Unit 1 - Ch. 1 Flashcards
Where does criminal justice rank on the list of concerns for Canadians?
7th
Bill C-59
Abolished early parole for non-violent first time federal offenders
Bill C-39
Increased offender accountability and inmate costs (i.e., room and board, telephone usage)
Bill C-32
Increased the rights of victims of crime in terms of access to information, participation in decisions, and restitution
Bill C-293
Increased offender accountability and inmate costs (i.e., room and board, telephone usage)
CCRA
Corrections and Conditional Release Act
This act has been amended such that protection of society is the paramount consideration in decisions regarding offender release and supervision
CCRA (Corrections and Conditional Release Act)
McGuire (2004) describes a variety of factors that have been used to define crime and to help explain when certain behaviours may be viewed as criminal or not. What are these factors?
These factors include an individual’s motivation, opportunity, politics, social convention, and context.
Muncie (20010 delineated how many definitions of crime?
11
What explanations do definitions of crime typically include?
Legal, moral, social, and psychological explanations
Definition of crime: What does legal explanation refer to?
legal refers to acts prohibited by the state and punishable under the law;
Definition of crime: What does moral explanation refer to?
moral refers to the violation of norms of religion and morality that are punishable by supreme beings
Definition of crime: What does social explanation refer to?
social refers to the violation of certain norms and customs that are punishable by the community
Definition of crime: What does moral explanation refer to?
moral refers to the violation of norms of religion and morality that are punishable by supreme beings
For the purposes of this text, our working definition of criminal behaviour comes from Bartol and Bartol (2008). Of note is that this definition incorporates intent, thereby addressing Canadian concerns regarding criminal responsibility. What is the definition?
Criminal behaviour refers to intentional behaviour that violates a criminal code; intentional in that it did not occur accidentally or without justification of excuse
Newman surveyed people in six countries and found there was a high degree of agreement in respondents’ perceptions of what is considered a crime. In particular….
Robbery, theft, and incest
Adjudicate
To pass judgement on
In addition to public opinion surveys indicating that crime in general is a major concern to Canadians, there are several additional considerations worth discussing. What are the three main considerations? PVC
Prevalence (the proportion of a population found to be involved in crime)
Victimization (those affected by crime)
Costs
According to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (Boyce, Cotter, and Perreault 2014), the police-reported crime rate in 2012 was:
6409 crimes per 100 000 people, or 2 235 325 crimes. However, one offender may have committed multiple crimes, so we should also consider the number of individuals charged, which was 1 678 425 individuals, or 4.84 percent of the Canadian population.
In Canada, crime occurs every ___ minutes.
3 minutes
Data from the General Social Survey (Statistics Canada 2009) indicate that (victimization):
225 per 1000 Canadians have reported being victims of (in descending order) theft of personal property, assault, sexual assault, and robbery. Most victims of crime are under 30 years of age.
The UCRS reported how many victims of violent crimes in 2009/2010?
Approximately 373 000 victims of violent crime
What is UCRS?
Uniform Crime Reporting Survey
The Fraser Institute estimated that in 1998 Canada spent ____ dollars on crime, of which ____ was associated with what we think of as “the direct cost of crime”.
42.47 billion
15.5 billion
What is the “direct cost of crime”?
Police, courts, corrections
How much does provincial/federal corrections cost per year?
4.62 billion
Koegl and Day (2015) calculated the criminal justice costs of a cohort of 386 juvenile offenders who were tracked for 15 years beginning in 1986. Based only on official convictions, the aggregate cost (which includes victim, correctional, and other criminal justice system costs) was:
671 million (or 1374 million per person)
Day and Koegl (2015) examined the costs relating to different trajectory groups of offenders, based on age of onset and persistence. While the average aggregate cost per person was ____, costs ranged from less than ____ for those with low persistence to more than ____ for those with high persistence and late onset. Clearly, longterm costs are ____________
- 5.86 million
- 4 million
- 16 million
- highly related to the trajectory group that the offender falls into
How many crimes are reported in Canada annually? Which crime represents the greatest proportion?
2.6 million crimes
Property crimes
An federal prison inmate has been paroled but commits a summary conviction and is sentenced to under two years. Does the inmate go to provincial prison or federal?
Federal
Are provincial or federal jails also remand centres?
Provincial
The General Social Survey (2009) suggests that ____ percent of Canadians report being a victim of crime in a given year.
22.5%
Are young offenders the responsibility of the provincial or federal government?
Provincial
An individual is found guilty of a sex crime and given a sentence of less than two years in provincial prison. However, the offender is designated as a Long Term Offender, requiring community supervision for 10 years. Is it the responsibility of the provincial or federal police to supervise the offender?
Federal
In Canada, how many provincial correctional facilities are there? Federal facilities?
115 Provincial
58 Federal
what is inter-individual differences?
Variation in criminal conduct between individuals
What is forensic psychology?
Any application of psychology to the legal system, intended to guide legal decision making
What is intra-individual differences?
Variations in criminal conduct within an individual across time and different situations
What is correctional psychology?
Specific psychological study of criminal behaviour
What is the analysis of crime at a macro level?
The objective is to understand crime as a large-scale social phenomenon, reflecting strain theory.
What is strain theory?
Strain theory, in sociology, is the proposal that pressure derived from social factors, such as lack of income or lack of quality education, drives individuals to commit crime.
What is differential association theory?
A narrower scope to strain theory, where the importance of socialization and the influence of community, family, and peer groups becomes of greater interest in regards to why individuals commit crime.
Heterogeneous
Diverse in character or content - Composed of parts of different kinds - “The party was attended by a heterogeneous group of artists, politicians, and social climbers”.
What is the percentage of offenders that follow some approximation of the age/crime curve (crime lessens the older you get)
70%
Heterogeneity
The quality or state of being diverse in character or content.
“the genetic heterogeneity of human populations”
What is PIC-R model?
The Personal, Interpersonal, and Community-Reinforcement model. It is sometimes referred to as a general personality and social psychology of criminal conduct.
This model posits that criminal behaviour reflects the immediate situation - factors such as temptations, facilities, inhibitors, and stressors – combine to influence a decision to engage in criminal behaviour. The decision is further influenced by attitudes supportive of crime, history of criminal behaviour, a balance of costs and rewards of crime, and the presence of social supports for crime.
PIC–R reflects a learning theory of crime that attends to both social and cognitive factors as well as behaviour, underscoring it as a contemporary cognitive social learning theory of crime.
What is the cognitive social learning theory of crime?
A learning theory of crime that attends to both social and cognitive factors as well as behaviour.
What are long-term risk factors?
Biological, individual, family, peer, school, community, and society
What are short-term risk factors?
Energizing and inhibiting factors, opportunity, antisocial tendency, and cognitive processes
Since 2000, the rate of violent crimes has decreased by_____ percent.
20.4%
What crimes are most common for adults?
Administration of justice charges (e.g., failure to appear, breach of probation), impaired driving, and weapons charges are more common for adults.
What crimes are most common for youth?
Break and enter, robbery, and sexual assault are more common for youth.
Do youth or adults account for more criminal charges? (2480 per 100 000)
Youth - Male and female approx. equally
What is the PRCSI?
Police reported crime severity index - This index tracks changes in the severity of police-reported crime from year to year by taking into account the change in volume of a particular crime and the relative seriousness of that crime in comparison to other crimes.
The principle behind the Crime Severity Index was to have more-serious crimes carry greater weight than less-serious crimes. As a result, changes in more-serious crimes have a greater impact on the Index than on the traditional crime rate.
In contrast to PRCSI, what is the “crime rate” that is reported by government?
All crimes - all reported police incidents - that count as 1 no matter the crime. 1 homicide counts the same as one bicycle theft.
What are the two parts of weighing crimes in the PRCSI?
First component: The first component is the incarceration rate for the offence type. This is the proportion of people convicted of the offence who are sentenced to time in prison.
Second component: The second component is the average (mean) length of the prison sentence (in days) for the specific type of offence. The weights are updated every five years to ensure that they reflect changes in sentencing patterns and new legislation.
What is the age group of the most victimized Canadians?
Below 30 – More than half (52.6%) of victims in 2011 were under the age of 30 (36.9% of the Canadian population is below 30). Canadians 65+ accounted for 2.5% (14.15% of the Canadian population is 65+).
Are males or females more likely to be victimized?
Females - Females aged 15-44 were more likely than males of the same age to be victims of a violent crime. Male victims of violent crimes tended to be younger.
What were the age groups with the highest rates of victimization for violent crimes?
Ages 15–19 (15.2 percent), ages 20–24 (15.0 percent), and ages 25–29 (12.4 percent).
According to the International Criminal Victim Survey in 2004, what was the percentage of Canadians aged 16+ that had been victims of at least one crime?
16%
What was the police-reported crime in 2007?
930/100 000 - approximately 294 000 victimizations annually
What was the estimated costs for victimization in Canada in 2003?
47 billion
What was the cost of crime in 2003 including victim-related costs, parole, officers, courts, and correctional services?
60 billion
Latimer and Desjardins’ study in 2007 revealed that Canadians….
57.8 percent of those surveyed believed the overall crime rate had gone up.
6.5 percent indicated that they believed their neighbourhoods were less safe
A quarter of respondents indicated a low level of confidence in the criminal justice system
One-third rated their confidence in the youth criminal justice system as low
Parole appears to have generated the least confidence in the Canadians who responded to this survey. Police the most confidence
What are the characteristics of Canadians who tend to be more optimistic about Criminal Justice according to Latimer and Desjardins’ 2007 study?
-Value government information
-Support less punitive sentencing practices
-Treatment-oriented
-University degree
-Use the internet as a source of information
-Support the government’s Tackling Crime agenda (tougher penalties and crime prevention)
Is there increased crime:
a. Further West and North
b. Further East and South
c. Further East and North
d. Further West and South
a. Further west and north
Which province has eight times the national average of crime?
Northwest Territories
What is Canada’s incarceration rate?
118 per 100 000
What is meta-analysis?
Quantitative method of combining the results of independent studies (usually drawn from published literature) and synthesizing summaries and conclusions that may be used to detect and evaluate trends.
Define effect sizes
Outcome measure indicating the degree of the relationship between two variables
As noted in PIC-R (Personal, Interpersonal, and community-reinforcement) model, determinants of crime have often been described as ________ and __________
distal (historical) and proximal (immediate, situational)
What is it of interest to psychologists to identify PIC-R (Personal, Interpersonal, Community-Reinforcement) factors?
To identify the factors that are most strongly associated with criminality in order to develop assessments that reflect these domains and interventions that address (change, modify, or diminish) these domains and reduce future reoffending.
The research (on crime) today is primarily _____, meaning ______________. However, we don’t know ___________
The research to date is primarily correlational, meaning there is a demonstrated relationship between some factor and criminal conduct. However, we don’t know what came first – the factor or the criminal conduct.
What is the Central Eight risk/need factors? (Andrews et al.)
- History of Antisocial behaviour
- Antisocial Personality
- Antisocial Cognition
- Antisocial associates
- Family and/or marital: Low levels of nurturance and/or caring and poor monitoring/supervision
- School and/or work: Low levels of performance and satisfaction in school and/or work
- Leisure and/or recreation: Low levels of involvement and satisfaction in anticriminal leisure pursuits
- Substance abuse
What is the Big Four?
The major causal variables in the analysis of criminal behaviour of individuals. The Big Four are embedded in the Central Eight risk/need factors.
The Big Four:
-History of antisocial behaviour: Early and continuing involvement in a number and variety of antisocial acts in a variety of settings.
-Antisocial Personality pattern: Adventurous pleasure seeking, weak self-control, restlessly aggressive
-Antisocial Cognition: Attitudes, values, beliefs, and rationalizations supportive of crime; cognitive emotional states of anger, resentment, and defiance; criminal versus reformed identity
-Antisocial Associates: Close association with criminal others and relative isolation from anticriminal others; immediate social support of crime.
What are minor risk factors?
Personal and/or emotional distress
Major mental disorder
Physical health issues
Fear of official punishment
Physical conditioning
Low IQ
Social class of origin
Seriousness of current offence
Other factors unrelated to offending
What are the most robust co-variation with criminal behaviour? (variables)
Variables embedded within cognitive social learning theory of crime.
Which factors must assessments and treatment attend to according to the factors that are most highly correlated with criminal conduct?
Antisocial attitudes and antisocial associates . These factors are more important than social class or mental health symptoms.
What are the two key points from Andrews and Bonta’s (2006) overview of meta-analytic findings regarding correlates of crime?
First, the eight independent meta-analyses yielded very consistent findings regarding the relative importance of risk factors.
Second, the confidence interval for the minor risk factors includes 0.00, which indicates that on average there is no relationship between these predictor variables and criminal behaviour. That is, these minor risk factors cannot explain criminal conduct.
Andrews and Bonta’s (2006) meta-analysis provides strong empirical support for a ___________ model of criminal behaviour.
Cognitive Social Learning model
Define criminogenic
criminogenic needs
Causing or likely to cause criminal behaviour (the Central Eight factors/Major risk factors) – When reduced, likely to reduce criminal behaviour
Criminogenic needs typically inform treatment referrals
Distal risk factors examples
Family background/history, educational achievements, work history
Proximal risk factors examples
Self-regulation issues
Substance abuse
Close antisocial associates
What are examples of protective factors?
New prosocial relationships
Prosocial community ties
Prosocial leisure activities
New employment
MAKE SURE ALL OF THE KEY TERMS ARE IN HERE
MAKE SURE ALL OF THE KEY TERMS ARE IN HERE
