CHAPTER ONE OUTLINE

An outline

Presented to

BUTTE COLLEGE

In partial fulfillment of the

Requirements for the class of

CRIMINOLOGY

Course # M4296 Tim of Class MW 11-12:20pm

By

Melissa Hamilton

January 28, 2012

The Changing Boundaries of Criminology

different types of crimes (including looting, violence, and fraud) can be expected at each

stage of a disaster

Criminology is a science that has much to offer- specifically policy aimed at protecting

the community from the most significant of all harms.

It is suggested there is not just one criminology-some have yet to be discovered

The changing boundaries of criminology

911 starts the process of criminal justice

Terrorism

o Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d)

Definition of terrorism: premeditated, politically motivated violence

perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or

clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

o Book definition of terrorism: The use of threat of violence directed at people or

governments to punish them for past action and/or to bring about a change of

policy that is consistent with the terrorists’ objectives

o Seven spokes of the wheel of terrorism- directly relevant to terrorism because

they support or a product from terrorism

Illicit drug trafficking

Estimated $1 trillion in “dirty money” available globally to finance

illegal activities.

Drug trade nurtures terrorism and fosters the growth of

international criminal organizations

Money Laundering

An activity aimed at making illegally obtained, and therefore,

untaxed funds appear legitimate

o Usually accomplished by putting funds in numbered but

unnamed accounts ( some countries this is still possible)

Infiltration of Legal Business

Legal business established as a front for terrorist operations to

smuggle money, agents, and supplies

Computer Crime

Cyberspace is available for everyone to use or abuse

o Abuses are increasingly being discovered and legislated as

crime

Money laundering

Potential of cyber-attacks on natal security &

technology infrastructure of the United Sates

Illicit Arms Trafficking

Wars of past provided terrorists of past and present with surplus

and remnant arms and munitions to fight their causes

What is new- market for weapons of mass destruction

o Nuclear

o Biological

o Chemical

Trafficking in Persons

Smuggling of illegal migrants from less desirable homelands to

more promising lands of opportunity

Feat of immigrant communities being terrorist havens

United States

o Illegal immigration is a political issue

Raising concerns with border security, civil

liberties, and the rights of citizenship

Destruction of Cultural Property

Terrorist seek to destroy past cultures and to impose their own

vision of culture

o The reach of Criminology

There is no limit to the reach of criminological inquiry

Every human activity is capable of deviance that produces

significant harm resulting in criminological scrutiny

Ecocide- destroying the environment

1960s emphasis was juvenile delinquency

1970s attention on street crime in general & drugs in particular

1980s focus on prison overcrowding & target hardening

1990s attention on foreign influence on US crime rates

Today principle crime problems are totally globalized

o What is Criminology?

Middle ages areas of human learning

Law

Medicine

Theology

Philosophy

18th and 19 century natural and social science become full-fledge

disciplines

Science of criminology has only been known for a little over a century

1885- Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo coined the term criminology

1887- French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the term criminology for

the first time

Described and encompassed the scientific concern with the phenomenon

of crime

Today’s students find that teaching and learning are distributed into 20 or

30 disciplines& departments

Widely accepted definition of criminology

Created in 1934 by Edwin H. Suhterland-one of founding scholars

of American Criminology

The body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon.

Includes:

o the process of making laws

o breaking laws

o reacting toward the breaking of laws

objective of criminology

o development of a body of general and verified principles

and of other types of knowledge regarding this process of

law, crime, and treatment or prevention

Criminologists are mandated by Sutherland to

Collect information for study

Analysis in accordance with research methods of modern science

Cesare Lombrose (1835-1909)

Among first researchers to analyze facts, statistics, and other

observable information in search for causes of crime

Biologically oriented theories influenced American criminology at

the turn of the 20th century

Causes of crime at turn of century believed to rest within the

individual

o Criminal behavior attributed to feeblemindedness and

moral insanity

B7 1920s

Cause of crime attributed to immigrants and their alien behavior

Cultural and social interpretations

o Crime explained in terms of social, economic, and political

problems not just in terms of the offender

Criminology is a disciplined that is the combination of the knowledge of

many other disciplines

The Making of Laws

o Deviance

Behavior that violates social norms including laws

o Social norms

Customary ways of doing everyday things

o Criminologists are interested in all social norms and in how society reacts to

success of failure of compliance

o Difference between crime and other forms of deviance is constantly changing and

varies from state to state, country to country, and from one time to another

What was distasteful and morally contradictory yesterday might be illegal

today

Jack D. Douglas & Frances C. Waksler

Presented continuum of deviance as a funnel

o Consists of definitions ranging from the broadest( feeling

of something is vaguely wrong) to the narrowest( judgment

that something is absolutely evil) some point in between

these extremes deviant behavior becomes criminal behavior

The Concept of Crime

o Crime

Any human conduct that violates a criminal law and is subject to

punishment

The Consensus and Conflict Views of Law and Crime

o Lawmaking

An accommodation of interests in a society, whether that society is

composed of equals(democracy) or of rulers and ruled(absolute

monarchies), as to produce a system of law and enforcement to which

everybody basically subscribes (Consensus Model)

o Certain acts are deemed so threatening to the society’s survival that they are

designated crime

o If majority of a group shares this view the group as acted by consensus

o Assumptions are made that members of a society generally agree on what is right

and wrong and that codification of social values become law, with a mechanism

of control that settles disputes that arise when individuals stray from what is

acceptable behavior

o French sociologist Emile Durkheim

“We can…say that an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined

states of the collective conscience”

o Consensus theorist view society as a stable entity in which laws are created for the

general good

o Conflict model

Law expresses the value of the ruling class in a society, and the criminal

justice system is a means of controlling the classes that have no power

The Breaking of Laws

o Process of breaking laws

A series of events, perhaps starting at birth or even earlier, that results in

the commission of crime by some individuals and not by others

o Most contemporary criminologists look to factors such as economic and social

conditions, which can produce strain among social groups and lead to law-

breaking.

o Another argument points to subcultures committed to violent or illegal activities

o A third argument is that the motivation to commit crime is simply part of human

nature

o Some scholars’ findings tend to show that law-breaking depends less on what the

offender does than on what society, including the criminal justice system, does to

the offender

o Opportunity plays a large role in the decision to commit a crime

If the opportunity is there all it takes is for an individual to have the

motivation to offend

Society’s Reaction to the Breaking of Laws

o Researchers often discover inhumane and arbitrary practices and provide the

database and the ideas for a humane, effective, and efficient criminal justice

system

Criminology and the criminal justice system

o Term “criminal justice system” became popular in 1967 with the publication, the

challenge of crime in a free society.

The Global Approach to the Breaking of Laws

o International crimes

Crimes against the peace

Security of mankind

Genocide

War crimes

Research Informs Policy

o Crime rates go up and down

o Perception of crime problem rates is fueled by media portrayals