to complete the offense
  • May still face criminal liability
  • Attempt is a common inchoate crime
33
Q

Defenses:

Duress

Entrapment

Insanity

Self-defense

Infancy

Mistake

A

Duress:

  • Being coerced into committing a crime
  • Forced because failure to commit would result in more serious harm
  • Not a usable defense for murder

Entrapment:

  • Being deceived into committing a crime
  • Occurs when law enforcements traps or tricks person into committing a crime that they would not have otherwise comitted

Insanity:

  • As a defense, refers to an individual whose mind was disoriented because of defective mental processes at the time of committing a crime
  • Provides lack of mens rea
  • Not guilty by insanity, usually results in psychotic treatment

Self-defense:

  • Protecting yourself or your property
  • When action against the perceived threat must be necessary, action must be proportionate to the threat, and the treat against which you are defending yourself must be immediate or about to happen you can use force to defend yourself (Self defense)

Infancy:
-Sometimes protects very young offenders from criminal liability

Mistake:
-The defense of mistake argues that a mistake related to a fact of the crime may have affected the state of mind of the defendant in such a way as to cause him/her to commit the crime, but w/o mens rea

34
Q

M’Naghten Rule

A

-Unable to know the nature and quality of the act as being wrong, or unable to distinguish right from wrong

35
Q

The mind of a killer (Joel Rifkin serial killer segment)

A
  • Killed 17 prostitutes
  • victims were nearly invisible to society
  • Lie to yourself to keep killing
  • Think of people as things
36
Q

PBS Frontline’s “A Crime of Insanity”

A
  • Mentally ill student sent to prison
  • Offender clearly insane, schizophrenic, paranoid, and out of touch w/ reality
  • Committed suicide
  • Case was wrong for putting someone ill away (shouldn’t have won)
37
Q

Actus reus

A

The act that makes a specific act a crime

Ex: for murder, would be to cause another person’s death

38
Q

Organized crime

A

An ongoing criminal conspiracy that exists to profit from providing illicit goods and services

(Ex: gambling, prostitution, auto theft, drug trafficking)

Criminology and the Criminal Justice System (4 decks)

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