KEY WORDS FOR CRIMINOLOGY

KEY TERMS FOR CRIMINOLOGY

Unlock the Secrets of Crime with These Essential Key Terms for Criminology! Discover the Language of the Police department, Criminal Behavior, and identify criminal personality.

Classicist criminology: this approach to the study of crime emphasized the importance of free will and viewed a criminal act as one that had been consciously carried out by its perpetrator having rationally weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of undertaking the action. The main focus of it was on the reform of the criminal justice system.

Conflict View: The belief that criminal behavior is defined by those in power in such a way as to protect and advance their own self-interest.

Dark figure of crime: this term refers to the gap between the crime committed in society and that which enters into official crime statistics. This discrepancy is explained by the nature of the crime reporting process, which consists of a number of stages, each of which acts as a filtering process progressively reducing the number of crimes that are officially reported.

Cuffing: this practice entails a police officer either not recording a crime that has been reported or downgrading a reported crime to an incident that can be excluded from official statistics.

Critical Criminologists: Members of a branch of criminology that focuses on the oppression of the poor, women, and minorities thereby linking class conflict, sexism,  and racism to crime rates. They examine how those who hold political and economic power shape the law to uphold their self-interests.

Deviancy: refers to actions committed by individuals to which society reacts negatively, even though these acts are not necessarily illegal.

Hate Crime/bias crime: A criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender‘s bias against a race, religion, ethnic/national origin group, or sexual orientation group

Moral panic: this refers to a process in which a specific type of crime is focused upon by the media in order to whip up public hysteria against those who are identified as the perpetrators. The aim of this is to secure widespread public approval for the introduction of sanctions directed against the targeted group.

Penology: this term refers to the study of the way in which society responds to crime. It covers the wide range of processes that are concerned with the prevention of crime, the punishment, management, and treatment of offenders, and the measures concerned with reintegrating them into their communities.

Positivist criminology: this approach to the study of crime adopts a deterministic approach whereby offenders are seen as being propelled into committing criminal acts by forces (that may be biological, psychological, or sociological) over which they have no control.

Recidivism: this refers to the reconviction of those who have previously been sentenced for committing a crime. It is an important measurement of the extent to which punishment succeeds in reforming the habits of those who have broken the law.

Reductivism: this term refers to methods of punishment that seek to prevent offending behavior in the future. Punishment is designed to bring about the reform and rehabilitation of criminals so that they do not subsequently indulge in criminal actions.

Restorative justice: A key aim of restorative justice is to enable a person who has broken the law to repair the damage that has been caused to the direct victims and to society at large. The main intention of this is to enable the offender to become reintegrated into society.

Situational crime prevention: this approach to crime prevention entails manipulating the immediate environment to increase the effort and risks of crime and reduce the rewards to those who might be tempted to carry out such activities.

Victimology: this aspect of criminology concerns the study of victims of crime. In particular, it seeks to establish why certain people become victims of crime and how personal lifestyles influence the risk of victimization.

Vandalism: Willful or malicious destruction, injury, disfigurement, or defacement of any public or private property, real or personal, without consent of the owner or persons having custody or control.

White-collar crime: as initially defined by Edwin Sutherland, this term referred to crimes committed by respectable persons within the environment of the workplace. Subsequent definitions have differentiated between illegal actions carried out in the workplace that are designed to benefit the individual performing them, and illicit actions.

Zero tolerance: this approach is most readily identified with a style of policing that emphasizes the need to take an inflexible attitude towards law enforcement. It is especially directed against low-level crime and seeks to ensure that the law is consistently applied against those who commit it. Unlike problem-oriented policing, it does not require the involvement of agencies other than the police to implement.

Tags: victimology, penology, moral panic, hate crime, white collar crime, critical criminology