Week 1

For the first week in the criminology course we start out by defining "criminology", which is simply "the study of crime." Now what is crime? Initially it's defined as "the human conduct that violates the laws of a state,federal government or local jurisdiction which has the power to make such laws." There are four main perspectives that make up contemporary criminology 1. Legalistic ,2. political, 3.sociological, 4. psychological. The purpose of this course is going to follow the legalistic perspective, which defines crime as I have stated. Without laws that define what a crime is, there can be no crime, regardless of how heinous an act may be to society. However in a "common law" state, a person can be prosecuted on what is accepted acts of right and wrong, it does not need to be any written formal law. These prosecutions are rare, and often unsuccessful though.

A quick look at the other perspectives of criminology are political, which defines crime as laws made by those in power to try and control the people from committing acts which would jeopardize their control. Sociological defines crime as an antisocial act that needs to be repressed in order to preserve the current system of society. Psychological perspective defines crime as a form of social maladjustment ,difficulty of the offender in reacting to the stimuli of his environment. It is a problem behavior which makes it difficult for the offender to live in a socially acceptable manner. But we will focus on the legalistic perspective only, for the purpose of this course. There is a difference between criminal behavior, and deviant behavior. Deviant behavior is simply human activity that violates social norms, the kinds of things that might get you in trouble in a "common law' state.

What is a criminologist, what do they do? A common broad stroking definition is of a person who studies crime, and criminals.  It's bit more complicated than that when you break it down though. Sometimes the scope of a criminologist gets overshadowed to those who are really criminalist, one who works in crime labs, or a crime scene investigator, or anyone who works with a special knowledge in a specific area of crime. Criminologist is reserved for academics and researchers with advanced degrees involved in the study of crime and trends and societal

reactions to crime.

The desire to understand the criminal mind predates written history, prehistoric skeletal evidence shows a primitive cranial surgery. It is believed that people assumed deviant behavior was caused by spiritual possession, and the surgery was an attempt to free the evil spirit.

Unfortunately the understanding of what criminology is, is not as simple as the explanation sounds. It's very detailed and covers many different theories. There is not one right or wrong theory, in my opinion, they all have valid ideas that need to be looked at.

 

Theoretical criminology is the type most often found in colleges and universities, it attempts to posit explanations for criminal behavior. There is also a category called "general theory" which attempts to define all criminal behavior under one explanation, this is one theory I would not bother looking to much into, because that is impossible to do. The integrated theory takes  concepts from different sources and merges them together to try and develop an understanding of crime. This theory seems like the most reasonable approach to me, and is part of what makes criminology an inter-discipline science.

The overall theme of this course is going to be one of social policy, the social problems perspective, which holds that crime is the manifestation of an underlying social problem such as poverty, inequality, and lower levels of education and so on. We must ask what we can do to control crime from these factors.

The opposite of this perspective is the social responsibility, which holds that individuals are responsible for their own actions, and they choose crime over law-abiding courses of action.

We will be contrasting these two perspectives in this course. Advocates of social responsibility believe that regardless of social programs to deter crime, certain individuals are always going to be prone to a criminal life, because that's what they choose to do. They want to see harsher enforcement and punishments, rather than government programs. This policy was best displayed in 1994, when the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was passed.

It expanded the number of capital offenses to 52, billions of dollars was made available to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets,it also funded money for prisons.

Every crime that occurs has a unique set of causes, consequences, and participants. Everyone from the offender, victim, bystanders, police, courts, and society as a whole,a criminal act has a different affect on them. Which usually leads to some sort of new law being enacted if society feels deeply offended by the case and realizes a need for change to prevent future instances as much as possible. The roles of the criminal justice system are (1) prevent crime, (2) adequately identify and inhibit specific offenders  prior to there involvement. (3) prevent the release of potential repeat offenders. 

Finally we change our definition of crime to an "emergent phenomenon" , a lawbreaking event that rises from an intricate social nexus involving a wide variety of participants.

In the discussion we talked about why society needs crime, on the surface we condemn crime, and punish offenders, but deep down crime and punishment is a ritual of our lives. Long ago, before television was made popular in America, the airwaves were filled with hundreds of radio programs of detectives solving murders, and the glamorous life of the old west lawmen, marshals and of course the Lone Ranger. Many of early televisions program were remakes of previously popular radio programs. Throughout the years since, criminal justice shows have been some of the highest rated programs ever. 

Today CSI : Miami is "THE" highest rated show in the world, with over fifty million viewers in over fifty five countries. Even though I hate to be the one to burst the big bubble and tell you that things don't really work quite that way in the real world, it just shows the desire and attraction people have to crime. Can you think of anytime in your life a criminal justice program wasn't popular? CHP's, Murder She Wrote, Matlock,COPS, Real Stories of the Highway Patrol,CSI,Law and Order... it could go on forever, I think it shows a positive conjunction for the thesis of this discussion.

We marvel at criminal behavior, as in the case of the old west outlaws, who were by all rights cold blooded killers, but society seen them as romanticized heroes. I'm not sure exactly where this comes from, I believe it's more of the detective in all of us coming out, and we don't stop to realize the true horror and life changing affects that a crime can cause. Hollywood really has desensitized us to the truth about crime over the last century, and sometimes it's not until it hits us directly that we realize what it's really about. 

We posted our introductions this week, some students are returning from my previous classes and some are new. Every criminal justice student takes a little different path in the order of the classes, so the ones that I've been with the last two terms will be with me to the end, and the rest will be mixed.

No assignments were due this week.

The same procedure in this course as well for week 1, post introductions to the class. We did not have any book reading assignment this week, we just read from the online lecture material and discussed why it's important for students to study corrections, which most people think of only as jail and prison. We must not forget that parole and probation as well as other rehabilitation programs are all included in the corrections branch of the system.

For the assignment I had to write a short three paragraph report summarizing the "convict ships" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that took convicted criminals from England away to exile to live in Australia. I covered the early days of cruel treatment and many deaths, until after 1801 when the English government got involved and put their own doctors on the ships who did not have to answer to the Captain, and also offered bonuses to the crew for the safe delivery of all the convicts.