Criminology Basics
This field studies crime and why it happens.
What is criminology?
This is a reasonable possible explanation for why something is happening that researchers can test.
What is a hypothesis?
This early way of explaining crime blamed supernatural forces or demonic possession.
What is pre-classical criminology?
This means behavior that violates criminal law.
What is crime?
A researcher studies why one teenager commits crime while another teenager does not. This is the level of analysis being used.
What is the micro-level?
This field focuses on responding to crime through police, courts, and corrections.
What is criminal justice?
This explains why facts or social phenomena may be related based on observed patterns.
What is a theory?
This approach assumes people have free will and can choose whether to commit crime.
What is classical criminology?
This means behavior that violates social or cultural norms, even if the behavior is not illegal.
What is deviance?
A researcher compares violent crime rates across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This is the level of analysis being used.
What is the macro-level?
These are known as the “three Cs” of the criminal justice system.
What are cops, courts, and corrections?
Researchers use this to clearly define a concept so that it can be measured or tested.
What is an operational definition?
This approach examines biological, psychological, and sociological factors that may influence criminal behavior.
What is positivist criminology?
This is true or false: Every behavior considered deviant is also a crime.
What is false?
A researcher defines “criminal behavior” as having at least one arrest during the previous 12 months. This is an example of this research tool.
What is an operational definition?
Criminology studies breaking laws, society’s reaction to people who break laws, and this process involving the creation of laws.
What is making laws?
When two variables are related or change together, they are said to have this type of relationship.
What is correlation?
This approach views crime as something society creates by labeling or making certain behaviors illegal.
What is critical/conflict criminology?
Speeding is an example of this because it violates criminal law, even though people may not view ordinary speeding as especially unusual behavior.
What is crime?
Ice cream sales and murder rates both increase during hot weather because a third variable, hot weather, affects both. This type of misleading relationship is called this.
What is spuriousness?
Edwin Sutherland described criminology as the scientific study of these three processes involving law and lawbreaking.
What are making laws, breaking laws, and society's reactions to lawbreaking?
This occurs when two things appear to be related, but another variable actually helps explain the relationship.
What is spuriousness?
Food insecurity, lack of supervision, and other conditions that increase the likelihood of crime can be described using this term.
What are criminogenic factors?
Definitions of crime can change across different societies, places, and historical periods, illustrating this idea about crime.
What is the social construction of crime?
A city responds to youth crime only with punishment while ignoring food insecurity, lack of adult supervision, and lack of school structure. These ignored conditions may be examples of this.
What are criminogenic factors?