Crime Theory- Midterm Review updated already passed

Crime Theory- Midterm Review

two major types of criminological theory - correct answer ✔✔1. theories of making and enforcing
criminal law.

2. theories of criminal and deviant behavior.



- Answer questions of how or why certain behaviors or ppl become defined, and are dealt with as
criminals in society

- Why are certain behaviors or people defined as criminal in society:

- Why is an action illegal?

- How should an illegal action be addressed?

- Who decides what is il(legal)? Etc. - correct answer ✔✔theories of making and enforcing criminal law



- Answer questions about why social and legal norms are violated

- Attempts to answer two types of questions ab why social and legal norms are violated;

a) Macro level: why certain groups appear more likely to engage in crime and deviance

b) Micro level: why certain individuals appear more likely to engage in crime and deviance - correct
answer ✔✔theories of criminal and deviant behavior



macro level - correct answer ✔✔why certain groups appear more likely to engage in crime and deviance



micro level - correct answer ✔✔why certain individuals appear more likely to engage in crime and
deviance



- Individuals offend in adolescence and then offending behavior tapers - correct answer ✔✔Age-Crime
Curve (Gott & Hirschi, 1983)



- Most offend only during adolescence and then cease, a small group offends throughout the life-course -
correct answer ✔✔Adolescent limited vs Life-course persistent (Moffit, 1993)

, - Desistence or persistence from criminality is a function of significant events or "turning points" such as
religion, marriage or military involvement - correct answer ✔✔Persistence vs Desistence (Sampson &
Laub, 1993, Maruna, 2001)



Solid Theory - correct answer ✔✔· A theory's concepts need to be tested and retested multiple times

· Criminological theories need to maintain a probabilistic concept of causality

· They should be useful in their policy implications



attributed natural disasters and henious acts to punishment from spiritual powers, to appease spiritual
powers, rituals were performed - correct answer ✔✔spiritual explanations: primitive societies



· Spiritual view of the world that motivated the approach to crime and deviance prior to and during the
middle ages - correct answer ✔✔demonological theories



· First appeared in Puritan colony on Mass Bay 3 crime waves caused by "the devil"; "3rd" and "worst"
invasion by a large number of witched (Akers and Sellers, 2013) - correct answer ✔✔Demonological
Theory in the New Land



· 1790 decided isolating criminals in a cell with a bible and manual labor was appropriate

· This would theoretically cause them to "repent" and the term "penitentiary" was created

· Modern prison system rooted in this spiritual explanation and consequence of crime - correct answer
✔✔Quakers and Penitentiary



· Early 1800s, punishment for crime was often cruel and unreasonable

- 100+ crime punishable by death in England in the early 1800s

· Enlightenment thinkers advocated human rights and reason in the guidance of human conduct

- John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacque Rousseau - correct answer ✔✔classical theory



classical theories place a major emphasis on - correct answer ✔✔free-will (agency) and rationality on
the part of the criminal