Rachel Lilienfeld Concepts Terms Introduction to Criminology Exam 1 Study Guide Politicization science is commonly used to advance political claims racism sexism Science is establishing facts to wining a debate The definition of criminology Process of making law The breaking of law The reaction of breaking of the law Correlation two things vary in a systematic way Establish causation causal connection Relationship must exist correlation Absence of Spuriousness Time sequence cause must proceed effect temporal ordering o ruling out other factors Spuriousness correlation does not imply causation Ideology set of beliefs that all of us develop about how the way the world should be Religious ideology Political ideology o conservative right repressive o liberal left forgiving media plays a role in misunderstanding crime and its causes meshed with Indology Conflict and consensus theory conflict Marcs a belief that the law reflects the interest of a powerful minority consensus Durkheim a belief that the law reflects the interest in most people of society evenly The dark figure of crime crime that is not reported or cannot be reported Ecological fallacy the economic resources of communities are associated with rates of crime in those communities does not necessarily mean that the same statistical relationship holds on an individual level Index crimes part 1 of the UCR 8 index crimes the two most reliable are MVT and homicide also robbery criminal homicide burglary forcible rape aggravated assault larceny theft arson motor vehicle theft aggravated assault is most commonly occurring index crime of violence Is criminology a science Yes and no yes methodology methods criminologists use to attempt to explain why o methods can be qualitative or quantitative and stories theory an effort to explain or make sense of the world no not good at predicting things definition of crime is always changing moral imperative Quantitative and qualitative data Cross sectional and longitudinal data quantitative numbers qualitative color size cross sectional data one point in time like a snapshot longitudinal data more than one point in time like movie or film Macro and micro level of measurement macro example city state nation gang micro individual Extra Relatively of crime the variation of conception of what behavior is criminal from one time place or context to another Five paradigms of crime general framework free will or rational choice people are able to make rational choices positivism focus is beyond control of the individual and the factors on why people commit crimes lay outside interactionism humans interact and react to each other critical criminology goes further into interactionism powerful vs powerless integration combines the m together boot camp death penalty Solutions DARE not effective Gun buy backs Scared straight not effective Three strike legislation Four criteria of crime prohibited and punishable by law Actus rea actual event must have occurred Social harm institution individual Mens rea rational act planning guilty mind Ways of measuring crime Raw numbers mean nothing Crime rate numbers in crime per 100 000 Percent change from T1 to T2 T2 T1 T1 100 Independent variable explains dependent things you think Dependent variable thing that needs to be explained ex crime rate How could crime cause poverty acts as a tax Classifying crime Some are worse than others misdemeanors felony Mala in se bad in itself murder rape Mala prohibita law defines that it is bad prostitution and gambling Prevalence number of people in a population that report one or more offences how often trends show up Items Uniform Crime Reports results are calculated as a rate voluntary system gets data from law enforcement agencies Strength Weakness o consistent definition does not vary o trends in data o easy to access and inexpensive o ecological fallacy o measure of policy activity rather than crime o doesn t capture unreported crime o only serious crimes are reported o doesn t capture white collar crime hierarchy rule only the worst crime gets recorded when someone commits multiple crimes at once o committees ten different robberies only shows up as one robbery National Crime Victimization Survey provides national estimate of victimization uses sampling NCVS estimates crime numbers that are double of what the UCR estimates strength of NCVS Bounding method to eliminate these two things eliminates dark figure of crime weakness o can not compare cities o telescoping o falsification o victimized crimes like homicide are not included memory decay is naturally forgetting o less crime than actually happens gets reported because people could forget telescoping too much crime gets reported o if asked if something happed in the last six months someone could say yes even though it was eight months ago and they just forgot Self report surveys based on offender behavior focuses on adolescent populations strength o dark figure gets stuff not reported to police weakness o emphasis upon trivial offense o falsification NIBRS doesn t use hierarchy rule nbrs represents a smaller proportion of the pop than ucr Some violence is approved self defense war Not approved homicide Crime Patterns Correlates of Offending Victimization crime rates have gone down since the 13th century time most crime happens at night weekends have a higher crime rate also geographical area cities urban areas tend to have more crime south has a higher crime rate age 16 24 has the most crime stable over time over represented teens have highest crime rates race Hispanic has the highest house rate victimization looking past black vs white and including Hispanic gender crime is male driven poverty and crime are connected Homicide Southern subculture victim precipitation victim offender overlap south has the highest homicide rate four types o murder premeditated o manslaughter not as premeditated o excusable homicide death that occurs at a consequence of an accident perpetrated by a preforming a lawful act with ordinary causation o justifiable homicide self defense or death penalty victim offender overlap o both tend to have similar straits homicide is normally intraracial and social economic statues is the same victim precipitation o when the person who instigates the crime gets killed Victims most are 18 24 most are between the same race intrarational 80 are males Sexual Assault almost all victims are females poor young unmarried non white are all more likely to be
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