Midterm 1 Flashcards
Crime deviance continuum:
What determines seriousness? (CSH)
- Degree of consensus that an act is wrong
- Severity of societies response to that act
- Degree of harm
Three agencies of the Canadian Legal System (CLS)
- The police
- The courts
- The correctional/prison system
2 Theories of law creation
- The consensus model
- The conflict model
What is the consensus model?
That law is a product of social agreement about what is morally wrong
What is the conflict model?
That law originates out of conflict between specific groups that have different beliefs and interests.
- Groups have different levels of power and those with the power want to protect their interests
Cesare Beccaria’s (1764) An Essay on Crimes and Punishment was a critique of what?
Beccaria was criticizing the cruelty and inhumanity that characterized the criminal justice system of his day
3 sources of crime statistics
- UCR 2.0
- Victimization Surveys
- Self-report Surveys
What are the limitations of the UCR?
Doesn’t show the dark figure of crime
Why criminologist need crime data (DEERP)?
Description – How much and what types of crime
Explanation – Crime trends? Social or geographical patterns?
Evaluation – Is crime prevention or control working?
Risk Assessment – Location, time, environmental designs – how people can avoid risk, the more known about when and where crime is happening
Prediction – prediction = prevention and prevention is preferrable to punishment
Adolphe Quetelet, one of the key figures of “The Statistical School” of crime theory found that crime is influenced by what?
Social Organization
- society prepares the crime and the guilty parties are just the instruments by which it is executed
What are the three key beliefs shared by Biological Theorists?
- Criminals = biologically distinct from non-criminals
- Biological difference exists at birth, predispose people to crime
- Criminals can be identified by their differences (e.g. genetics, physical structure, brain structure)
Explain Cesare Lombroso’s Theory of Atavism:
o What are stigmata?
Features of a criminals that defines them as atavism:
Big jaw
Hairy
Big cheek bones
Abnormal heads
Insensitive to pain
More neanderthal-like
What is William Sheldon’s Somatotype Theory?
There are THREE different body types
Each with different temperaments and personalities
The idea was looking at different body types could predict personality traits
What are the traits of an endomorph?
Round and soft
Easygoing and happy
What are the traits of a mesomorph?
Well-built and muscular
Aggressive and reactive
What are the traits of an ectomorph?
Tall and lean
Introverted and nervous