Criminology in Brief

Understanding Crime and Criminal Justice

Robert Heiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000215366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho penal

This book offers a short and accessible introduction to criminology. Written in a clear and direct style, criminological theories are made more accessible for undergraduates, and the workings of the criminal justice system are explained. Students will learn not only how the criminal justice system works, but also how it does not work. Beyond introducing students to the basics, the book provides a persuasive argument that the criminal justice system we have in the United States comes nowhere close to our ideals for justice, doing little good in terms of crime control, while doing great harm to minorities and the poor.

Engaging and far-ranging, this text offers a condensed approach to the key themes and debates surrounding crime and justice, and covers definitions and measurements of crime, criminological theories, crime typologies, and contemporary issues in the criminal justice system. It includes chapters on:

• Criminological Methods and Data

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• Biological, Psychological, and Classical Theories of Crime

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• Sociological Theories of Crime

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• Patterns of Crime

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• The Police

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• The Courts

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• Corrections and the American Prison System

Written by an experienced textbook author, this book offers a critical approach to the subjects discussed and draws on topical examples such as Black Lives Matter, the militarization of the police, plea bargaining and the War on Drugs. It is essential reading for Criminology courses within a Sociology Major and will also be of interest to Criminal Justice majors, law students, policymakers, and informed citizens.

CHAPTER 1

Criminological methods and data

Criminology is the scientific study of crime. There are two fundamental components of the scientific enterprise; these are methods and theory. Methods are the techniques we use to uncover and gather facts. A theory is an attempt to explain the relationship between facts. Thus, criminologists employ methods to gather facts about crime and criminals, develop theories to explain those facts, and then gather more facts to test their theories.

Today, most criminologists in academic settings have been trained to use the methods developed by the social sciences. Very often they employ statistical analyses of data collected by government agencies (in particular, law enforcement agencies); sometimes they may use data generated by surveys (for example, of victims, or of the general public); and sometimes they may interview key players in the criminal justice process (for examples, police officers, convicted criminals, and victims).

People who study crime outside of academia often employ methods developed in the natural sciences. DNA research was developed in the biological sciences; and the study of bomb fragments and shrapnel trajectories may employ methods developed in chemistry and physics. We use the term “criminalistics” or “forensics,” rather than “criminology,” to refer to the application of methods developed in the natural sciences to the investigation of individual crimes.

What is crime?

In order to collect and measure facts about crime, we must first define it. Our definition will determine what it is that we are measuring. Criminologists are not all agreed on how to define crime, but most employ, either explicitly or implicitly, a legalistic definition of crime. Such a definition allows the law to define crime. According to the legalistic definition, a crime is an act prohibited by law. When we use the law to define crime, we are relying on a mala prohibita definition of crime. Mala prohibita is Latin for “wrong because it is prohibited.”

A number of legal provisions are built into the legalistic definition. By law, for an act to be criminal it must the accompanied by the intent to do something wrong, or mens rea (Latin for a “guilty mind”). The law does not require that the actor have the intent to achieve a particular result to be guilty of a particular crime; it only requires that the actor have criminal intent. To be guilty of murder, for example, one does not have to have the intent to kill the victim; one only has to have the intent to do something wrong at the time of the act. One also has to have the capacity to form criminal intent. The law, for example, makes exceptions for the “insanity defense,” as well as for cases when the act was committed by a minor under a certain age. Lastly, there are acts that would otherwise be criminal, but that are justified by law, such as killing someone in self-defense.

Some criminologists take exception to the legalistic definition of crime, arguing that the law is a political artifact. Scientific findings, they argue, should be applicable over time and throughout the world; but legal definitions of crime vary from time to time and place to place. Politicians make the law and no other sciences would willingly allow politicians to define their subject matter. Acceptance of a legalistic definition of crime, critics argue, aligns the work of criminologists with the interests of those who have the power to make the law and directs our attention to crimes committed by the poor and powerless. (The relevance of this position will come into more focus when we discuss conflict theory in Chapter 3.)

Critics of the legalistic definition of crime suggest criminologists employ a mala in se definition. Mala in se is Latin for “wrong in and of itself,” and such a definition would include acts that are universally wrong; that is, acts that are wrong in all cultures throughout time, regardless of who is writing the law. The problem with male in se definitions is that it is difficult or impossible to provide examples of so-called “universal crimes.” For example, the act of killing someone is murder in the context of a robbery, and heroism in the context of battle. Incest is often given as an example of a universal crime because it is often held that “the incest taboo is universal.” This assertion is misleading, though, because, indeed, all societies do have an incest taboo, but different societies define incest differently. Thus, a sexual act between certain relatives may be considered taboo in one society, but not in another. In any case, if criminologists were to confine their research to universal crimes, they would be restricting themselves to a very limited field of subject matter that would be of little interest or practical utility to people outside of the discipline.

To summarize the debate on how best to define crime, the mala prohibita definition is far more practical and concrete than the mala in se definition, which is more abstract and may belong as much or more within the realm of philosophy than in the science of crime. However, mala in se proponents have made a valuable contribution to criminology when they point out that the criminologist should be mindful of the moral and political implications of how we define crime.

Imagine if

Imagine if you were a Martian sent to Earth to study earthling society. Early in your observations, you see a vehicle with flashing blue lights pull up beside a man. Two people wearing uniforms rush out of the vehicle, grab the man, force him against the vehicle, pull his arms behind his back, chain his wrists together, and recite some incantation, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney …” Given your assignment, you wonder if these observations could be a clue to understanding something fundamental about earthling society. You follow the vehicle with the lights on top and you witness the same rituals being performed several times over the week, with the exact same incantation. After a while, you start to follow the men with their wrists chained together. You see them hold numbers above their chest and then a flash of light; you see them forced to roll their fingers in ink, and then make marks on a piece of paper. Later you see them paraded before a very officious looking person wearing black robes, whom you come to realize has a great deal of power over these men’s fate. Everything you observe happening to these men is highly ritualized and you become convinced that a great deal of history and meaning is embedded in these rituals.

All societies have constructed very elaborate rituals around their reactions to wrongdoers in their midst, and anthropologists inform us that rituals tell us much about a culture. In fact, the kinds of crimes that are prevalent in a society, and the way a society defines and reacts to crime do, indeed, tell us much about a society. Crime is a representative characteristic of a society. If we think about particular examples, this assertion becomes self-evident.

Consider the kind of crime and societal reactions that typified Salem, Massachusetts at the end of the seventeenth century. “Witchcraft” and the ensuing trials tell us much about Salem society then. Consider the kinds of crime that typified the city of Chicago in the 1920s. Bootlegging, gangland violence, and police corruption tell us much about Chicago society during Prohibition. Consider the kinds of crimes and reactions that typified Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia. Political dissent and harsh repression of real and imagined enemies of the state tell us much about those societies. Consider the kinds of crimes and reactions that typified the American South in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Peaceful protests on behalf of civil rights met with police brutality and a court system that would look the other way on white-on-black violence—these tell us much about society in the American South during that era. We can also looks at acts that are or were not defined as crime. Consider that slavery was not defined as crime for much of American history. This speaks volumes about American society for much of its past. The fact that wholesale genocide of Native Americans and the expropriation of their land were not considered crimes also speaks volumes.

It is easy to see the truth to the assertion that crime is a representative characteristic of a society when we have the advantage of hindsight, and also when we are looking through American lenses at what goes on in other countries. We are appalled and our biases are confirmed when we hear about thieves’ hands being amputated in one country, or an adulterer being stoned to death in another country. But crime and reactions to it in the United States today also represent American society to people in other parts of the world, and they too are sometimes appalled. They take note that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, that poor people and minorities are vastly over-represented in our prison population, that guns are easily accessible, that the United States has very high rates of gun fatalities, and that the United States is among a very few industrialized countries that still uses the death penalty. These facts represent the United States to people throughout the world.

There are the obvious reasons for the scientific study of crime: crime costs thousands of lives and causes billions of dollars in financial losses every year in the United States. An understanding of crime that comes from scientific research can be used to better inform policy-making decisions, which will reduce the enormous losses caused by crime. But, as we have seen in this discussion, the study of crime can also open a window into an understanding of our own society.

Measuring crime

First, we should note that among all human behaviors, criminal behavior is likely the most difficult to study. Since crime is most often met with shame, ostracism and punishment, its perpetrators want to keep it a secret. To the extent that they are successful in keeping their secret, perpetrators and their behaviors may never come to the attention of criminologists. Those that do come to the attention of criminologists may be different from those who do not and, therefore, those who are “caught” may not represent those who are not caught. Coming up with random samples is often difficult in the social sciences, but even more so in criminology.

How do criminologists gauge the effectiveness of a given policy? How do we know if crime rates are going up or down? How do we know that certain groups are more likely to be perpetrators or victims of crime? How do we know that some cities or countries are more dangerous than others when it comes to crime? The answers to these questions require that we compare numbers: the number of crimes occurring before policy implementation compared with the number afterward, the number of crimes today compared with the number from 20 years ago, the number of black victims compared with the number of white victims, the number of crimes in Detroit compared with the number in Miami. Thus, in order for crime statistics to be meaningful to criminologists, they must be comparable.

Comparability is difficult to achieve because of the secretive nature of criminal behavior discussed above. There are vast numbers of crimes that never come to the attention of the authorities. Criminologists call these the “dark figure” of crime. The dark figure makes the comparability of crime statistics problematic. For example, if Miami’s crime statistics include one-half of all crimes committed during a given year, while Detroit’s statistics include only one-third, then a comparison of the two cities’ crime statistics would likely yield erroneous conclusions. However, as we will see below, there are different sources of crime data, and some of them take into account the dark figure.

The Uniform Crime Report

The Federal Bureau of Investigation compiles crime statistics voluntarily submitted to them by some 18,000 state, local, county, federal and tribal jurisdictions and then publishes its data annually. (These data are now published online in a variety of formats that anyone can use for quantitative analyses.) The publication’s title is Crime in the United States, but it is better known as the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) as it is produced by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which has been collecting such data since 1930. The UCR’s more detailed an...