The Nature of Crimes.

similar multi-billion-dollar schemes of investment managers such as Bernard Madoff and of businessmen such as Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling,
and Andrew Fastow. Enron, at one time the tenth largest company in America, is now bankrupt because of their corrupt business practices. These and similar incidents show that today, people in positions of power have the capability of illegally obtaining not just millions but billions of dollars from people around the globe. The reach of crime has become truly international, creating new challenges for law enforcement authorities. These cases have captured headlines around the globe, have raised fascinating questions about crime and its control, and have spurred interest in criminology, an academic discipline that uses the scientific method to study the nature, extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior. Unlike political figures and media commentators, whose opinions about crime may be colored by personal experiences, biases, and election concerns, criminologists remain objective as they study crime and its consequences. 2 Criminology is an interdisciplinary science. Criminologists hold degrees in a variety of diverse fieldsmost commonly sociology, but also criminal justice, political science, psychology, economics, engineering, and the natural sciences. For most of the twentieth century, the majority of criminologists were trained in sociology, but today criminology can be viewed as an independent approach to the study of criminal behavior, with its own literature, scholarly journals, and specialized graduate programs. How this field developed, its major components, and its relationship to criminal law and deviance are among the topics discussed in this chapter.
What Criminologists Do: The Criminological Enterprise

Criminology is a fascinating field, encompassing a wide variety of topics that have both practical application and theoretical importance: How can substance abuse rates be reduced? Does viewing violence in the media cause people to commit crime? Can punishment reduce crime? Criminologists bring to their field a wide variety of skills, education, and experience that enhance their primary professional role: applying the scientific method to the study and analysis of crime and criminal behavior.3 As is the case in other social sciences, several subareas exist within the broader arena of criminology. Taken together, these subareas make up the criminological enterprise. Criminologists may specialize in one of them in the same way in which psychologists might specialize in child development, perception, personality, psychopathology, or social psychology.
CRIMINAL STATISTICS/CRIME MEASUREMENT

The subarea of criminal statistics/crime measurement involves calculating the amounts and trends of criminal activity: How much crime occurs annually? Who commits it? When and where does it occur? Which crimes are the most serious? Criminologists interested in computing criminal statistics focus on creating valid and reliable measures of criminal behavior: To analyze the activities of police and court agencies, they formulate techniques for collecting and analyzing institutional records and activities. To measure criminal activity not reported to the police by victims, they develop survey instruments that estimate the percentage of people who commit crimes but escape detection by the justice system. To identify the victims of crime, they create surveys designed to have victims report loss and injury that may not have been reported to the police. To test theories (for example, the theory that income inequality produces high crime rates), they create databases that make it possible to investigate the relationship between an independent variable (such as percentage of population living in poverty) and a dependent variable (such as neighborhood violent crime rates). Without valid and reliable measures of criminal behavior, efforts to conduct research on crime and formulate criminological theories would be futile.
The development of criminal statistics and what they tell us about patterns and trends in the crime rate will be discussed in Chapter 2.
SOCIOLOGY OF LAW / LAW AND SOCIETY / SOCIO-LEGAL STUDIES

Sociology of law / law and society / socio-legal studies is a subarea of criminology concerned with the role that social forces play in shaping criminal law and the role of criminal law in shaping society. Criminologists interested in socio-legal studies might investigate the history of legal thought in an effort to understand how criminal acts (such as theft, rape, and murder) evolved into their present form. Criminologists may use their research skills to assess the effects of a proposed legal change. Take, for instance, the crime of obscenity. Typically, there is no uniform standard of what is considered obscene; material that to some people is lewd and offensive is, to others, a work of art. How far should the law go in curbing the production and distribution of adult films and literature? Criminologists might conduct research aimed at determining the effect the proposed law will have on curbing access to obscene material such as kiddie porn. Other relevant research issues might include analysis of the harmful effects of viewing pornography: Are people who view pornography more likely than others to commit violent crime? The answers to such questions may one day shape the direction of legislation controlling sexual content on the Internet. In the accompanying Policy & Practice feature, criminological research on a similar policy issuesex offender registrationis discussed in some detail.
DEVELOPING THEORIES OF CRIME CAUSATION

Criminologists also explore the cause of crime. Some who have a psychological orientation view crime as a function of personality, development, social learning, or cognition. Others investigate the biological correlates of antisocial behavior and study the biochemical, genetic, and neurological linkages to crime. Those with a sociological orientation look at the social forces producing criminal behavior, including neighborhood conditions, poverty, socialization, and group interaction

The Nature of Crimes.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Nature of Crimes.

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Nature of Crimes.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

similar multi-billion-dollar schemes of investment managers such as Bernard Madoff and of businessmen such as Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling,

What Criminologists Do: The Criminological Enterprise

CRIMINAL STATISTICS/CRIME MEASUREMENT

SOCIOLOGY OF LAW / LAW AND SOCIETY / SOCIO-LEGAL STUDIES

DEVELOPING THEORIES OF CRIME CAUSATION

You might also like