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Criminology Lecture Notes
Week 1
Recent crime problem in the Netherlands: More mafia-like structures happening
Crime and the media:
Does media accurately portray crime? It can shape what you believe about the crimes in a certain
country. No accuracy since they pick the most interesting cases
Does media contribute to crime? Do children who watch crime shows, use social media certain ways
or play violent games get criminal? Does violent media trigger crime?
Does media engender moral panics? Media often exaggerates and makes problems out of things that
might not have been that problematic before.
Is the impact different for real crime than for fictional crime? Is there a difference between a crime
show based on real events or a video game? What about fake news?
Questions of this lecture:
What is criminology? What is crime? History of criminology and the content of the course.
WHAT IS CRIMINOLOGY?
It is not law, it is a (social) science. It’s the science of an object which is crime and the reactions to it.
Thus, how do people deal with crime, what is the justice system, so the formal reaction. What works
and what doesn’t in terms of approaches to crime? What works in preventing crime?
Informal reactions include reactions of the broader public, what do they think about crime, what do
they think about how it is punished. What are the differences between the groups and also between
different cultures?
Criminology is extremely practice based. Make the situation better, crime happens but what can we
do?
Criminology is multidisciplinary: It combines social studies such as sociology, geography, economics,
public administration etc., human sciences (psychology, biology), natural sciences (physics,
chemistry which are more forensic based) and legal sciences (criminal law, administrative law). It
originated in anthropology and similar sciences.
Criminology is not normative; it focuses on theory (to explain reality) and empirical research. You
for example make theories on why crime is higher in certain neighbourhoods and then you conduct
research to investigate that theory and whether it is correct.
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MAIN QUESTIONS ASKED IN CRIMINOLOGY :
What is considered a crime and why? Different between countries, cultures etc.
What is the nature and size of crime and how does it develop? What are pattern, trends in crime?
Are rates rising or declining? Why?
What are explanations for crime? Possibly biggest area, how can we explain why people commit
crimes? Calles Eteology
What are consequences of crime? How do government and people react to it?
SUB-DISCIPLINES ?
- Descriptive criminology
- Aetiology
- Reactions to crime and penology
- Crime prevention
- Victimology (looking at the victims, what happens with them? What are reactions here? How
do they feel and deal with what happened?)
- Non-commune crime (terrorism, human trafficking, organised crime; regular theories do not
work well here as they are mostly focused on common crimes)
- Green criminology, crime with environment etc)
Some work in a sub-discipline to find out more about those aspects.
WHAT IS CRIME ?
Difficult to find one definition since crime can be when someone deviates, goes against social norms
(not necessarily in law books) or crimes listed in law books. There is not one definition. Common
parts of definitions are:
- Human behaviour
- Includes rule violation (often a rule from the criminal code) highly country dependent
- Serious consequences for society or victims
- Violation of legal order, evoke some sense of injustice happening
(Thought on rule violation: Is illegal housing a crime? Kind of but also not. It is not criminal in the
NL, but you get fined for it. It differs in countries. In NL it is not criminalised since it would
exhaust the possibilities of the courts. Since it is on the fringes, criminologists do investigate it.
Administrative law is different from other forms of law, so saying illegal housing does not mean it
is criminal)
Crime can be a legal construction, but it is also a social construction (what we consider as a crime,
believe should be criminalised). In the end a legal construction is also just a social construction.
Therefore, there are:
- Differences between groups or persons
- Differences in time
- Differences between countries
- Criminalisation (something added as crime) and decriminalisation (taken out of law)
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NARROW VS BROAD DEFINITIONS OF CRIME
Narrow in relation to crime: Does illegal mean criminal?
Borad as in deviant behaviour
HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Based a lot on roman times but back then stealing for instance was a thing between the two people
and part of civil court.
But in medieval times it turned harsher and more to capital punishments as crime was seen as going
against the ruler. If someone did something on your property, you could decide how to deal with it.
Until 1700 – a theological approach: A more religious and crueller lens where you had to harshly
punish the devil in the person
1700-1800 – philosophical approach: humans are rational actors so we shouldn’t have harsh
punishments but proportional punishments in accordance with what the crime was and the
punishment should cause people not to commit crimes knowing of the consequences
1800-1900 – scientific approach: study human behaviour, investigate causes. Did not see people as
rational
1900-now – modern scientific approach: own scientific approaches were developed, better methods
Classic school – rational actors etc.
Positivist school – reaction to classic school (Italian school of anthropology (biological/physical
features so high forehead indicates criminals etc. so crime is in your nature; Lombroso), French
school which looked at it more scientific and they thought (social) conditions caused crime, it wasn’t
rational)
Socialist criminology – grew from the French school, inspired by Marx and sociologists, look at the
system as the cause rather than physical features
HISTORY OF DUTCH CRIMINOLOGY
Started in 1922 when first professor of criminology was appointed for the law faculty: Willem Bonger
Traditionally criminology grew from law faculties but in other countries it is often part of social
science faculties. Is there a relation between theft (bread) and bread prices. Saw that crime levels
mirrored the price of bread; thus, it is not something you are born with but societal circumstances:
if you cannot afford it, you might get criminal
White collar crime was introduced by him, crime that happened among wealthy. Criminal law is
what those in power think should be criminalised. Hence, what the wealthy do is not criminalised
even though it might should be. If it is criminalised, it is often not taken to court. He generally said to
look at societal aspects
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1930-1960
Criminal law (Utrecht school: Willem Pompe)
Psychological circumstances and crime, responsibility?
1960-2000
In 1960s crime rates exploded and tripled. That was the reason for setting up institutes and
departments to research that development. This is the official start of criminology.
2000-present
Only in the 2000s it grew into what it is today, having bachelor programs, master programs and
leading to professionalisation and internationalisation
Week 2
NATURE AND SIZE OF CRIMES – DESCRIPTIVE CRIMINOLOGY
How do you measure the trends of crime development?
- Registered crime
- Data from police, public prosecutor, court and prison/sanction system
- But the data can differ
- You can look at prison population per 100.000 people, but not every crimes lead to
imprisonment or even a sentence in general, countries might not declare numbers correctly,
what counts as a prison? Crime perception different across countries, homosexuality can
count as a crime but in others not. In USA many prison sentences and over a long time
- In NL estimated crimes again civilians are 3.8 million, 783,000 registered by police, 170.000
registered by public prosecutor, 88.100 are juridical decisions and only a small part leads to
imprisonment/criminal case
- Most data come from police reports for that reason, but there is a dark figure of hidden
crime since some crimes don’t get reported at all
Topics of the lecture:
Registered Crime, Selectivity in criminal justice, Hidden crime, International comparisons
ADVANTAGES OF REGISTRATION DATA
Why use data from police? First instance to go to, they are responsible for registering crimes. You
target the entire population, so a more accurate picture. It is also easy to collect, in NL it gets
published each year to the public so it is easy to access (CBS/StatLine). Also, longitudinal research is
possible if there are no big changes in how they register the numbers
