1. Definitions of Criminology and Crime PDF

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Explains in depth criminology...

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What is Criminology? Criminology is not about catching crooks nor forensic psychology nor exclusively on discovering the causes of crime. Raffaele Garofalo coined around with the term criminology and Topinard brought it into matter and started the usage of the word. Deciding what kind of criminalist I am will depend on my own background. Criminology is a multi-disciplinary with various approaches to studying and explaining crime/criminality. Some approaches will will focus on biological, psychological, socio-economic, cultural, politicised of the offender at hand. Criminologists will decline that it is a scientific type of study because it could be seen as a social or political type of study. The three main areas of crime are largely - sociology of law - theories of crime causation - social and political responses to crime (White and Haines, 1996) Four ‘Models’ of Criminology include - The legal model (classical, rational people, what is in their best interests, calculate the costs and benefits of any action) - The medical model (Positivism, crimes not from choice but from a lack of choice, psychological factors, driven to commit crime, not focused on punishment but looking to address the factors and cure them) - The sociological model (Structural Functionalism, why the society or cultural factors have an impact on the generation that commit the crime, the role of the economy. Social conflict/political model) - The interdisciplinary model (looks up the interaction of many things, the environment, society, a multidisciplinary model) The scope and Subject matter of criminology, is to attempt to measure the extent of crime and offenders, how laws are formed and applied, issues of punishment, crimes impacts on victims, exploring the various representation (the media) of crime and crime prevention. NZ falls just after the states for the amount of offenders we put in jail. We also need to take into account, the state crime, when and why they also break the law, corporate crime, define crime itself.

What is Crime? Categorizing attempts to define crime into three categories - Legal “Crime is simply what the criminal law code says it is” - The black letter crime approach. Is this really true? Without law there would be no crime right? No, we will still have crime, no one can

be labeled criminal until the law has been applied, but we all know a huge number of criminals don't get caught and are not tried, this goes to show that criminals can be labeled criminals without any criminal law. Crime has to then be traced back to the origin of societies and cultures also we have to go beyond these narrow definitions made by the law. Why is gambling in the form of lotto okay but a poker school is so wrong? The legal definition is stripped of any cultural, historical, sociological or political favours which are essential for why crime takes place. - Sociological A Crime as a social Construct view is that no act is inherently criminal, Criminality is neither an inherent quality of any given behaviour but simply a definition given by others to that behaviour. A moral view, Crime is a behaviour that offends the ‘collective consciousness’ and provokes punishment, typically though not always enshrined in the criminal law. A social view is that crime is a behaviour that violates social norms including violation of the criminal law. Crime is never static, it changes over time and across different societies and cultures. The police have codes to the various types of crimes, these are all included in the criminal code, there is no common denominator the only thing they share is the fact they are in the code. Behaviour can be criminalised and decriminalised very easily. For example weed is legal in portugal and other some places and is illegal in NZ. - Political Humanistic view of crime is that it is a behaviour, whether individual institutional, governmental that denies basic human rights. Others see the Criminal law as an instrument of social control in the hands of powerful groups. What gets defined as crime depends on having the power to resist criminalizing definitions (Henry 2001). Quinneys Social Reality of Crime: - A definition of human conduct - Criminal definitions describe behaviours that conflict with the interests of society - Criminal definitions are applied by the segments of society that have the aspects

Reading: Criminology is the science of understanding a criminal. A crime is purely a person who is to be held accountable for their actions that provided harm or damage. The term crime is synonymous with the term ‘illegal act’ (Fattah). If we accept that the law defines crime then we could also argue that the law is is the formal cause of crime. Sociological definitions: Sellin argues that crime should go beyond just law breaking but refer to the moral and social code. The term is viewed as a legal term that fails to capture all wrongful behaviour. other terms that could be used to describe this sort of crime are ‘deviance’, non-conformity’ and ‘anti-social conduct’, these are social categories rather than legal categories. This definition means that crime should not be defined by law but rather the level of social injury and social harm. Crime is a label that canes ove time and differs accross cultures....