Crim Theories
This school of criminology assumes that people have free will and are capable of making rational choices.
What is the Classical School?
Citizens filming or livestreaming police activity are engaging in this practice—the reverse of authorities watching citizens.
What is sousveillance?
Instead of asking police how many offences they recorded, researchers using this method ask members of the public whether they have personally experienced crime.
What is a victimization survey?
The person who is directly harmed or injured during the criminal event is classified as this type of victim.
What is a primary victim?
Creating an “us versus them” distinction in which another group is viewed as fundamentally different or threatening is called this.
What is othering?
This concept describes the idea that people generally seek pleasure and try to avoid pain.
What is hedonism?
During a moral panic, this person or group becomes symbolic of the supposed social threat and is blamed for the problem.
What is a folk devil?
This crime measure differs from a traditional crime rate because it gives greater weight to more serious offences.
What is the Crime Severity Index?
The parents of a homicide victim were not present during the offence but experience grief, financial consequences, and major disruption to their lives. They would most closely be classified as these victims.
What are tertiary victims?
“People from that group are naturally more aggressive.” This statement most clearly represents this concept.
What is biological determinism?
This early Positivist thinker is often called the “father of modern criminology.”
Who is Cesare Lombroso?
Concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility are the five characteristics of this phenomenon identified by Goode and Ben-Yehuda.
What is a moral panic?
Crimes that occur but are never reported to police are missing from this major source of crime data.
What are police-reported crime statistics/UCR data?
Information, participation, protection, and restitution are four rights recognized under this Canadian legislation introduced in 2015.
What is the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights?
“I have nothing against those people, but their culture and values don't fit with ours.” This statement is an example of this concept.
What is cultural racism?
He argued that crime exists in every society and therefore some level of crime should be considered socially “normal.”
Who is Émile Durkheim?
A news story portrays youth crime as an “epidemic,” identifies one simple cause, and immediately calls for harsher punishment while ignoring competing explanations. This illustrates this media concept.
What is a problem frame?
A neighbourhood suddenly reports more sexual assaults after a major awareness campaign. A criminologist should not automatically conclude that actual victimization increased because this may also have changed.
What is reporting behaviour/the willingness to report?
Avoiding certain locations, changing travel routines, and refusing to go out alone at night are examples of these behaviours.
What are protective behaviours?
A correctional assessment tool appears race-neutral, but over time it consistently classifies members of one racial group as higher risk. This is more useful as evidence of this form of racism than simply looking for one prejudiced individual.
What is systemic/institutional racism?
A study discovers that people with Trait X are overrepresented among violent offenders. Researchers immediately conclude that Trait X causes violence. They have confused these two concepts.
What are correlation and causation?
Two students watch the exact same documentary about an accused offender. One sees the person as dangerous; the other sees them as a product of trauma and social conditions. This difference demonstrates this concept from cultural criminology.
What is an active audience?
Police issue a warning in one drug-possession incident but lay a charge in another nearly identical incident. This shows how this can affect official crime statistics.
What is police discretion?
Telling someone to lock their doors is risk-reduction advice. Saying they caused their burglary because they forgot to lock the door would cross into this.
What is victim blaming?
A law appears identical for everyone, but researchers examine whether its history, structure, and operation produce unequal racial outcomes. This type of analysis is most consistent with this framework.
What is Critical Race Theory?