Exam #1

Question 1

The body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes making laws, breaking laws, and the reacting to the breaking of laws. The objective in criminology is the development of a body of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime, and treatment of prevention.

Answer 1

(Edwin Sutherland) Definition of Criminology

Question 2

The development of a body of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime, and treatment/prevention.

Answer 2

Objective of Criminology

Question 3

Some acts are seen as so threatening to a societies survival that they are designated as crime. (Ex. Under the table gambling or drugs etc..) or, Acts Reus with Mens rea committed without defence or justification and sanctioned by the state as summary or indictable conviction.
- Act or omission that violates criminal legislation.

Answer 3

Factual Definition of Crime

Question 4

Harm/damage caused to others

Answer 4

Normative Definition of Crime

Question 5

Criminal Offences in the Criminal Code of Canada have nothing in common. Explain Crime in a “social construction”:

Answer 5

• Criminal ways may be constructed as criminal in one culture but not in another. The definition of what is deviant or criminal changes over time.
• There is room for variation in the way a society chooses to respond to convicted offenders

Question 6

certain acts are deemed to be so threatening to the societies survival that they are designated to crimes. The law is equally applied to all in society.
-We all agree that certain acts are wrong, we share dominant values.
-Helps keep social order and harmony for most

Answer 6

Consensus perspective in the making of criminal laws.

Question 7

It expresses the values of the ruling class in society and that the CJS is a means for controlling the classes that have no power.
2 approaches
-“law supports some interests at the expenses of others”
-“laws reflect the values of the ruling class” (economic elite)

Answer 7

Conflict perspective in the making of criminal laws.

Question 8

offers additional insights into understanding law and crime. Similar to the conflict model, this model focuses on special interest groups vying for power and influence and their efforts to pass legislation, that reflects their agendas. It allows for the interaction and competition between numerous groups with various types of power (financial, political, and religiously) each pursuing their own objectives.

Answer 8

Interactionist perspective in the making of criminal laws

Question 9

What is Green Criminology?

Answer 9

Crimes that are inflicted on the environmen. Ex; Polluting waterways, harming animals etc..

Question 10

What is Applied Criminology?

Answer 10

What is to be done about the crime?

it is the scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.

Question 11

What is Public Criminology?

Answer 11

The media, what you engage in as a criminologist, encouraging public debates on the topic of crime.

Question 12

What is Convict Criminology?

Answer 12

Story telling, case studies, ex. cons who have gone on to get MA and PhD’s and now teach.

Question 13

People who are passionate about a cause and who use their political, economic, or educational influence to raise awareness about an issue and who work toward making changes in laws.

Answer 13

Moral Entrepreneur

Question 14

Behaviour that violates social norms, including laws is called…

Answer 14

Deviance

Question 15

Why do we have so much crime?

Answer 15

• Society needs crime
• Relative depravation: Some people live life without having to work because they were born with money and others work a lot just to make ends meet

Question 16

How much crime is there?

Answer 16

Lots in the 90’s but since then has been decreasing. Crime rates vary by season. Highest crime reported is property crime.

Question 17

What is the Attrition of cases through the CJS because of the decision that is happening through the case personnel?

Answer 17

Crime Funnel

Question 18

All crime that is happening in our society that is not being reported to the police is called…

Answer 18

Dark figure of crime

Question 19

What does GSS Stand for, and what does it do?

Answer 19

General Social Survey;

Reports on the victims experience every 5 years.

Question 20

What does UCR stand for, and what does it do?

Answer 20

Uniform Crime Reports;

Crime complied by the police, and national, crime victimization surveys, which measure crime through victim reports.

Question 21

1. Attempted and completed crimes are counted in the same category
2. When several crimes are committed in one event, only the most serious is recorded
3. Aggregate totals recorded
4. Omissions

Answer 21

4 Limitations of the UCR

Question 22

The nature and extent of crime.

(# of incidents/population in area) x 100 000

Answer 22

Crime Rate

Question 23

Characteristics of the crime and the victims.
Perceived characteristics of the offenders.
Patterns of police reporting.

Answer 23

Victimization Surveys

Question 24

Reporting on your own behaviour is called a?

Answer 24

Self report survey

Question 25

Reasons why victims do not report crime?

Answer 25

``` They do not want certain people to find out, they believe nothing will come of it, they are embarrassed etc… #1 reason: Not important enough
 #2 reason: Police could do nothing about it ```

Question 26

Weighs different crimes depending on there seriousness?

Answer 26

Crime severity index

Question 27

What does the UCR data convey about crime rate trends and patterns?:

Answer 27

Most crimes committed were not violent but property crimes and that crime rates have actually been decreasing over time.

Question 28

What is the relationship between age and criminality? Gender and criminality? Social class and criminality? Ethnicity and criminality?:

Answer 28

Age: Most crimes are committed by young Adults 18-25 Gender: Typically male Ethnicity: White/caucasian Social Class: Lower Class/Underprivileged generally, For higher classes it usually results in high fines.

Question 29

A form of qualitative research in which an author uses self-reflection and writing to explore their personal experience and connect this autobiographical story to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.

Answer 29

Auto-ethnography:

Question 30

He argued that we all need to be equal under the law no matter what. “everyone deserves equal treatment.” He argued 3 things in order for punishment to be deterrent: must be certain, appropriate to the crime, and must happen immediately… He said the best approach was that the social contract is more important than punishing people. Serve the people, not the monarchy. It’s better to prevent crimes rather than punish them

Answer 30

Cesare Beccaria to Criminal Justice Reform

Question 31

Utilitarianism: Usefulness of the law ( assumes that all human actions are calculated in accordance with their likelihood of bringing happiness. ) He looked at what Beccaria said about deterring punishment and he said that certainty is the most important part of the crime. He argued that Laws should prevent evil and produce good and they should ensure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Answer 31

Jeremy Bentham to Law Reform

Question 32

What does heidonistic calculus mean?

Answer 32

desire for self pleasure

Question 33

“Punishment must be assigned to end crime so that the pain would outweigh any pleasure derived from the commission of the Crime”-______

Answer 33

Bentham

Question 34

The shift to positivism (scientific methods)… Scientific knowledge based on careful empirical research, measurement, and experimentation has more validity than philosophical doctrines based on abstract speculation and argumentation.

Answer 34

Classical School of Criminology

Question 35

Legacy of the Classical School?

Answer 35

The Classical School laid the foundation for our modern legal system.

Question 36

the idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behavior, in other words we are self determined.

Answer 36

Free Will

Question 37

Deterrence:

Answer 37

Deterrence is the use of punishment as a threat to deter people from offending. Deterrence is often contrasted with retributivism, which holds that punishment is a necessary consequence of a crime and should be calculated based on the gravity of the wrong done.

Question 38

The agreement between people and government that says people need to give up their absolute right to do whatever they want. When you break this contract the government can take away some natural rights. When the government breaks it, the leader can be impeached or, in extreme cases, revolutions can be started.

Answer 38

Social Contract

Question 39

- The study of criminal behaviour based on external factors. - Criminals are for Criminals - represented a significant intellectual shift in criminological thought in that it embraced the scientific method as a more effective way of conducting research in the social sciences.

Answer 39

Positivism

Question 40

Biological Determinism:

Answer 40

- Emerged from 19th century positivism - Biological determinism in the 19th century hypothesized that serious criminal behavior was mostly found to occur among people who were born with an innate impulse to commit crime. Simply put, biological determinists argued that criminals are 'born,' rather than 'made' through their interaction with other social processes and contexts. From this perspective, biological determinists argued that your family history--including criminal histories and problematic medical and mental health histories--determined whether or not you would be a criminal. - Middle Ages: If you were suspected of a crime the uglier was the more likely to be guiltier.

Question 41

- Wanted to know if the shape of a person's facial features or the shape and texture of their head influenced criminal behavior. More than that, he wanted to know if a person's physical attributes were determinants of criminality. - His theory of the “born criminal” states that criminals are lower forms of life, nearer to their apelike ancestors than non-criminals in treats and dispositions. - Atavistic stigmata: Physical features of creatures at an earlier stage of development, before they became fully human. - He argued that criminals frequently have huge jaws and strong canine teeth.

Answer 41

Cesare Lombroso

Question 42

*The Atavist*

Answer 42

Overly large head, facial features in which one side differs from the other, protruding lips, large jaw and/or cheek bones, very narrow forehead, long arms fingers or toes. If and individual was born with any 5 of the stigmata, then they are a born criminal.

Question 43

What is Phrenology

Answer 43

Different personalities in different parts of the skull.

Question 44

Somatotype:

Answer 44

William Sheldon | Mesomorph was linked to be the ideal criminal body type.

Question 45

Psychological Determinism:

Answer 45

Isaac Ray; - Can a person be held legally responsible for their act if some part of their brain- the affected area- is impaired? - Psychological determinism states that people commit crimes because of mental problems they have.  Proponents of psychological determinism believe that defects in the brain predispose people to performing illegal behavior.  In the 1800s, psychiatrist Isaac Ray wrote The Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, which discussed how people can be insane and not know right from wrong. Ray thought that punishing criminals for their crimes, when they had no true malicious intent, was be wrong

Question 46

Henry Maudsley

Answer 46

he believed that criminal behavior was just an outlet and/or a side-effect of insanity.  Another words, committing crimes, Maudsley thought, was a way for people to let out their “. . . unsound tendencies . . . [because] they would go mad if they were not criminals.

Question 47

Social (sociological) Determinism:

Answer 47

- Sociological determinism is the belief that social factors determine whether a person is a criminal or not. - André Michel Guerry took crime statistics and found that there were relations to social conditions, such as age, income level, and gender.  At the same time, a mathematician named Adolphe Quételet also analyzed the trends in crime, which he called “moral statistics,” and found that it was possible to predict behavior based on social conditions.

Question 48

Emile Durkheim

Answer 48

best known and most influential of all the sociological determinism scholars.  In the late early 1900s, Durkheim stated his idea that crime was a natural part of life, impossible to stop, and important for society in order to advance.  His reasoning was that crime exists because people have different values, and those values sometimes conflict, resulting in crime.  He believed that people would always have different values in society, so crime would never be eliminated.

Question 49

Gabriel Tard: Principles that governed the process by which people became criminals.

Answer 49

Laws of imitation

Question 50

What is Anomie?

Answer 50

The lack of normal ethical or social standards. | A breakdown of social order as a result of a loss of standards and values.

Question 51

What is Eugenics?

Answer 51

The science of controlled reproduction to improve hereditary qualities.

Question 52

Adult behavioural patterns are rooted in childhood development; behaviour and unconscious motives are intertwined.

Answer 52

Psychoanalytic explanation for criminality (Freud):

Question 53

Criminals are slower to develop a conscience. | Criminals tend to score higher on psychoticism, extroversion, and neuroticism personality dimensions.

Answer 53

Criminal Personality (Eysneck):

Question 54

Moral reasoning develops inn three phases: pre conventional, conventional and postconvensional. Most delinquents reason at the pre conventional level.

Answer 54

Lack of moral judgement (Kohlberg):

Question 55

Poor behavioural controls, early behavioural problems, juvenile delinquency, revocation conditional release, criminal versatility.

Answer 55

Antisocial Traits and criminality

Question 56

Pathological liars, self-centred, manipulate, and impulsive. They lack empathy for their victims, do not feel guilty about their criminal actions, and do not learn from or fear the consequences of their criminal behaviours.

Answer 56

Psychopathy and criminality