H1 t/m H5

Question 1

Definition Criminology

Answer 1

The study of crime; justice and law; other issues; the broader dynamics of societies in terms of informing how those things exist and are experienced

Question 2

What are factors to consider when seeking to explore and understand crime & justice?

Answer 2

• social & cultural context
• political climate
• nature of the economy
• process of globalisation
• technological progress
• human rights agenda
  etc….

Question 3

skills & competences of a criminologist

Answer 3

• finding appropriate materials
• using materials in appropriate way (evidence driven —> arguments supported by appropriate evidence)
• being a critical enquirer
• being a reflective learner
• being a pragmatic researcher
• being digitally competent
• being an advocate for change

Question 4

Definition criminal justice system

Answer 4

the process through which the state responds to behaviour that is deemed unacceptable

Question 5

Stages of criminal justice

Answer 5

• charge
• prosecution
• trial
• sentence
• appeal
• punishment

Question 6

Processes & agencies of the criminal justice system

Answer 6

• law-making
• enforcement of law (police)
• processing, defence & sentencing of suspect (via crown prosecution & court system)
• instruments for punishment (prison & probation)

Question 7

deviancy

Answer 7

= acts that are outside of mainstream values & norms of a society; may be illegal or legal, but will often eventually become formally criminalized when there is enough reaction

Question 8

Harms based approach

Answer 8

There are harms caused by behaviours that are often not dealt with by law. The approach considers a range of issues (not explicitly focusing on crime ), such as working conditions —> harm carried out against people and groups, which demands attention & action)

Question 9

acquisitive crimes

Answer 9

acts that involve the acquisition of property, money or anything else that is a tangible reward

Question 10

expressive crimes

Answer 10

acts that do not, seemingly, involve the acquisition of goods, but instead are linked to emotions and emotional release where the act itself is the goal

Question 11

property crimes

Answer 11

acts involving the acquisition of property or damage to property

Question 12

crimes against the person

Answer 12

crimes that directly involve an act against an individual or group of people

Question 13

sexual offences

Answer 13

acts covering all manner of unwanted or inappropriate sexual behaviour against a person, or group, physical or otherwise

Question 14

white-collar crime

Answer 14

acts committed by people usually in a work context, for their own personal gain, offending within respectable or status-based professions, as opposed to ‘blue-collar’ workers (manual workers)

Question 15

corporate crime

Answer 15

acts committed by/on behalf of a company that in some way benefit company goals

Question 16

crimes of the powerful

Answer 16

acts committed by those in positions of power, where they are abusing their position of power and acting with some form of corruption and impunity

Question 17

state crimes

Answer 17

acts committed, or commissioned, or advocated in some way by the States to achieve their goals

Question 18

peace crimes, including crimes against humanity

Answer 18

acts that are so abhorrent or terrible, that they go against humanity as a whole, and they have their own lable

Question 19

social harms

Answer 19

linked to the harms-based definition of crime. Acts that harm communities or specific groups of people and are often not dealt with by formal laws

Question 20

war crimes

Answer 20

acts committed during conflicts and wars, whereby state actors breach domestic or usually international laws regarding warfare, and usually involve a disregard for human rights

Question 21

status offences/crimes

Answer 21

acts that are prohibited, usually only for certain groups or in the context of certain conditions

Question 22

hate crimes

Answer 22

acts committed where the victim or victims are targeted because of their personal characteristics

Question 23

cybercrime

Answer 23

acts committed using or facilitated by emerging information and communication technologies, typically the internet

Question 24

problems with theory

Answer 24

• heuristic tools —> mental shortcuts / simplifications for making sense of something
• unrealistic simplificatinos
• gaps in theory (one theory needs to fill in the gap of another)
• assumption of early writers did not take into account the full complexity of human behaviour and decision-making

Question 25

classicism (theory)

Answer 25

offending as a consequence of people choosing to commit crime, based on them weighing-up situations and likely outcomes - free will; choice - crime as a rational act

Question 26

positivism (theory)

Answer 26

there is individual positivism & social/sociological positivism people engage in offending because they are influenced by forces outside of their own control / some people don’t have the capacity to act rationally actions influenced by: - internal forces (biology, psychology) - external forces (social conditions, culture)

Question 27

critical theories

Answer 27

they challenge the status quo, and ask questions of the role of the state, laws and the criminal justice system how crime is defined, who is labelled as offenders, how crime is responded to, are often said to relate to inequality, power, and even social control

Question 28

5 blocks of theory

Answer 28

1. choice and decision-making 2. individual pathologies 3. social pathologies 4. critical approaches 5. integrated accounts

Question 29

block 1: choice and decision-making

Answer 29

offending as a rational decision-making process - expected outcome - classicism - response to crime: make offending more difficult & punishment outweighs gains of crime

Question 30

block 2: individual pathologies

Answer 30

offending as a consequence in some way of biological or psychological abnormalities of an offender - positivism - response: treating/rehabilitating offenders to remove abnormalities/pathology that caused the offending

Question 31

block 3: social pathologies

Answer 31

offending as consequence of an abnormality or pathology in the context outside of an individual

Question 32

block 4: critical approaches

Answer 32

crime in the context of wider social processes, such as inequality, class, power and marginalization of some groups - crime as a response mechanism or surviving in groups

Question 33

block 5: integrated accounts

Answer 33

combined elements of ideas from other blocks for a more comprehensive or complete understanding

Question 34

Counting crime: what to count?

Answer 34

Depends on what is defined as crime, which can vary also. Measures for counting crime tended to follow the legal definition of crime.

Question 35

2 measures to count crime

Answer 35

1. official crime data (official statistics; police reports) 2. information taken from victimization survey work 3. self-report survey (extrapolating from victimization survey data) —> unreported crimes of unrecognized crime by victim, or victimless crimes 4. data from non-governmental organisations & investigative journalism first 2 are the main measurements

Question 36

process of official recorded data

Answer 36

1. recognizing the crime 2. reporting it 3. recorded for crime event to end up in data it has to have gone through the 3 stages

Question 37

attribution

Answer 37

more and more of the total is lost over time through various stages

Question 38

self-report surveys

Answer 38

counting crime with an offender-focused approach