Summary Criminology and Criminal Justice notes for Global Law Students
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Module
620295-B-6 (620295B6)
Institution
Tilburg University (UVT)
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Criminology and Criminal Justice
Notes – Readings and KCs
Introduction – Social construction
Criminological research questions:
o Definitions: what types of harmful behavior are criminal and why?
o Scope: what is the size of specific crime problems? How can this be measured?
o Explanation: What causes crime and how is criminal behavior explained?
Personal level: psychological, physiological, etc.
Social and institutional level
o Consequences: What are the consequences? For perpetrators, victims,
societies, ecosystems?
o Evaluation: how can crimes be tackles? What is the effect of interventions?
How may we prevent crime?
How do we determine what crime is?
o Basic premise: no objective definition of crime or deviant behavior.
o What we define as criminal behavior is the outcome of a process of social
construction.
o Only a few things are defined as deviant behavior across cultures:
Indiscriminate lying, stealing, murder or violence, incest.
What is crime?
o Philosophical approach
John Stuart Mill: harm principle – the only purpose to exercise power
against an individual in a civilized community is to prevent harm.
Problems: what is a civilized society? What is harm? Does this
include animals?
Feinberg:
Paternalism – liberties may be limited to prevent an individual
from harming themselves.
Moralism – liberties may be limited when societies reject
behaviour, regardless of whether it causes harm or not.
o Problematic: homosexuality, sexuality, religion, etc.
Offense principle – liberties may be limited if behavior visibly
offends other people, regardless of harm being caused.
o Note: not all behavior which constitutes a violation of societal norms is
penalized by criminal law. Most (potentially) harmful behavior is regulated,
and first enforced by administrative authorities, while some may not be
regulated at all.
Symbolic interactionism:
o Social concepts cannot be defined exactly
Sensitizing concepts
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o Interaction (e.g., language, images) structures how people experience, interpret
and attribute meaning to everyday reality (Blumer, 1969)
Social construction:
o Human social relations and behavior are regulated through social norms
o A social norm is ‘any standard rule that states what human beings should or
should not think, say or do under given circumstances’
o These norms are continuously defined and redefined by the members of a
social group
o Larger communities cannot constantly (re)define norms in direct social
interactions
Instead, norms are ‘informally codified’ in what we define as culture
Laws are formalized codifications of social norms.
o Cultural norms (and laws) are necessarily simplified representations of the
complexities of everyday life
These simplifications are called ‘frames’
In specific situations, there may be a lot of reasons why general social
norms would perhaps not apply
o Definition setting:
Communities define their own norms
Who: individuals, interest groups, institutions, political parties,
religious actors, etc.
Where: local, national, international levels
Definitions are not static, but tend to change over time.
The power to define is spread unevenly within societies
Powerful economic actors may exert disproportionate influence,
whereas weaker groups may not be heard despite making up a
large proportion of the population.
Increased complexity of definition setting:
Increased complexity of societies
Digitalization and ‘bubbles’
Global interests vs national sovereignty
Expanding the study of criminology:
White collar crime
o Initially a very controversial subject
o Geis (1968) proposed to solve it by introducing 4 categories:
Committed by individuals against random victims
Committed by individuals against legal persons (occupational crime)
Committed by legal persons against their workers
Committed by legal persons against their customers or the public
(corporate crime) – most important type of white collar crime, causing
most damage
State crime
o Definition: act or omission committed by actors within the state.
o Modern state crimes
Crimes by security forces
Political crimes
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State-sponsored social and cultural crimes, e.g., institutional racism
Green criminology
o Study of environmental crimes and harms affecting human and non-human
life, ecosystems and the biosphere
o Non-human life, ecosystems and biosphere are usually studied as victims (flora
and fauna may however be ‘perpetrators’ as well.
o Green crimes affect the health, quality of life, and even the existence of large
groups of people and other living creatures with high impact and over long
periods of time
o Environmental crimes (legal-procedural approach)
o Environmental harms that may not be statutorily proscribed: ‘lawful but
awful’ (socio-legal approach)
Punishment – critical remarks on the criminal
justice system
Advantages of sending people to prison:
o
Disadvantages of sending people to prison:
o
o Secondary victimization – enormous costs for victims of crimes, as well as
harm to their psychological health, thus making them a victim again.
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The criminal justice funnel:
Many cases are not taken
or defendants not prosecuted
Recidivism rates stay almost the
same regardless of whether a fine
was imposed, or a prison sentence.
General observations:
o In countries where levels of
inequality are higher, governments tend to rely more on (harsh) punishment
o Little to no relation between crime levels and incarceration levels
o Sanctions tend to be more effective when offenders view them as legitimate
Wealth bias
o Prior employment levels of inmates are exceptionally low
o A large number of men and women in the US prison system come from just a
handful of deeply impoverished neighbourhoods
o The rich are usually involved in corporate crime and operate under a protective
cloak of their corporations
Even if these are discovered, penalties are usually low
o Jails and prisons are filled with poor people, rich citizens are rarely
incarcerated
o “the poor do time, the rich pay fines”
Racial bias
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