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Samenvatting Introduction Criminology
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Samenvatting Introduction Criminology 2021 Minor Universiteit Utrecht
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Week 1/3618th century: Classical criminologists; crime as a result of free will and cost-benefit analysis
19th century: First criminologists (positivists); criminals are different then other people, and should be
treated to become better again.
Chapter 1 (p. 1-18)
Criminology: the study of crime, justice, and law and order issues, and the broader dynamics of
societies in terms of informing how those things exist and are experienced.
Criminal justice is delivered through a series of stages:
Law-making, enforcement of laws through agencies such as the police,
and then the processing, defence and sentencing of suspects via a system involving the
crown prosecution service and the court system,
and the instruments for delivering punishment, such as prisons and probation (proeftijd).
Unemployment, race and gender influence criminal justice decision making. The combination of
dynamics such as gender, class and ethnicity can interact with one another to create or exacerbate
(verergeren) issues such as criminal justice inequalities.
What is crime?
Only seeing crime as an act that goes against the law is very limited.
Things only become defined as ‘crime’ once there has been enough of a reason for the State
to react to it, and, even then, criminalising some behaviours might be slowed-down or
blocked by powerful actors with vested interests.
Some groups in society are seemingly disadvantaged by the needless criminalisation of
certain behaviours, like homosexuality or abortion.
Social attitudes can change in a country, for example, rape within marriage was only made
illegal in the UK in 1991.
Some criminologists prefer to use the term deviancy (afwijkend gedrag van culturele
normen) over that of crime. The norms are decided by the people with power.
People can not follow these norms because of what you learned from other people,
your nature, internal circumstances (emotion).
On the other hand, instead of focusing explicitly on crime, some criminologists prefer to use
a harms-based approach to thinking about offending.
The sociological definition of crime
Sellin: ‘Search for universalities in norms and rule transgression: what things do societies generally
believe to be ‘wrong’?’ crime as a sociological problem, instead of only a legal problem
Socially constructed nature of crime: much of what is viewed as ‘crime’ is a product of the dynamics
of a given society at a given point in time.
Howard Becker: ‘We determine crime by discussing together what we think crime is and how we
react to it, but we do so in unequal ways because society is unequal. Not everyone has the same
power position. Only the most powerful people decide what crime is.’
,The human rights definition of crime (social justice)
Schwendinger: ‘Every action that hurts your human rights, is perceived as a crime. For example:
racism, sexism etc.’
People in power have a lot of power of definition, they might make sure that their crimes are not
seen by the population as crimes. People might be not aware, the crimes might be hidden or the
media might condone the crimes. In the sociological definition you can’t label these things as crimes.
In the human rights definition you can.
The harm definition of crime
Crime is a legal construct made by powerful people, and is anthropocentric (too much focused on the
human species). We should also look at other species. ‘Crime’ is the harms done to the environment,
animals etc.
Although crime is not a straightforward concept, it is possible to point to a number of different forms
of crime.
Acquisitive crimes (gain of money or anything else, like: theft, robbery burglary, fraud)
Expressive crimes (acts of anger, frustration, etc. where the act itself is the goal)
Property crimes (acquisition of property or damage to property, like vandalism and so on)
Crimes against the person (act against an individual or group of people)
Sexual offences (unwanted/inappropriate sexual behaviour, physical or otherwise)
White-collar crime (usually in work context, for their own personal gain)
Corporate crime (acts committed by/on behalf of a company)
Crimes of the powerful (acts committed by those in positions of power)
State crimes
Peace crimes, including crimes against humanity (acts that are so terrible that they go against
humanity as a whole)
Social harms (acts that harm communities or specific groups of people and are often not
dealt with by formal laws)
War crimes
Status offences/crimes
Hate crimes (acts committed where the victim is targeted because of their personal
characteristics like religion, ethnicity and so on)
Cybercrime (acts committed using or facilitated by emerging information and communication
technologies, typically the internet)
Chapter 2 (p. 21-24)
Using credible sources within your work around criminology is important. It is also important to ask
from where the source has come: what is the evidence to support the discussions, does it fit in with
what other sources tell us about the subject and so on.
Chapter 5 (p. 98-119)
Behaviours are only included within counts of crime if they are determined to meet our criteria
regarding crime (or harm). The count of crime has changed over time. Different criteria has been
used, different categories of crime are created, the inclusion and exclusion of different behaviours as
a result in the changing of law over time, and the priorities and competencies of the police in
detecting and responding to specific behaviours has changed over time.
, The different methods used for counting crime vary in relation to how they work and the accuracy
with which they paint a picture of reality. Measures to count crime:
Official crime data from agencies who have some direct involvement in dealing with law and
order issues
Information taken from victimisation survey work
Self-report surveys
Data from non-governmental organisations and investigative journalism
This measure includes aspects of crime and justice that others cannot, this
might be in relation to revealing information to us regarding offences that
are more difficult to track.
The processes of recognising, reporting and recording are all important. But only a fraction of the
total amount of crime that we think has taken place ends up within the recorded crime statistics.
This is called the dark figure of unrecorded crime
Not all crimes that are recognised are reported: victims might distrust the police, they might
want to deal with matters themselves, and so on.
Who is the criminal?
In criminology we tend to overly focus on a certain kind of offender, like: men rather than women,
young rather than old, poor rather than rich, ugly rather than pretty, etc. As well as a certain kind of
victim (the ‘ideal victim’).
The difference between social scientific research and legal study
Primary & secondary data
Primary data: observe, interview by yourself
Secondary data: everything someone else has written, concluded, and so on (academic &
non-academic sources)
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