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CRM 1300 Alvaro Notes
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CRM1300 NotesClass 2; What is a Crime?
Criminology vs criminal justice
- Criminology; scientific study of the nature, extent, causes and management or control of
criminal behavior
- Criminal justice; involves describing, analysing and explaining the agencies of police,
courts and corrections
What do criminologists do; the criminological enterprise
- Criminal statistics (create valid, reliable measures of crime and international crime
trends)
- Sociology of law (interested in the role of criminal law in shaping society)
- Theory construction (explaining, predicting criminal behaviour)
- Criminal behaviour (determining nature, cause of crime patterns
- Penology (correction and control of criminal behaviour
- Victimology (nature, cause of victimization)
Some concepts about society
- Norms (rules and expectations by which a society guides the behaviour of its members.
Can be prescriptive (don`t) or proscriptive (do)
- There are two special types of norms that were identified by William Graham Sumner :
mores (right and wrong) and folkways (right and rude)
, - As we internalize norms we respond critically to our own behaviour through shame or
guilt
Social control
- Formal (police, government)
- Informal (friends, family, work ect)
Definitions
Crime: any form of human behaviour that is designated by law as criminal and subject to
penal sanction
Law: a rule with consequences
Rule of Law: we accept that laws are rules of society and when transgressed will have
repercussions
Criminology
“Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It
includes…the processes of making laws…of breaking laws, and of reacting to the
breaking of laws…The objective of criminology is the development of the body of
general and verified principles and other types of knowledge regarding this process of
law, crime and treatment”
– Sutherland and Cressey, 1960
What is a crime? (Sutherland and Cressey)
- Criminal behaviour is behaviour in violation of the criminal law
- Behaviour is not a crime unless it is prohibited by criminal law
- Laws are defined conventionally as a body of specific rules regarding human conduct
- Laws are enforced by punishment administered by the state
Legalistic definition of crime
- A crime is any intentional act or omission in violation of the criminal law, committed
without defence or justification and sanctioned by the state
- Problems with the definition? What is intentional? How do you know?
Labeling Definition
- Not the quality of act but the label that others attach to the act that makes it a crime
- Who applies the label and who is labelled
Exercise
- Criminal act + conviction = criminal
- No criminal act + conviction = criminal
- Criminal act + no conviction = citizen
- People in positions of power apply the label (judge)
Chambliss The Saints and the Roughnecks (1973)
- Saints = middle-class
- Roughnecks = lower class
- Same levels of delinquency
- Different treatment by society
- Adulthood
- How people are treated has an impact on future behaviour
How are Crimes Determined?
- Deviant behaviours are behaviours that violate the social norms
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