MIDTERM 1 (chp 1,3,4,5)

Question 1

What is Deviance?

Answer 1

any behaviour that violates social norms.
- most often has negative connotation.
- positive deviance: a good samaritan; running into the fire to save sb; olympic athletes

Question 2

What is Over-conformity (to social norms)?

Answer 2

Deviance based on UNQUESTIONED ACCEPTANCE of norms; involves “supranormal” actions and, in extreme cases, leads to fascism.
- Eg. olympic athletes

Question 3

What is unconformity? (to social norms)

Answer 3

Deviance based on IGNORING or REJECTING norms; involves “subnormal” actions and, in extreme cases, leads to anarchy.

Question 4

What are social norms and how do we learn them?

Answer 4

• Silent road map about expectations that guide our behaviour.
• Rewards for conformity: eg. shopping therapy -> rewarding bc u may be buying sth that helps u conform with what the trends are. -> coming to the norms of society makes us feel like we belong.

Question 5

How do we know what the norms are?

Answer 5

• Observation - imitation
• Education (eg. an orientation for uni)
• Correction - feedback -> sanctions which are applied when you step out of line
• breakdown
• Emotional Response

Question 6

Is all deviance crimes?

Answer 6

No, not all deviance is crime.

Question 7

Is all crime deviance?

Answer 7

No, not all crime is deviance!
- Eg. driving -> speed limit on highway is 110, but almost everyone goes at least 110.
-> eg. when ppl usually drive 125/130, you will also have to drive over the speed limit to be safe.

Question 8

Is crime something everyone does? Or, is it confined to the “criminal” classes?

Answer 8

• Almost all of us sometime in our past have committed a crime for which we could be sent to jail.
  -> NOT confined to criminal cases
• the most dangerous place for humans is in the home.

Question 9

What are the elements of deviance?

Answer 9

1. Deviance is socially constructed.
   - We respond to not the thing itself, but how it has been constituted.
   -> brought into existence by groups and is accepted as true by that group (collectively held)
   -> Humans create meaning through interaction
   -> Culturally relative
2. Deviance is contextual/situationally specific
   - 2 elements:
   -> the idea of what is deviant changes according to social group (eg. strict church, absolutely no dancing at weddings in his church -> vs other cultures -> dancing is encouraged eg. powwow)
   -> the idea of what is deviance changes according to the situation (boardroom v. rink) (urban v. rural: knowing everybody and their business vs the city; leaving the door open)
3. Deviance is culturally relative.
4. The concept and definition of deviance changes over time. (eg wearing seatbelts, tattoos)

Question 10

What is the key take-away about norms?

Answer 10

Norms are ever changing and silently guide all areas of human behaviour that reward conformity and sanction violations.

Question 11

What is the only violent crime typically committed by strangers?

Answer 11

Robbery

Question 12

What do Class Conflict Theorists believe?

Answer 12

That laws are passed by members of the ruling class to maintain their privileged position by keeping the common people under control.
- Activities that threaten the powerful are defined as illegal, and the legal mechanism of the state is used to enforce the laws.
-> eg. Hayter Reed, Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs used the Indian Act to control the Indigenous population. -> urged the police to continue enforcing the system.

Question 13

What is Group Conflict Theory?

Answer 13

a perspective that recognizes that all laws are the result of a political process and that this process typically involves a conflict or a debate among various interest groups.
-> a theory that attempts to explain certain types of criminal behaviour as resulting from a conflict between the interests of divergent groups.
Eg. 1988 Supreme Court of Canada decided the laws restricting abortion were unconstitutional. -> since then, decisions over the legality of abortion have meant that Canada has had no criminal law concerning abortion. -> bc the groups on different sides of the issue are so committed to their positions, it is unlikely that such laws will be passed in the near future.

Question 14

What is “Green Criminology?”

Answer 14

Is rooted in the environmental and animal rights movements.
- environmental issues include air and water pollution and harm to natural ecosystems such as oceans and forests.
- Criminologists interested in animal rights have introduced “speciesism” which refers to discrimination against nonhuman animals.
- Green criminology encompasses a broad range of behaviours ranging from acts that are clearly harmful, such as dumping toxic waste in the ocean, to acts that many ppl consider acceptable, such as eating meat or wearing leather shoes.
- Green criminologists believe that criminology should study socially harmful actions as well as acts that violate the criminal law.
- Grounded in the philosophy of ecological citizenship -> notions of morality and rights should be extended to “nonhuman nature” and that societies should adopt a notion of ecological citizenship that obliges them to recognize that the environment must be protected for future generations.

Question 15

What is terrorism?

Answer 15

The deliberate use or the threat to use violence against civilians in order to attain political ideological and religious goals
- complication with terrorism is that while we normally view terrorism as referring to acts committed against a government, the term can also be applied to actions committed by government against its own people. -> eg. Mao Zedong who controlled China from 1949-1976, killed millions of his own people in order to maintain their political control.

Question 16

What have governments done in the War on Terror?

Answer 16

Many governments have violated the rights of their own citizens.
- Eg. Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen was returning from a holiday when he was apprehended in New York by US officials and bc he was expected to have ties to al-Qaeda, he was sent to Syria where he was tortured in a Syrian prison. -> RCMP had violated its own policies by providing US authorities with info about him that was inaccurate and unfairly negative

Question 17

What is surveillance?

Answer 17

Any systematic focus on personal information in order to influence, manage, entitle or control those who information is collected .
- surveillance can cause harm: 2014 Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner filed a court action against the Toronto Police Service bc it refused to stop releasing information about attempted suicides to other agencies. -> precipitated by a case of a woman who missed a Caribbean cruise after she was refused admission to the US bc she had attempted suicide several years earlier.

Question 18

What is one big consequence of the collection of personal information?

Answer 18

Social sorting -> data is used to make decisions about our lives.
- Eg. among ppl who have been involved with the justice system, the desire to avoid surveillance can limit involvement with institutions such as banks, schools, and hospitals that track and share information. -> can impede their reintegration into society.

Question 19

What is a major issue of surveillance?

Answer 19

The increasing capacity of corporations and governments to link surveillance technologies, as commercial companies aggregate data from multiple sources and as governments establish fusion centres that integrate a variety of different databases to enhance security or to monitor and deliver government surveillance capabilities.
- Eg. Drones
- Social media and privacy
- Online DNA matching -> serial killer with ancestry DNA
- Facial recognition -> eg. Ticketmaster partnering with Blink Identity -> facial recognition systems for the US Department of Defense. -> concertgoers enter its venue by facial scanning rather than tickets. -> but if hacked, we cannot be reissued another face.

Question 20

What does the term Criminology refer to?

Answer 20

The body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. -> includes the
- processes of making laws, - breaking laws, and
- reacting to the breaking of laws.
- objective is to develop a body of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime and treatment.

Question 21

What are the six major areas of criminology?

Answer 21

the definition of crime and criminals, the origins and role of law, the social distribution of crime, the causation of crime, patterns of behaviour, and societal reactions to crime.

Question 22

Our behaviour is strongly influenced by what?

Answer 22

norms, many of which we have internalized.
- most of the time rules are enforced through informal means such as the disapproval of family and friends; in some cases the rules are formalized by laws.

Question 23

What is crime defined as legally?

Answer 23

An act that violates the criminal law and is punishable with jail terms, fines, and other sanctions.
- discussing white-collar crime, Sutherland said that criminologists should also include violations of other types of laws in addition to criminal law.
- Schwendingers: crime be defined as a violation of human rights.
- Hagan: should consider deviance and crime as a continuum ranging from minor acts of deviance to serious crimes.

Question 24

What do consensus theorists believe?

Answer 24

That laws represent the will of most of the people in a particular society.

Question 25

What do conflict theorists believe?

Answer 25

Law reflects power relationships in society, as those with power use the law to help maintain their position.

Question 26

Can Dr. Evil be convicted of attempted murder if he shot into Austin Powers’ bed when we was not there, believing that he was (since Mini-Me assured Dr. Evil Austin Powers was asleep)?

Answer 26

• Yes. -> is about intention

Question 27

Is prostitution a crime?

Answer 27

• no → the sexual act is not a crime
  
  • the activities around the sexual act are criminalized (solicitation) and living off the avails of a prostitute (if you live off a prostitute’s income)

Question 28

Has legalizing alcohol and gambling decreased involvement in organized crime?

Answer 28

No.

Question 29

Are the costs higher for “street crime” or “white-collar” crime?

Answer 29

Monetary losses are higher from white-collar crime.

Question 30

True or false? It was legal in Canada for men to sexually assault their wives until 1983.

Answer 30

True

Question 31

What is the most common item stolen in break and enter thefts?

Answer 31

• Jewellery, electronics, wallets

Question 32

Where do Canadians tend to learn about Crime?

Answer 32

the media (TV and internet)

Question 33

What is crime?

Answer 33

Comes from latin term crimen meaning accusation.
- Legal definition: is what the law proclaims it to be and a crime is an act punishable by law.
-> any act that contradicts the criminal code.

Question 34

Does the act make a person guilty?

Answer 34

No! act DOES NOT make a person guilty, unless his/her mind is also guilty.
- 2 parts:
-> Actus Reus
-> Mens rea
- Prosecution must prove: accused behaviour cause the avent (AR)
-> simultaneously accompanied by certain state of mind (MR).

Question 35

What is the Actus Reus?

Answer 35

Accused behaviour caused event.
The act itself (sb must do sth that transgresses the criminal code)

Question 36

What is the Mens rea?

Answer 36

A certain state of mind.
- you also have to have the mental ability to know what you did was wrong
- not talking about negligence
- It is your responsibility to know what the laws are
- Eg. lady who didn’t think she needed a license bc she was travelling → you should know that you do (know the laws of the country you go to)
- the intention, the mental aspect of it → you have to have understood the consequences of your actions.

Question 37

What groups would be considered incapable of committing crime?

Answer 37

Those with mental disabilities.
- there are certain groups in our society who are not able to form the mens rea
- Eg. children under the age of 12 → by law children under the age of 12 are considered unable to form intent for crime → bc they are not able to process/understand the consequences of their actions
- People with certain mental illnesses

Question 38

If you buy a bag of baking powder and think you are purchasing coke, are you guilty of an offence?

Answer 38

Yes! Intention -> “guilty mind”
-> the intent is there, and you have the mental capacity to understand what you were doing (you knew buying coke was wrong and you were trying to do that)

Question 39

What is the History of Criminology?

Answer 39

• Coined in 1885 by Italian Law professor Raffaele Garofalo (Criminologia)
• Is now a discipline in its own right – interdisciplinary study of crime
• In Canada
  -> Denis Szabo -1960 first criminologist in Canada at the Universite de Montreal
  -> Centres for Criminology late 1970s
  -> First textbook – early 1990s Rick Linden and Vince Sacco

Question 40

What are the Institutes of Criminology?

Answer 40

• Universite de Montreal, University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, Simon Fraser University.
  -> Centres for Criminological Research throughout the country.
• Purpose:
  -> teach and train next generation of criminal justice staff
  -> work on particular problems as set by Solicitor General and Dept. of Justice
  -> Engage in scientific research

Question 41

What research requires ethical clearance?

Answer 41

Any research involving human subjects requires ethical clearance.

Question 42

What is the only violent crime typically committed by strangers?

Answer 42

• Robbery.
  -> in general, we are more likely to be victimized by sb we know

Question 43

You go into Starbucks and give the cashier a $50 bill and they give you $55 back → you know they gave you too much change, are you guilty of a crime?

Answer 43

• Yes, you stole. And you knew what you did was wrong.
• The act is a crime, its only an offence when you get accused.

Question 44

who is most likely to appear in the courts?

Answer 44

marginalized groups

Question 45

What were the roles for early criminologists?

Answer 45

• Frank Potts (1980s) , when making a case for centres of criminology in Canada (Simon Fraser, Centre for Criminology, Montreal), Stated:
  
  • To study criminology is to study one of mankind’s oldest and most stubborn problems…

Question 46

What was Nuremburg?

Answer 46

military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading German physicians for atrocities committed against humans in concentration camps during WWII.
- Nuremburg Code was established in 1948, stating that “The (a) voluntary (b) consent of the human subject is absolutely essential,” making it clear that subjects should give consent and that the benefits of research must outweigh the risks.
- Basis of university ethics

Question 47

What are the 10 standards of the Nuremburg Code?

Answer 47

1. Volunteers freely consent to participate
2. Researchers fully inform volunteers concerning the study
3. Risks associated with the study are reduced where possible
4. Researchers are responsible for protecting participants against remote harms
5. Participants can withdraw from the study at any time
6. Qualified researchers conduct the study
7. Cessation of the study if adverse effects emerge
8. Society should benefit from study findings
9. Research on humans, should be based on previous animal or other previous work
10. A research study should never begin if there is a reason to believe that death or injury may result

Question 48

What was the Declaration of Helsinki?

Answer 48

In 1964, the World Medical Association established recommendations guiding research involving human subjects.
Issues addressed:
- Research protocols should be reviewed by an independent committee prior to initiation
- Informed consent from research participants is necessary
- Research should be conducted by medically/scientifically qualified individuals
- Risks should not exceed benefits.

Question 49

How Did the Tuskegee Experiment Change How Ethics is Thought About?

Answer 49

• Why was it problematic?
  
  • no voluntary informed consent collected
  • they hid the true nature of their research
  • no ability to withdraw
  • the risks greatly outweighed the benefits
    
    • couldn’t protect the participants from harm
  • studied syphilis and those who didn’t have it in Black men (most marginalized ppl in society → took advantage of them (most marginalized0 in the name of science → racist overtones)
    
    • gave them incentives: free meals, free medical exams, free burial
    • at end of study, only 74 of the 600 men were still alive and many of their wives had been infected/their families had health

Question 50

What was the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilus?

Answer 50

• studied syphilis and those who didn’t have it in Black men (most marginalized ppl in society → took advantage of them (most marginalized in the name of science → racist overtones)
• gave them incentives: free meals, free medical exams, free burial
  - at end of study, only 74 of the 600 men were still alive and many of their wives had been infected/their families had health

Question 51

What ethical standards were violated by the Tuskegee experiment?

Answer 51

• no getting voluntary informed consent
• no ability to withdraw
• was given incentives
• did not protect participants
• took advantage of participants
• the risks greatly outweighed the benefits

Question 52

What was the Willowbrook School study (1956-1971)?

Answer 52

Children with intellectual disabilities were intentionally given hepatitis in an attempt to track the development of the disease and develop a vaccine.

Question 53

What was the Tearoom Trade Study (Laud Humphries) ?

Answer 53

• In the first part, he befriended men by acting as a “lookout”. Since the public washroom was in a park the researcher was able to take down some of the men’s liscense plate numbers. He then obtained identifying information on these men by tracing their car liscense plates via the police.
• A year later, in the second part of the study, the researcher utilized the identifying information he obtained to contact and subsequently, interview the men in their homes. To avoid being recognized, he altered his appearance and claimed he was conducting a study on health issues.
• The concerns with this study were the use of deception upon deception and the lack of opportunity for participants to provide informed consent.

Question 54

What must researchers ensure?

Answer 54

• Researchers must (usually) ensure:
  
  • Anonymity?
    
    • If you tell something about sth you did to a kid in the past, prof will tell the authorities -> eg crimes against children -> if you did anything else in the past, he will hold it in strict confidence → to keep credibility
• Confidentiality research causes no undue harm to participants
• informed consent of participants
• have not disguised the true nature/purpose of the research (manipulation)

Question 55

What are the challenges of researching crime?

Answer 55

The crime funnel affects police-recorded crime rate.
- Police cannot record unreported crime or crime of which they are unaware.
- The further into the CJS you go, the more obvious it becomes that you are collecting statistics on how the CJS operates (that is, that you are counting official decisions)
-> For example, data on the prison population provide valid indicators of one way that a society responds to crime, but are not a valid measure of the scope and nature of crime.
- statistics that we count very well: incarcerated people → how many people are already in an institution at all times

Question 56

What’s the crime funnel like?

Answer 56

• There is 441,000 break and enters
  -> (speculation) Only 31% of 441,000 reported to the police
• Only 2% of that 1/3 were convicted and only 1% of those 2% spent any time in jail.

Question 57

Why is counting crime problematic?

Answer 57

because much of it is committed in secret or goes unreported.
- The major problem of crime statistics is the DARK FIGURE OF CRIME:
-> crime that remains unreported, unrecorded, largely unknown

Question 58

What is the dark figure of crime?

Answer 58

Crime that remains unreported, unrecorded, and largely unknown -> causes problem with crime statistics

Question 59

What are Canadian Uniform Crime Reports (Official Statistics?)

Answer 59

The goal of Uniform Crime Reports is to provide uniform and comparable national statistics.
- Benefits because it is based on rates (based on a numerical denominator → rate per hundred thousand → then can compare places and jurisdictions to one another), not raw or total numbers.
- Anything that is reported to police gets added to the Uniform Crime Report
- Is all the crime in a given year that gets reported and comes to the attention of the police (statistical accounting)
- Allows, for comparisons between jurisdictions or over time, and
- Shows us different trends as well
- It is not influenced by differences in population size between jurisdictions, or changes in population size in one jurisdiction.

Question 60

Is the crime rate Increasing or Decreasing?

Answer 60

Staying about the same.
- Total Crime Rate went down in 2020
- But are staying relatively the same
- More domestic crimes being reported to police in 2020

Question 61

What percentage of the population do 12-17 yr olds make up?

Answer 61

About 10%.

Question 61

What percentage of crime is committed by younger offenders (between 12 and 18)?

Answer 61

About 20%.

Question 62

Youth Crime Statistics?

Answer 62

• 53,688 youth accused of a Criminal Code offence (excluding traffic).
  
  • Which represents a 3% drop and has been on a long downward trend, declining for over two decades after peaking in 1991.
• The rate of youth accused of violent crime increased 6%.
  
  • However, the violent youth crime rate increased, the Violent CSI (which measures both the volume and severity of crime involving youth accused (charged and not charged) decreased 4%, meaning that the relative severity of violent crime decreased, despite the volume of violent crime going up.
    In the Last Decade
• Between 2011 and 2021, the rate of youth accused of crime fell
  
  • Crime rates for youth has fallen considerably since 1960s
  • Crime rate for youth is lowest its ever been now
• result of widespread decreases in the rates of nearly all reported property and some violent violations

Question 63

What Factors Might Influence the Crime Rate?

Answer 63

• What might explain reduction fo youth crime in 2002? → when the Youth Criminal Justice Act came into effect → implemented in 2003 → new mentality of governance toward youth crime → YCJA separated out the violent offender and the first time non-violent offender
  
  • Treated violent crimes much differently than first-time non-violent behaviour
  • When person is not charged, they don’t appear in the Criminal Justice System
• So administration changes
• Economic Fluctuations (eg. recession)
  
  • Economic downturn = more crime and criminality
  • Economic booms = less crime being reported (does not directly translate into a real drop in crime)
• Demography changes
  
  • Young ppl between 18-24 are the most likely to be convicted of crimes
  • If there was a reduction in individuals who were at that age → correlates to a decrease in crime and criminality
  • Less people in the group, less crime and criminality

Question 64

Between 2011 and 2021 what has happened to youth accused crime?

Answer 64

Between 2011 and 2021, the rate of youth accused of crime fell
- Crime rates for youth has fallen considerably since 1960s
- Crime rate for youth is lowest its ever been now
- result of widespread decreases in the rates of nearly all reported property and some violent violations

Question 65

Why don’t people report crime to the police?

Answer 65

• too minor
• police won’t do anything
• inconvenient
• reported to another official
• personal matter
• protecting offender
• revenge
• not sure if the behaviour is actually criminal

Question 66

What crimes are most likely to be reported?

Answer 66

• Anything that deals with loss of property or money (financial loss)
  
  • bc of insurance purposes → in order to get money through insurance, you have to report it and have a police report number in order to have it go through insurance
• Homicide

Question 67

What have we learned from victimization studies?

Answer 67

• Allows ppl to be anonymous
• Victimization studies cannot capture the entire “dark figure” of crime by the UCR, but victimization data show that many more Canadians are victimized than is revealed by official statistics.
• Some categories of offenders are less likely to be reported (eg. family members)
• Victimization surveys go beyond merely counting crime. -> - They provide data on costs of victimization, financial losses, physical injuries, and fear
• Data allows us to explore various dimensions of seriousness
• Give us a sense of what ages of ppl are more likely to be victimized)

Question 68

Which age group are most at risk for violent crime (victimization)?

Answer 68

• Elders most fear violent crime.
• 15 to 29 are most at risk for violent crime

Question 69

What are the most common crimes according to the UCR?

Answer 69

1. theft under $5000
2. drug offences
3. administration of justice issues (Eg. go into Build-a-Bear and doesn’t have a wallet → tucks the bear under his jacket and walks out → caught by security and is reported → sentence to criminal service → refuses to do it )
4. Common assault - level 1 (does not involve the use of weapon or cause bodily harm)

Question 70

What is the most common crime according to victimization studies?

Answer 70

• Victimization surveys
  
  • Done every 5 years
  • Key findings
  • Fraud is increasing at a really high level
  • 2.5 million reported being the victim of fraud, 7% of Canadian population 15+.
    
    • Highest in Alberta

Question 71

Why is fraud increasing at such a high rate?

Answer 71

• New technology
• Widespread use of the internet
  
  • have changed the way we interact, consume and work.
  • Shopping online
• Increase in online banking
• Our presence on the internet
• Changes have disrupted the way crime manifests itself with technologies providing criminals with new opportunities.
• Fastest growing crime in Canada

Question 72

What are the problems with the UCR?

Answer 72

• Dark figure
• What type of crime(s) do police tend to focus on?
• Crime is a social construct.
• As a social construct, the labelling of an act as crime is sensitive to variation in:
  
  • Reporting
  • Policing
  • Definitions
  • Administration
  • Media Attention

Question 73

Limitations to Victimization Studies (eg. GSS)?

Answer 73

• do ppl always tell the truth?
  
  • do ppl always remember if it happened that year? or a previous year?
• cannot measure some crimes (homicide)
• very costly
  
  • Have to pay them for their data
  • Have to pay sb to go through the data → whereas if you’re using secondary data like the UCR, then its easy bc the data has already been collected and sorted for you
• sampling problem
  
  • who is actually going to talk about this → do they always tell the truth
  • typically conducted over the phone → have to call ppl
  • there are populations that don’t have phones → marginalized → how do we contact them? → changes are that population is going to be missed.

Question 74

Do those who use official statistics for the purpose of research require ethical clearance?

Answer 74

Those who use official statistics for the purpose of research don’t require ethical clearance bc it is seen as secondary data → not interacting with data

Question 75

What are self-report studies?

Answer 75

• Rather than relying on police data, why not just ask criminals what they do and how often they do it?
  
  • The people who know the most about crime are those who break the law.
• The most common self-report studies are administered among a specific population (for example, secondary school students)
  -> Students are asked questions about whether they have committed a crime, the nature of the crime, and when.

Question 76

What are the limitations to self-report studies?

Answer 76

Those who are typically law abiding are more likely to report their occasional infractions compared to more serious and chronic offenders.
- Respondents tend to report minor infractions and downplay more serious infractions.
- Some demographic groups are more apt to underreport criminal behaviour
- It is often difficult to survey serious, chronic offenders.
- Eg. you want to study auto theft and go to individual schools to survery about it → go to different public schools across the city → your data won’t be reliable bc it doesn’t take into account youth who are involved with said criminality → what is the likelihood they’ll be in school. -> Validity (does it actually measure what we’re trying to measure) and reliability (can you repeat this study and get the same results?) challenges

Question 77

What are the correlates of crime?

Answer 77

Variables that are connected with crime
- A correlate is “a phenomenon that accompanies another phenomenon and is related in some way to it.”

Question 78

What is a correlate?

Answer 78

A correlate is “a phenomenon that accompanies another phenomenon and is related in some way to it.”

Question 79

Do Churches and Ice Cream Cause Crime?

Answer 79

Why does the crime rate go up if there are more churches in an area?
- Concentration of ppl
- Seasonal?
- The area → highest concentration of churches in Edmonton in downtown → 118 Boyle street → also highest population of homeless and poorest area in the city
- The more ice cream that is consumed, the more crime there is. Thus, eating ice cream leads to crime. → is this true?
- The more ppl are out and about (in summer) the more potential for crime.
- Heat of summer makes ppl irritable
- After 9 months of winter ppl go out → more likely to be out and about, more people interacting in public spaces

Question 80

Do we measure crime committed by strangers better or crime committed by family/ppl we know?

Answer 80

We measure crime that is committed by strangers much better than crime committed in homes

Question 81

What is the Third Variable Problem?

Answer 81

There is a third variable that intervenes which helps explain that occurrence (ice cream eating and increased crime)
- A third variable conditions the deviant outcome
- People erroneously believe that there is a causal relationship between the two primary variables rather than they recognize that a third variable can cause both.
→ correlation does NOT equal causation
- Eg. more ppl eat ice cream when its hot and so more ppl go out when its hot
- those who lack schooling and more likely to commit crimes → does that mean lack of education causes crime → no
- We can never draw a direct line between sex (female or male) and criminality

Question 82

What is correlation?

Answer 82

• An association
• A relationship between two (or more) variables
  
  • Positive
  • Negative
• One THING is related to another THING

Question 83

Knowing that Poverty and Crime are Correlated, Which of These Can We Conclude?

A. Crime is one of several causes of poverty.
B. Poverty is the main cause of crime.
C. Crime alone causes poverty.
D. Poverty alone causes crime.
E. None of the above

Answer 83

Correct answer: E. NONE OF THE ABOVE
- Bc there is no such thing as a causal relation when it comes to criminal behaviour (causal: when X happens, Y always happens)
- X (poverty) does not lead to Y outcome (crime)

Question 84

What are the STRONGEST CORRELATES OF CRIME?

Answer 84

• Age and sex (female and male)
• Crime is a “young man’s game”
• UNIVERSALLY, YOUNG MALES COMMIT MORE CRIME THAN OLDER PEOPLE.

→ strongest correlation is sex (being a man) → positive association between being male and crime and criminality

Question 85

How does the public perceive youth crime?

Answer 85

• Celebrate? Tolerate? Condemn?
• Focus on youth as offenders
  
  • Victims of Y.C. are more likely to be peers, not adults
  • youth = 10% of Canadian population, but 20%
• Emphasizing youth offending →
  1. distorts thinking about relationship between youth and crime;
  2. Social policies directed more toward punitive measures than remedial ones
• We see youth as “troubling” → that they are causing crime → we only focus on the outcome of these behaviours (the end result: drug abuse, stealing, vandalism) → leads to more punitive types of intervention/punishment
• Ppl get most of their info about crime and criminality from traditional media and social media
• When you get info about youth crime from this way, they don’t talk about who the young person is → they just talk about their behaviour -> Create social policies directly toward punishing
• BUT we need to account for the fact that youth are troubled → youth is fraut with difficulties, pitfalls and challenges, mental health issues. → young ppl experiencing the world change in very acute ways.
• We often see them as being troubling instead of troubled

Question 86

What is the Age-Crime Relationship?

Answer 86

• CR data revel peak is what age?
• 17-19 years
• The highest rate of crime is for…
• 18-24 make up 12% of population and account for 31% of criminal court cases
• 25-34 make up 17% of population and account for 28% of criminal court cases
• Is association stronger for property or violent crimes?

Question 87

What age is the highest rate of crime for?

Answer 87

18-24, make up 12% of population and account for 31% of criminal court cases.

Question 88

What were the main conclusions of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment?

Answer 88

• People will act the part and forgo individual identity crises
• What is more important: the environment or a persons personality/identity?
• Would the person’s personality be more important than the situation? → NO.

Question 89

At what point did the Zimbardo prison experiment become real for the subjects?

Answer 89

Day 2

Question 90

What ethical standards of research were violated in the Zimbardo Prison experiment?

Answer 90

• Ability to withdraw at any time
• That it does more good than harm
• Not/reducing harm to the prisoners
• As research study should never begin if there is a reason to be believe that death or injury may result.
• Cessation of the study if adverse effects emerge.
• Weren’t fully informed about the extent of the experiment
• The people who were the prisoners did not consent to be picked up by the police at their homes → and has an impact on how they see themselves.
• Any time a participant shows and emotional reaction, researchers have to respond and react/find support for that individual.
  
  • Zimbardo did kind of do this → gave them a hot meal but also urged them to continue on so not really good
  • Said the guy who went into a rage was “playing crazy”

Question 91

What is Criminal Law?

Answer 91

a body of jurisprudence that includes the definitions of the various crimes and the specification of the respective penalties but also. a set of general principles concerning criminal responsibility and a series of defences to a criminal charge.

Question 92

What are the two primary sources of Canadian criminal law?

Answer 92

(1) legislation
(2) judicial decisions that either interpret such legislation or state the “common law”

Question 93

A crime can normally be defined by what two basic elements?

Answer 93

(1) a prohibition against certain conduct

(2) a penalty for violating that prohibition.

→ However, when the courts are required to decide whether Parliament has enacted legislation that legitimately falls within the scope of its criminal law power, a third element must be added to the definition of crime: the prohibition and penalty must be directed against a “public evil” or some form of behaviour that is having an injurious effect on the Canadian public.

Question 94

What is substantive criminal law?

Answer 94

legislation that defines various criminal offences (such as murder, manslaughter, and theft) and that specifies the various legal elements that must be present before a conviction can be entered against an accused person. → also refers to the legislation that define the nature and scope of such defense as provocation, duress, and self-defence.

Question 95

What is criminal procedure?

Answer 95

A body of legislation that specifies the procedure to be followed in the prosecution of a criminal case and that defines the nature and scope of the powers of criminal justice officials.

• Eg. the provisions of the Criminal Code classify offences into 3 categories:
  
  1. Indictable offences
  2. offences punishable on summary conviction
  3. “mixed” or “hybrid” offences, which may be tried either as indictable or as a summary conviction offences.
     -> Indictable offences carry the most serious penalties upon conviction of the accused.

Question 96

What are “True Crimes?”

Answer 96

when an individual engages in conduct that is not only prohibited, but also constitutes a serious breach of community values; as such, it is perceived by Canadians as inherently wrong and deserving of punishment. Only the parliament of Canada. using its Criminal Law power under the Constitution Act 1867, may enact a “true crime”.

Question 97

What are Regulatory Offences?

Answer 97

arise under legislation (either federal, provincial, or territorial) that regulates inherently legitimate activities connected with trade, commerce and industry, or with everyday living (driving, fishing). These offences are not considered to be serious and usually carry only a relatively minor penalty upon conviction. Many regulatory offences are sanctioned by means of a ticketing system, and the fines may often be paid online. → classified as quasi-criminal law.

Question 98

What is common law?

Answer 98

that body of judge-made law that evolved in areas not covered by legislation.

Question 99

What is the Impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on Criminal Law?

Answer 99

As an entrenched bill of rights, the Charter empowers judges to declare any piece of legislation to be invalid—and of no force or effect—if the latter infringes on an individual’s Charter rights.
- charter -> part of the Canadian constitution. Sets out those rights and freedoms that Canadians believe are necessary in a free and democratic society.

Question 100

Every criminal offence can be analyzed in terms of what two major elements?

Answer 100

actus reus and mens rea. → means that an accused person may not be convicted of a criminal offence unless the prosecution can prove the following beyond reasonable doubt:
- 1. that a particular event or state of affairs was “caused” by the accused person’s conduct (actus reus) → includes and element of voluntariness
2. that this conduct was simultaneously accompanied by a certain state of mind (mens rea)

Question 101

What are 3 components of the actus reus element of crime?

Answer 101

• conduct (a voluntary act or omission constituting the central feature of the crime);
• the surrounding or “material” circumstances; and
• the consequences of the voluntary conduct
  -> For example, in order to prove that an accused person is guilty of the offence of assault causing bodily harm (section 267 of the Criminal Code), the Crown must establish that the accused applied force to the body of the victim (conduct); that the force was applied without the consent of the victim (circumstances); and that the application of force caused bodily harm (consequences).
  -> voluntary part: If a driver is repeatedly stung by a swarm of bees and crashes his or her vehicle, the accident will be considered the consequence of a series of reflex actions that were beyond the driver’s control; clearly, they did not flow from the free exercise of his or her will.

Question 102

What are some exceptions to the division of the actus reus into 3 elements?

Answer 102

perjury →does not require proof of any consequences. → provided the accused person knowingly makes a false statement with intent to mislead the court, they will be guilty of perjury even though not a single person actually believed the false statement.
- Occasionally, the actus reus of an offence does not contain the requirement that the accused enaged in conduct of any kind; instead, the Crown must prove that the accused was found in a particular “state” or “condition”. → eg being drunk or impaired and getting in a vehicle to drive but you don’t actually drive it (vehicle may be stationary)
- The answer is that a failure to act can constitute a crime only if the accused was under a pre-existing legal duty to act.
- A good illustration is the duty owed by a parent to a small child to provide the latter with the “necessaries of life”—for example, by feeding the child and providing him or her with necessary medical care (section 215 of the Criminal Code).

Question 103

What is the mens rea?

Answer 103

• ll mental elements (other than voluntariness) that the Crown must prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) in order to obtain a conviction for a criminal offence.
• Ensures that only those defendants who are morally blameworthy are convicted of “true crimes” under the Criminal Code.

Question 104

What are the 2 mens rea requirements in Canadian criminal law?

Answer 104

(1) subjective

(2) objective

Question 105

What is subjective mens rea?

Answer 105

• based on the notion that accused person may not be convicted of a criminal offence unless (a) they deliberately intended to bring about the consequences prohibited by the law, (b) subjectively realized that their conduct might bring about such prohibited consequences but recklessly continued with that conduct in spite of their knowledge of the risks involved, or (c) were willfully blind in that they deliberately closed their minds to the obvious criminality of their actions.
  
  • constitutes a requirement that the accused deliberately chose to do sth wrong.

Question 106

What is Objective Mens Rea?

Answer 106

predicated on the principle that accused persons should be convicted of certain offences, not because they intended to bring about the prohibited consequences or acted recklessly, but rather bc reasonable people, in the same situation, would have appreciated that their conduct created a risk causing harm and would have taken action to avoid doing so.
- the culpability lies in the fact that the accused person had the capacity to live up to the standard of care expected of a reasonable person and failed to do so.
- premise: a reasonable person in the accused’s position would have been aware of the risks arising from the conduct.

Question 107

What are the 3 forms of subjective mens rea?

Answer 107

1. Intention and knowledge
2. recklessness
   
   • the accused knows that their conduct could cause certain prohibited consequences but deliberately proceeds with that conduct bc they do not care one way or another.
3. wilful blindness
   
   • where accused persons have every reason to make some kind of inquiry as to whether there are circumstances that would render their conduct criminally but deliberately choose to shut their eyes to the obvious bc they wish to avoid being convicted of an offence.

Question 108

What is the relationships between regulatory offences and mens rea?

Answer 108

Crown only has to prove the actus reus elements of the offence; the onus is then on the accused to prove, on the balance of possibilities, that he or she was not negligent (or that he or she “acted with due diligence).

Question 109

What is a party to a crime?

Answer 109

one is party to— and liable to conviction—of a criminal offence if one actually commits it, aids and/or abets it, becomes a party to it by virtue of having formed a common intention with others to commit a crime, or counsels the commission of an offence that is actually committed by another person. → even if the offence was committed in a way different from that which was counselled.
- Each of these individuals is considered a party to any offence committed by the other person(s) who entered the original agreement provided that (1) this other offence was committed in order to carry out the “common purpose” and (2) these individuals either knew or ought to have known that the commission of this other offence “would be a probable consequence of carrying out the common purpose.”

Question 110

What is an Inchoate Crime?

Answer 110

a criminal offence that is committed when the accused person seeks to bring about the commission of a particular crime but is not successful in doing so (or never brought to fruitition). The 3 inchoate offences in the criminal code are attempt, conspiracy, and counselling.
- accused persons must take some form of action that manifests their intention to commit a crime; in counselling, the accused must encourage another person to commit a crime; in attempt, the accused must take a substantial step towards completion of a crime; and, in conspiracy, the accused must enter into an agreement to commit a crime.
- section 22 of the criminal code: it is a crime to counsel (procuring, soliciting, or inciting another person to commit a crime) another person to commit an offence that is not ultimately brought to fruition.

Question 111

What is Criminal attempt?

Answer 111

a criminal attempt occurs when an individual does—or omits to do—anything for the purpose of carrying out a previously formed intention to commit a crime. The conduct in question must constitute a substantial step towards the completion of the crime that is intended. → is an offence
- what is important is that the accused person seriously intended to commit the crime and that there is a real likelihood that, having failed on this particular occasion, the accused will try again and, perhaps, be more successful on that subsequent occasion.

Question 112

What is Conspiracy?

Answer 112

an agreement by 2 or more persons to commit a criminal offence.
– the actus reus of conspiracy is the agreement to engage in criminal conduct
- mens rea component consists of the intent not only to enter into this agreement but also to implement it.
- Crown must prove that there are at least two persons who seriously intended to implement the plan

Question 113

what is the NCRMD defence against a criminal charge?

Answer 113

Special verdict of “not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder.” In order to be found NCRMD it must be proved on the balance of probabilities that, because of mental disorder, the accused lacked the capacity to appreciate the nature and quality of the act or omission in question or to know it would be considered morally wrong by the average Canadian.
- in practice, only those accused persons who, at the time of the alleged offence, were experiencing the symptoms associated with a severe mental disorder are likely to be found NCRMD (for example, the hallucinations and or delusions that may be caused by schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder)

Question 114

What is the mistake of fact defence to a criminal charge?

Answer 114

may be a defence where the accused person acts under the influence of an honest mistake in relation to any of the actus reus of the offence charged.
- For example, if a woman participates in a marriage ceremony with a man, erroneously believing that her first husband is dead, she is not guilty of the crime of bigamy.
- - If the accused honestly believes that she is a widow, then—in the circumstances as she perceives them to be—she is not committing a prohibited act because she is no longer married to her first spouse.
- When the accused operates under a mistake of fact, he or she is really stating that the Crown has failed to prove the necessary mens rea of the offence. -> section 273.2(b) of the Criminal Code (enacted in 1992) states that mistaken belief in consent will not be a valid defence to a charge of sexual assault unless the accused took “reasonable steps, in the circumstances known to the accused at the time, to ascertain that the complainant was consenting.”

Question 115

What is the defence of necessity against a criminal charge?

Answer 115

may be a defence to a criminal charge when the accused person commits the lesser evil of a crime in order to avoid the occurrence of a greater evil.
- arises when an accused person can avoid some disaster of calamity only by breaking the law → eg. the lost Aplinist, who on the point of freezing to death, breaks open an isolated mountain cabin.

Question 116

What is the defence of Duress against a criminal charge?

Answer 116

may be a defence to a criminal charge when the accused was forced to commit a crime as a consequence of threats of death or serious bodily harm made by another person.

Question 117

What is the defence of provocation against a criminal charge?

Answer 117

may be a partial defence to a charge of murder (if successful it reduces the charge from murder to manslaughter). Required elements are (1) that the accused responded to the commission of a serious crime by the victim against the accused in circumstances that were of such a nature that an ordinary person would have been likely to lose the power of self-control, and (2) that the accused acted “on the sudden and before their was time for their passion to cool.”

Question 118

What is the defence of Self-Defence against a criminal charge?

Answer 118

a person may use a reasonable amount of force in self-defence if he or she reasonably believes that they or another individual are the target of actual force or a threat of force that is being made against them.

Question 119

According Heimer and De Coster (1999), why are women less likely to commit violent crimes?

Answer 119

• Heimer and De Coster (1999): the gender gap in violent crime is the result of structural positions and cultural processes:
  -> violent delinquency is a function of social learning of violent definitions by males and females.
  -> where do boys learn these roles? -> parents, peers…
• • ependant on how those boys grow up → its okay to be risky, physical
• opportunity and opportunity structures → feminity constructed around different expectations
• female double punishment → offending the law and offending expectations around being a good girl.
• Gender differences: boys learn more violent definitions and have more experience with physical violence.

Question 120

What is the relationship between poverty and crime?

Answer 120

• Historically, the working and immigrant classes have been seen as responsible for crime.
  -> - small towns → you couldn’t get away with crime bc your family will probably know before you get home
• cities make it harder to know what happened like we do in small towns → don’t even know our neighbours → chances of resolving things aren’t as great
• when we formed cities → had a working class/working poor → saw them as a threat → needed a way to police them so we made the police
• They have been referred to as the “dangerous class” “criminal class” or “underclass.”
• -There are explicit socio-economic correlations:
  
  • People at the margins of society
  • the unemployed
  • people in poverty, with little education, dependency, etc

Question 121

What is the relationship between socio-economic status and crime?

Answer 121

• The relationship between SES and crime is complex.
  
  • Police typically concentrated in those areas which are impoverished → focus our police resources in inner-city → vast majority of our police are concentrated on street crime and criminality. → so the poor are most likely to be targeted.
• People with low SES are overrepresented in police-reported statistics.
  
  • This is in part because the crimes of the “middle and upper crime class systematically escaped official notice” (Gaylord & Galliher, 1988, 68). (Types of Crimes)
• “Relationship between class and crime is class and crime specific” (Hagan, 1992, 9).
  
  • Different classes are involved in different crimes because they have different opportunities to commit crimes.

Question 122

What is the relationship between Race and Crime?

Answer 122

• Some minority groups are overrepresented (disproportionate relative to their portion of the population) in police-reported crime statistics in Canada. For example:
  
  • Eg. if they made up 10% of the population but make up 30% of the crime stats, they are overrepresented (more than they are in the population)
• eg. In Canada, Indigenous ppl
  eg. Black Canadians are: more likely to be stopped and searched (racially-profiled) by police -> more likely to recieve tougher sentence from courts compared to white people -> disproportionately represented in correctional institutions

Question 123

What is the relationship between Indigenous people and the Canadian CJS?

Answer 123

Problems facing indigenous people in the Canadian CJS:
- - More likely to be denied bail
- More time is spent in pretrial detention
- More likely to be charged with multiple offences
- More likely not to have representation at court proceedings
- More than twice as likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous offenders

Question 124

Indigenous Youth and the Canadian CJS?

Answer 124

• Indigenous youth are overrepresented in custody and the numbers are increasing
  
  • made up 43% of admissions to correctional services in the nine reporting jurisdictions, while representing about 8% of the Canadian youth population

Question 125

Why are Black and Indigenous People Over-represented in the CJS?

Answer 125

• • Structural Racism
    
    • The CJS reflects dominant group’s norms and values and favours that group.
    • Racism in the CJS is not an aberration; it is “normal.”
    • Intersectionality (intersecting forms of oppression)
      
      • Can’t point to just one factor → most important factor is structural racism which is built in.
• Long history of colonialism

Question 126

Which of the following statements accurately depicts the relationship between sex and crime.

• A. The overall crime rate for men greatly exceeds that for women.
• B Males are much more likely than women to be charged with violent crime.
• C. Females reports much lowers rates of delinquency than males
• D. All of the above

Answer 126

D. ALL OF THE ABOVE

Question 127

How does the Public Perceive Youth Crime?

Answer 127

• Focus on youth as offenders
  
  • Victims of Y.C. are more likely to be peers, not adults
  • youth = 10% of Canadian population, but 20%
• Emphasizing youth offending →
  1. distorts thinking about relationship between youth and crime;
  2. Social policies directed more toward punitive measures than remedial ones
     • We see youth as “troubling” → that they are causing crime → we only focus on the outcome of these behaviours (the end result: drug abuse, stealing, vandalism) → leads to more punitive types of intervention/punishment
     • Ppl get most of their info about crime and criminality from traditional media and social media
     • When you get info about youth crime from this way, they don’t talk about who the young person is → they just talk about their behaviour
     • Create social policies directly toward punishing
     • Are all youth like this?
     • BUT we need to account for the fact that youth are troubled → youth is fraut with difficulties, pitfalls and challenges, mental health issues. → young ppl experiencing the world change in very acute ways.
     • We often see them as being troubling instead of troubled

Question 128

What is the Age-Crime Relationship?

Answer 128

• CR data revel peak is what age?
• 17-19 years
• The highest rate of crime is for…
• 18-24 make up 12% of population and account for 31% of criminal court cases
• 25-34 make up 17% of population and account for 28% of criminal court cases

Question 129

What is reliability?

Answer 129

consistency of results over time

Question 130

What is Validity?

Answer 130

• the extent to which the tool (questionnaire, experiment) actually measures the concept the researcher claims to be interested in and not something else.
• are the methods and techniques involved in gathering statistics strong enough that anyone following the procedures would produce the same counts (reliability)? And do the statistics collected count what they purport to count (validity)?

Question 131

How are crime rates calculated?

Answer 131

calculated by dividing the amount of crime by the population size and multiplying by 100,000. → produces the standard rate per 100,000.

Question 132

What is the Crime Funnel?

Answer 132

The criminal justice system operates as a funnel: only some fraction of incidents result in a police record of a criminal incident, only a portion of recorded incidents result in suspects identified, only a portion of suspects are arrested or charged, only a portion of charges result in conviction, and only a portion of convictions result in incarceration.

Question 133

Before records can be converted into statistics, what must be addressed?

Answer 133

• Units of account
  -> Consensus about what it is that we are counting
• Levels of aggregation
  -> Consensus about how to combine data
  
  • Do we want to combine police records for a city? Do we want to combine stats for an entire province?
• Definitions
  -> - Consensus about how to define what is being counted
  
  • eg. what constitutes an “inmate”: should one count those who are temporarily absent, or those on remand, or those in community correctional facilities, or those who have committed criminal acts and have been assigned to mental institutions?
• Data elements
  -> - Consensus about what specific information should be collected
  
  • police will need certain kinds of info to help them in their investigative activities.
• Counting Procedures
  -> - Consensus on how to count units and elements
  
  • Eg. if an offender goes on a break-and-enter spree and hits six houses in an evening, how many offences should be counted—six (one offence per house) or one (on a singular spree)? And if, during a break and enter, an offender is confronted by the homeowner and assaults him or her, is this one or two offences.

Question 134

Does data on prisoners tell us much about crime and criminal behaviours?

Answer 134

No, they tell us more about the criminal justice system.

Question 135

What is the major problem of counting crime?

Answer 135

• dark figure of crime -> crime that remains unreported, unrecorded, and largely unknown.

Question 136

What are some problems with the UCR?

Answer 136

• is not always entirely clear what we want to count.
• count of crimes includes violations of the Criminal Code, violations of other federal and provincial statutes, and violations of some municipal bylaws.
• treats property and personal crime differently → several property crimes, even if they have different victims, may be recorded as a single offence if they are considered part of the same incident.
• may tell us more about police activities than about crime
• official statistics seriously underreport the actual numbers of crimes.

Question 137

What is Gross Counts of Crime?

Answer 137

• a count of the total amount of crime in a given community.
  
  • eg. if you include traffic convictions between 1901 and 1965 (when people started driving cars), the gross counts of crime may be up an alarmingly high percentage.

Question 138

What are Victimization Surveys?

Answer 138

a survey of a random sample of the population in which people are asked to recall and describe their own experience of being a victim of crime.
- acts that the Criminal Code defines as criminal
- asked to describe the nature and consequences of their victimization experiences; to describe the criminal justice response; to indicate whether victims or others brought the incidents to official attention, and if not, why not; and to indicate their perceptions of and attitudes toward crime and criminal justice.
- conducted about every 5 years.
- not for all crimes like murder, or consensual crimes where there are no direct victims—eg. drug use, gambling, etc.
- The categories included were sexual assault, robbery, assault, break and enter, motor vehicle theft, theft of household property, theft of personal property, and vandalism.
- these surveys do reveal that many more Canadians are victimized than is revealed by official statistics.
- useful in identifying those categories of people most at risk of criminal victimization.
- risk of victimization is lowest for older Canadians, especially those 65 years of age or older.
- the typical victim of crime is young, single, male, not employed fill-time, and living an active social life. → number of evenings spent outside the home is one of the best indicators of whether a person has been victimized.

Question 139

What crime was the least likely to be reported to the police?

Answer 139

Sexual assault

Question 140

What are the top reasons for not reporting crime?

Answer 140

• Crime was minor and not worth taking the time to report
• Police wouldn’t have considered incident important enough
• Lack of evidence
• Police wouldn’t have found property/offender

Question 141

What are the problems with self-report studies?

Answer 141

• those who are typically law-abiding are more likely to report completely their occasional infractions than are the committed delinquents to report their more serious and frequent infractions.
• differences between official statistics of delinquent behaviour and self-report data may reflect not simply biases in official data, but biases in the self-report method as well.

Question 142

What is the most reliable data on crime?

Answer 142

Corrections data are the most reliable and valid because the task of counting prisoners can be done accurately. By contrast, crimes known to the police, the most commonly used statistics, will always be biased by inconsistencies in reporting and recording, although the CCJS is very stringent about verifying data.

Question 143

Can administrative records be the basis of statistics?

Answer 143

Yes. Administrative records can be the basis of statistics if clear procedures are developed about units of count, levels of data aggregation, definitions, data elements, and counting procedures.

Question 144

What is the Canadian Uniform Crime Report system designed for?

Answer 144

The Canadian Uniform Crime Report (UCR) system is designed to provide uniform and compatible national statistics. There is much debate about just what is counted. Some hold that the UCR provides a reasonable estimate of crime rates. Others hold that what is being measured is criminal justice processing.

Question 145

What has happened to Crime Rates ?

Answer 145

The crime rates provided by the UCR, based on crimes reported to the police, have declined since the peak year of 1991. Both violent and property crimes have declined. The police-reported crime rate in 2013 was the lowest recorded since 1969, 33 percent below the police-reported crime rate in 2003. In 2016, the national CSI increased 1 percent from 70.1 in 2015 to 71.0, but remained 29 percent lower than a decade earlier in 2006.

Question 146

What is a correlate?

Answer 146

• a phenomenon that accompanies another phenomenon and is related to it in some way.
• Correlates of crime are variables that are connected with crime.
• Correlates of crime include socio-demographic variables: age, gender, ethno-racial background, and socioeconomic status, as well as the spatial location of offences.
• Correlation is not the same as causation.
  
  • do not CAUSE crime

Question 147

How does age act as a correlate of criminal behaviour?

Answer 147

• Young people are disproportionately represented in crime generally and in violent crime in particular.
• Criminal activity intensifies in adolescence and young adulthood and declines thereafter.
  
  • with the exceptions being political crimes, corruption, and other white-collar crimes; all of these require structural opportunities and employment opportunities that are not yet available to young ppl.
• In 2014/15 persons aged 18 to 34 were involved in 58% of all the cases (criminal court)
• Most crimes committed by Canadian youth are nonviolent.
• Theft under $5000 is the most common offence committed by youth.

Question 148

Why do young people commit more crimes than adults?

Answer 148

• Maturational reform - the fact that people are less likely to commit crime as they grow older.
• Basic explanation: adolescence is a period of transition marked by ambiguity. Young ppl are neither children nor adults.
• The confusion, marginality, and “in-between-ness” of adolescents’ social position may be conducive to criminal behaviour, for these provide little incentive for noncriminal lifestyles; adults, by contrast, enjoy greater incentives to conform, such as jobs and marriage.

Question 149

Maturational reform encompasses what 3 factors that may cause crime to decline?

Answer 149

1. aging brings physiological limitations
2. the formation of various types of social bonds, such as work, marriage, and children, means that individuals have other people who depend on them to make the “right” choices.
3. maturational reform involves a more socially responsible trajectory of human agency → eg. beyond a certain age, “getting wasted” on weekends may no longer sound as attractive a course of action as it is for younger ppl
   - Maturational reform intertwined with life course theory.
   
   • Life course theory is concerned with the “role of age-graded transitions and social controls”
   • How social bonds such as attachment to a spouse, pursuit of education, and the onset of major life events or turning points such as having children or stable employment help reduce the likelihood of involvement in crime.

Question 150

How is Gender a Correlate of Crime?

Answer 150

• Females are less likely to be charged with criminal offences
  
  • But the last 3 decades have seen an increase in the number of females charged with criminal involvement.
• Males are still greatly overrepresented in crime.
  
  • in 2014-2015 males made up 80% of all accused persons in adult criminal courts.
  • Males were generally more likely than females to be involved in violent and serious offences.
  • Males made up 98% of the accused in sexual assault cases, 89% of robbery cases, 86% of homicide cases, and 77% of major assault cases.
• Females were most commonly accused of theft (35%) and fraud (33%).
• Adult female sentences were generally shorter than those given to male counterparts.
  
  • Why do women receive more lenient treatment in the courts? → main reason is that males commit more serious crimes, especially more violent offences. → also female offenders’ responsibility for young children is another factor that influences court decisions.

Question 151

What is the Relationship Between Men and Violent Crime

Answer 151

• 86% of persons accused of homicide in 2016 were male.
• Most homicide victims are male (75%)
• Both males and females are more likely to killed by males.
• Boys have higher rates of violent delinquency partly because they tend to learn more violent definitions and gender definitions and have greater experience with violent crimes than girls.
• The most violent males are those who are the most disadvantaged.

Question 152

What is Role Convergent Hypothesis?

Answer 152

the hypothesis that as the work roles of women become similar to those of men, so will their involvement in crime.
- as women leave the domestic sphere for the world of wage labour, there should be an increase in female crime.

Question 153

What is the relationship between race and crime?

Answer 153

• Race is not as strongly related to crime as age and sex.
• The evidence the does exist suggests that some minority groups are overrepresented in police-reported crime statistics.
• In Canada, indigenous people are overrepresented.
• Evidence from US: lacks are arrested for drug offences at 2 to 11 times higher rates than whites, and black offenders receive sentences that are 10 to 20 percent longer than those given to white offenders for the same crimes

Question 154

What is the Differential Offending Hypothesis?

Answer 154

There are actual differences between racial groups in terms of the incidence, level of seriousness, and persistence of offending patterns.

Question 155

What is the Differential Treatment Hypothesis?

Answer 155

structural inequality in the administration of justice (from police patrols to courtrooms to correctional services) is responsible for the overrepresentation of minority groups in the criminal justice process.

Question 156

What is the Relationship Between Indigenous Peoples and the Criminal Justice System?

Answer 156

• Indigenous people are overrepresented in the criminal justice process.
• In 2015–16, 31 percent of the male youth population in custody and community services were Indigenous males; Indigenous females represented 44 percent of female youth admitted to custody and community services.
• . Indigenous adults are also greatly overrepresented in the prison population. Although Indigenous adults made up 3 percent of the Canadian adult population, they comprised 26 percent of those admitted to provincial and territorial services and 28 percent in federal custody in 2015–16

Question 157

Why are Indigenous People Overrepresented in the Criminal Justice System?

Answer 157

• close to cultural conflict theory → Indigenous cultures are viewed as different from the dominant Euro-Canadian culture in content and/or manner of expression.
  
  • not a really good explanation bc it assumes that Indigenous culture hasn’t chnaged over time and is the same for all Indigenous groups
• Structural theories:
• Colonial model
• historic transmission model
• critical race theory

Question 158

What is the colonial model (structural explanation) of why Indigenous ppl are overrepresented in the CJS?

Answer 158

focuses on the intersection of “structural oppression, alienation and three adaptive forms of behaviour—assimilation, crime or deviance, and protest”
- 4 stages of colonialism: 1. the territory of one racial group is invaded by another. 2. A colonial society is formed where cultural imposition (Indigenous populations are forced to adopt the values and ways of life of the colonial power), cultural disintegration, and cultural re-creation occur. 3. Native ppl find themselves governed by representative of the colonizer’s power, such as the police or military. 4. The colonial society develops a caste system based on race. → access to socially valuable resources such as land, jobs, and education is shaped by racial considerations.

Question 159

Historic Transmission Model

Answer 159

emphasizes the social and psychological consequences of colonialism.
- The focus is on how historic trauma manifests itself socially and psychologically. In particular, this model demonstrates how “acculturation (and a loss of the social self) is often associated with alcoholism, drug addiction, family disintegration and suicide”
- This model argues that when a group of people experience physical extermination, cultural genocide, and colonial subjugation, members of the group develop “learned helplessness” -> First, through biological channels, which include inherited predispositions to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). These conditions have been linked to some Indigenous youths’ inability to articulate thoughts, and also to their confusion with adjudication processes (Greenberg, Grekul, and Nelson 2012). Second, traumatic memories are passed on through storytelling and other culturally sanctioned behaviours. Third, historic trauma is passed on as a direct result of violence, deficient parenting, the acting out of abuse, and other social ills. Fourth, there are psychological avenues involving memory and individual recollections of pain, suffering, and debilitating social conditions (66).

Question 160

What is Critical Race Theory?

Answer 160

It challenges the policies and dynamics and taken-for-granted assumptions of institutional power.
- It adopts a social constructionist approach to race, the law, and justice. A social constructionist approach questions the idea that there is a social reality that is observable or measurable, positing instead that multiple realities pervade the social world. In other words, crime is what a society defines it to be and is not an objective fact.
- The notion of “legal indeterminacy” is central to critical race theory. This concept means that “not every legal case has one correct outcome”
- Critical race theory focuses on racial subordination, racism, and discrimination. It also examines the intersection of race, gender, and class in the criminal justice process.

Question 161

What are the assumptions of Critical Race Theory?

Answer 161

• the idea that the law reflects the dominant group’s norms and values and favours that group.
• presupposes that the enforcement and interpretation of the law is subjective. That is, the law is not colour-blind.
• holds that racism in the justice process is not an aberration; rather, it is “normal.”
• the law is in fact not an objective entity. Its enactment, enforcement, and interpretation are subjective processes; as a result, groups that are not well situated to make, enforce, and interpret laws often bear the brunt of the criminal justice system
• So from this perspective, Indigenous people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system because of their systematic exclusion from the conventional opportunity structures of society and because of overpolicing and harsh sentences.

Question 162

What is the relationship between SES and Crime?

Answer 162

• People with low SES are overrepresented in police-reported statistic partly bc the criminal behaviour of the “middle and upper crime class systematically escaped official notice.”
• various classes are involved in different kinds of criminal behaviour because they have differential access to opportunity structures for committing crime.
• Male children of employer-class parents were found to be more likely to commit copyright violations (Hagan and Kay 1990), while theft was common among young people from poorer families

Question 163

What were the findings concerning the link between SES and crime or delinquency?

Answer 163

1. the link between SES and crime is an indirect one that operates through mediating variables, which include people’s attitudes, behaviours, neighbourhood, peer networks, family conditions, cultures, economic opportunities, and so on
2. low SES promotes ­delinquency—that is, it serves as a catalyst for delinquency because it causes alienation, financial strain, and aggression even while reducing individuals’ educational and occupational aspirations.
3. high SES promotes delinquency by reducing adherence to conventional values while increasing social power and risk-taking behaviours.

Question 164

What are the 3 categories that the. Criminal Code classifies offences into?

Answer 164

1. Indictable offences
   
   2. offences punishable on summary conviction
   3. “mixed” or “hybrid” offences, which may be tried either as indictable or as a summary conviction offences.

Question 165

What are the sources of Criminal Law?

Answer 165

Since Canada is a federal state, legislation may be enacted both by the Parliament of Canada and by the legislatures of the various provinces and territories. (FEDERAL LEGISLATION)
- regulatory offences are dealt with by municipal and provincial gov’ts but this does not make it a SOURCE of criminal law (this is “quasi” criminal law)