Samenvatting Verdieping Criminologie
Inhoudsopgave
Week 1.......................................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 – What is criminology?........................................................................................................................1
Chapter 3 – Classical, Neoclassical, and Rational-Choice Theories......................................................................2
Week 2.......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Chapter 4 – Biological, Physiological and Biosocial Theories of crime.................................................................6
Chapter 5 – Psychiatric and Psychological Explanations for Crime....................................................................12
Week 3........................................................................................................................................................ 19
Chapter 8 – Social Ecology and Cultural Theories of Crime................................................................................19
Week 4........................................................................................................................................................ 24
Chapter 6 – Social Process Theories...................................................................................................................24
Chapter 7 – Control Theory, Social Bonds, and Labelling...................................................................................30
Week 5........................................................................................................................................................ 34
Chapter 9 – The sick society: Anomie, Strain and subcultural theory................................................................34
Week 7........................................................................................................................................................ 42
Chapter 11 – Patriarchy, Gender, and Crime/ Feminist Criminological Theory.................................................42
Chapter 12 – New Directions in Critical Criminological Theory..........................................................................46
Week 8........................................................................................................................................................ 53
Chapter 10 – Capitalism as a Criminogenic Society...........................................................................................53
Week 1
Chapter 1 – What is criminology?
6 changes in our nature of the world:
1
, 1. Globalization
2. The communications revolution, The Internet
3. Privatization and individualization
4. The global spread of disease
5. Changing perceptions of conflict and national security
6. Internationalization of terrorism
Globalization has many different definitions. One is as following: “Globalization is
the process whereby people react to issues in terms of reference points that
transcend their own locality, society or region.” “Globalization refers to all those
processes by which peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world
society, global society.”
Two trends related to globalization
- A decline in collective social action
- Increased economic polarization
Comparative/global criminology is the cross-cultural or cross-national study of
both crime and crime control, applying the comparative scientific method in
criminology.
Victimology has been defined as the scientific study of the physical, emotional
and financial harm people suffer because of criminal activities. Introduced in the
1970s.
Chapter 3 – Classical, Neoclassical, and Rational-Choice Theories
The preclassical era
16th century
People were born into status and wealth
The law was the will of the powerful applied to the subordinate
members of society
By 1650, many governments adopted the new mercantile system of trade,
especially colonial trade monopolies, and this paved the way for upward mobility.
Humans were now seen as capable of making a difference in their lives and
situations through acts of will. The concept of “the individual” was thus born, with
the highly esteemed qualities of rationality and intelligence.
Also, in the middle of the 16th century, English reformers were calling for a clear
distinction between the respectable, deserving poor and the unrespectable and
undeserving poor.
Respectable poor those suffering from sickness and contagious diseases,
wounded soldiers, curable cripples, the blind, fatherless and pauper children and
the aged poor
2
,Unrespectable poor vagabonds, tramps, rogues and dissolute women >
worthless and were to be punished with imprisonment and whipping before
trained for honest work.
The classical reaction
The combination of both a rising landowning middle class as well as an escalating
crime rate led the philosophical leaders of the classical movement to demand
double security for their newfound wealth.
The primary focus of utilitarian philosophers was to transform arbitrary criminal
justice into a fair, equal and humanitarian system.
Cesare Beccaria
His ideas were shaped by the Milanese political activist brothers, Pietro and
Alessandro Verri. These intellectuals formed a radical group called the “Academy
of Fists”, which was dedicated to waging relentless war against economic
disorder, bureaucratic petty tyranny, religious narrow-mindedness and
intellectual pedantry.
Published book: On crimes and punishments
Banned by the pope
Popular first in Paris then worldwide
Founding fathers of the US and Thomas Jefferson relied on it
Beccaria challenged the prevailing idea that humans are predestined to fill
particular social statuses. Instead, he claimed, they are born as free, equal and
rational individuals having both natural rights, including the right to privately own
property as well as natural qualities, such as freedom to reason and the ability to
choose actions that are in their own best interests.
Social contract free, rational individuals sacrifices part of their freedom to the
state to maintain peace and security on behalf of the common good. The
government would use this power to protect individuals against those who would
choose to put their own interests above others.
Individual sovereignty individual rights have priority over the interests of
society or the state
Beccaria believed that crimes offended society because they broke the social
contract, resulting in an infringement on others’ freedom.
He also believed that individuals would be best protected through an adversarial
trial in which the accused had the rights to be represented and was ensured
equality of inquiry and equality before the law.
3
, Law and punishments should be only as restrictive as necessary to just deter
those who would break them by calculating that it would not be in their interests
to do so.
To maximize the possibility of justice and deterrence, Beccaria believed that
punishments should be proportionate to the harm caused; thus, the severity of
the harm determines the level of punishment.
In order for deterrence to work, three things must occur:
- Certainty refers to a high chance of apprehension and punishment
- Severity of punishments mean that the level of punishments must be
appropriate
- Celerity punishment must occur swiftly after apprehension
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham expanded on Beccaria’s initial contribution by offering the notion of the
‘hedonostic, or felicity, calculus’ as an explanation for people’s actions. This
calculus states that people act to increase positive results through their pursuit of
pleasure and to reduce negative outcomes through the avoidance of pain.
Crimes without victims, consensual crimes and acts of self-defence should not be
subject to criminal law, because they produce more good than evil.
Bentham argued that punishments should be scaled so that an offender rationally
calculating whether to commit a crime would choose the lesser offense. For
example, if rape and homicide were both punished by execution, the rapist might
be more inclined to kill the victim. Doing so would reduce the risk of identification
and execution. But if harsher punishments resulted from murder than rape, the
offender would be more likely to refrain from the more harmful crime.
In contrast to Beccaria, Bentham believed that in the case of the repeat offender,
it might be necessary to increase the punishment to outweigh the profit from
offenses likely to be committed.
Bentham was responsible for designing the ultimate disciplinary prison, the
Panopticon, designed to control not only the freedom of movements of those
confined but their minds as well.
Limitations of classical theory
First and foremost was the assumption that people were equal. Would individuals
be treated equally base on intellectual ability, age, mental capacity and gender
at this time?
Second, how could a system designed to allow some people to create more
wealth than others, and therefore to become materially unequal, maintain that in
law all persons were formally equal?
Neoclassical revisions
4
