Criminology

Criminology

Statistics - Gathering valid crime data. Valid (measures what it's meant to) and reliable (produces consistent results).
1. Analyise activities of police and courts
2. Measure criminal activity not reported by victims.
3. Identify victims of crime.
4. Create databases to determine relationships and test theories.
Sociology of Law - The role that social forces play in shaping the law.
1. Assess the effects of proposed legal changes.
FACT: Sex offender registration has little effect on on offenders or rates of child molestation.
Develop theories of crime causation.
FACT: Wife beaters may have an abnormal brain structure that predisposes them to respond to provocation with violence.
Patterns of Criminal Homicide - Martin Wolfgang 1985. landmark analysis of the nature of homicide and the relationship between victim and offender. Understanding and describing criminal behaviour.
Penology - The study of correction and sentencing of known offenders.
Victimology - The study of the victims role in the criminal event.
1. Calculating probabilities of victimisation risk.
2. Studying victim culpability.
3. Designing counselling and compensation services for victims.
4. Measure nature, extent and true cost of crime.
FACT - Samuel Gross found that death row prisoners were 100 times more likely to be exonerated than the average imprisoned felon.
Classical criminology - Mid eighteenth century.
1. Cesare Beccaria - Father of criminology. First to understand why people commit crime 'born criminals'. Utilitarianism - People's motivation is to achieve pleasure and avoid pain.
2. People have free will to chose criminal or lawful solutions.
3. Crime is attractive when it has great rewards for minimal effort.
4. Crime may be controlled by the fear of punishment.
5. Punishment that is or perceived to be severe, swift or certain will deter criminal behaviour.
Positivist criminology - 19th century. Auguste Comte.
1. Use of the scientific method to conduct research.
2. Empirical verification.
3. Predicting and explaining social phenomena in a logical manner.
Sociological criminology.
1. Emile Durkheim - Anomie (norm or role confusion). Adolphe Quetelet.
2. Influence of social factors to commit crime.
Conflict criminology - Karl Marx.
1. Criminal laws are created to protect the haves from the have-nots
Critical criminology - Karl Marx.
1. The economic systems produce high crime rates.
Developmental Criminology.
1. Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck
  1. Poor family relations lead to delinquency.
Deviance - Behaviour that departs from norm but is not necessarily criminal.
1. Becomes a crime when it is deemed socially harmful or dangerous and is defined, prohibited, and punished under criminal law.
FACT: A person can be convicted of a crime for possessing a sexual explicit line drawing of a child.
Views of crime.
1. Consensus view - Crimes are behaviours that all elements of society consider repugnant.
2. Conflict view - Different groups in society maintain power through the use of the law.
3. Interactionist View - Crime reflects the preferences and opinions of people who hold social power in a particular legal jurisdiction
Criminal Law
1. Code of Hammurabi - An eye for an eye. Severity of punishment also depended on class standing.
2. British Common Law - Early English law developed by judges. New rules became precedents.
  1. Mala in se - inherently evil and depraved (consensus). Mala prohibitum - or statutory crimes.
3. Misdemeanour - Minor/petty crime: Unarmed assault. Felony - Serious offence that carries a prison sentence: Burglary, murder, rape.
4. Purpose of the law - Enforce social control, discourage revenge, express public opinion and morality, deter criminal behaviour, punish wrongdoing, create equity and maintain social order.
Chicago School.
1. Social forces operating in urban areas created a crime-promoting environment; some areas were "natural areas" for crime.
Interdisciplinary
Ethical Issues
1. What to study - Criminologists must be concerned about the topics they study. Their research must not be directed by the sources of funding on which research projects rely.
2. Whom to study - Too often, criminologists focus their attention on the poor and minorities, while ignoring middle-class white-collar crime, organized crime, and government crime.
3. How to study - Criminologists must also be careful to keep records and information confidential in order to maintain the privacy of research participants

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