Introduction into criminology for social science.
Criminology, By T. Murphy
Book summary
By M. Middelkoop
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: introducing the landscapes of criminology p. 2-4
Chapter 2: ‘Theory’ and its uses p. 5-6
Chapter 5: Counting crime p. 7-8
Chapter 3: The causes of crime p. 9-13
Chapter 4: Doing criminological research p. 14-17
Chapter 9: Punishment p. 18-21
Chapter 6: The politics of law and order p. 22-23
Chapter 8: Media and crime p. 24-26
Chapter 7: Offenders and victims p. 27-31
Chapter 10: Social policy and crime p. 32-34
Chapter 11: Global justice p. 35-37
Chapter 12: Moving towards a harms-based approach p. 38-39
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Chapter 1 Introducing the landscapes of criminology Lecture 1
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.
Wider processes which impact criminology can be; social and cultural context, political
climate, economy, globalisation, human rights, and so on. Criminology is often
interdisciplinary (the expertise and knowledge across multiple disciplines are drawn in).
Some skills and competences asked to be a criminologist (student):
- Finding appropriate materials
- Using materials in an appropriate way
- Being a critical enquirer
- Being a reflective learner
- Being a pragmatic researcher
- Being digitally competent
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- Being an advocate for change
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The criminal justice system (CJS) requires various processes and agencies like law-making,
enforcement of laws through agencies as the police. Prisons and probation are instruments
for delivering the punishment. Each element is of interest to criminologists for example: there
is a need to think in terms of intersectionality; how the combination of dynamics such as
gender, class and ethnicity can interact with one another to create issues such as criminal
justice inequalities.
Crime: an intentional act which breaks or goes against a law of some sort. This is a technical
definition but limited. This legal definition can be transparent and a clear guide for society but
a range of issues must be considered: where have laws come from? Who creates them? For
what purpose? Are some laws needless? Who is affected by the laws? Do some laws,
intentionally or not, victimise specific groups?
Laws are not fixed or static. New laws can be made and old laws repealed. This means that
what is understood to be ‘crime’ must also be fluid. Also, the decision to criminalise
certain behaviours has to be influenced by something (Ex. Media, political agenda,
cultural attitudes, etc.).
The moral component is often how we understand behaviours and whether they are viewed as
problematic. This also works the other way around whereby certain behaviours were not
previously defined as illegal. Rape within marriage for example. Criminologists describe
this often as the socially constructed nature of crime: how much of what is viewed as
‘crime’ is a product of the dynamics of a given society at a given point in time. Important here
is deviancy: describes acts that are outside the mainstream values and norms of a society.
Some criminologists prefer to utilise the harms-based approach. They can consider a range
of issues (working conditions, environmental damage, health damage, etc.) whereby there is
clearly harm being carried out against people and groups (social harms) that demands some
form of attention and action. the more harm done, the greater the severity of the response
required.
Although ‘crime’ is not a straightforward concept, it is possible to point to a number of
different forms of crime.
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Cybercrime and hate crime have emerged in recent decades as new crime categories.
Grabosky seeks to assess the actual relationship between a crime and technologies, and uses
the analogy of wine. New wine of old wine in a new bottle: is the act being committed
fundamentally a new act of crime: would cybercrime be impossible without the electronic
platform, or is it simply an older act occurring through a new medium? Other examples
include behaviours such as terror recruitment, propaganda and digital dealing (illicit drugs or
items are traded using social media platforms).
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Chapter 2 ‘Theory’ and its uses Lecture 1
Usually when people talk about aspects of a theory within criminology, they are thinking
about how to understand the nature of offending: why people engage with crime. This is
however only 1 aspect of the theory. Such theories about the causes of crime are aetiological
theories of crime. However crime can vary between different groups, places and over time.
Therefore accounting for why people commit crime is based on assuming that certain things
are deemed to be ‘criminal’, and that’s that. The critical approaches challenge this. Theory in
crime can help us to consider and understand a range of different issues connected to crime,
law and order, and the broader nature of society. This affords the opportunity for policy-
making: creation of laws, strategies and specific measures to tackle crime.
Another problem with theories is that there is often a black and white separation of the
theories and what they can tell us. In reality, these theories or models are simplified efforts at
explanation, and it is rarely the case that on model can completely explain or make sense of
events and processes on their own. The author refers to theories in criminology as heuristic
tools: mental short cuts or simplifications for making sense of something. Different theories
helps us understand different aspects of events and processes, and using more theories often
fills in more of the gaps.
Rational choice models of crime reflects the approach of synthesis: to make sense of events
in the real world. Recent writers have recognised that early writers did not take into account
the full complexity of human behaviour and decision making processes. More modern writers
use concepts such as bounded rationality. They often accept that people can act rationally in
relation to what they actually know and their ability to process the information they have.
Foundation school of thoughts in criminology:
Block 1: Choice and decision-making: classicism was about the people choosing to commit
crime, based on them weighing-up situations and likely outcomes. Individuals are viewed as
rational actors wo are self-interested/selfish in their actions.
Block 2: Individual pathologies: Individual positivism offending as a consequence in some
way of biological or psychological abnormalities.
Block 3: Social pathologies: something that is wrong with an individual but in the context of
processes outside the individual, like a community, culture or the social structures of a
society.
Block 4: Critical approaches: presents crime in the context of wider social processes, such
as inequality, class, power, and the marginalisation of some groups. This approach tries to
answer the question of who is targeted by lawmakers and the criminal justice system, and
why? Criminalisation is there for highlighted. Social control is an argument offered by some
of the theories.
Block 5: Integrated accounts: theories are combined from the other blocks. This is done to
achieve a more comprehensive or complete understanding (for example: bio-social theories
has aspects of both social and biological processes).
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Theories emerge from a series of processes, and is inherently related to a series of key devices
(referred to as a web of knowledge). Beneath is an explanation of these components:
- Broad issues and concerns of criminology: is usually the initial starting point for
research and courses of study within criminology.
- Specific questions: allow for more in-depth thinking and analysis.
- Concepts: mental shortcuts which help to describe or label certain phenomena.
Concepts are important because theories use specific concepts within their analysis.
For example, critical approaches use concepts as social control.
- Research activities: collecting data to inform their thinking and help them to answer
the question they have. There are multiple strategies to do so. For example, literature-
based work or empirical data.
- Evidence: the data from the research forms as evidence. Which is simply information
that helps to develop thinking about an issue or test pre-existing ideas.
- Evaluation: after the evidence, the next step is to assess what is means and what it
tells us about the issue/question we are considering.
- Policy: action, a set of practices or law-making that is concerned with affecting
change, dealing with a problem or reacting to it in some way, usually with a hoped-for
positive outcome.
In the figure below is the relationship between the components demonstrated.
