...Running head: UNDERSTANDING THE CRIMINAL Understanding the Criminal Understanding the Criminal Crime is an activity that societies around the globe have had to experience from close to the beginning of manhood. Crime is nothing new to us but the extent of criminal behavior has evolved over the centuries. We will probably never live in a world that is free of crime, but learning more about the criminal aspects in our society may one day make our world a much better place to live. To help resolve criminal behavior becoming more familiar with the biological and psychological explanations of crime, the way criminals learn to commit crimes and the criminal justice system in place to deal with criminals must be understood. Understanding the explanations of crime is a controversial issue by many researchers. What is understood is that the crime rate over the last century has increased and that this is largely due to the criminals in our society. If the criminal could be understood then perhaps that would be a large step in the combat against crime. Criminologists study factors to explain why and individual would commit crimes. Although one explanation does not supersede the other when considering the causes of crime, research has shown evidence of biological and psychological factors resulting in the criminal characteristics. Often people experience both contributing factors that drive them into the world of criminal behavior. Biological causation of crimes used to be an instrumental...
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...Introduction The criminal justice system in the United States is multifaceted and is best understood when dissected into individual parts. There are the components of the criminal justice system, classifications for crime, due process, types of punishment and the process of the criminal justice system, all of which only scratch the surface. When studying and working in the criminal justice field it is important to remember that without each part of this system many of the freedoms and rights citizens take for granted every day could not be enforced. Even more important to remember, as annoying as it is sometimes, no law is too infinitesimal to be enforced because without even the smallest law, the society so many Americans love and cherish would not function. Components of the Criminal Justice System Though the criminal justice is complex, when broken down into its individual components is easily dissected and explained. The major components of the criminal justice system are the police, the criminal courts and corrections (Schmalleger, 2008). These components work together to provide safety for the community as well as punishment and rehabilitation for criminal offenders (Schmalleger, 2008). The first component of the criminal justice system is the police. The police enforce the law, investigate crimes, apprehend criminals, reduce and prevent crime, maintain public order, ensure community safety, provide emergency community services and protect the basic rights and freedoms...
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...causation, both old and new, make certain basic assumptions. Among them are these: Crime is caused by the individual exercise of free will. Human beings are fundamentally rational, and most human behavior is the result of free will coupled with rational choice. Pain and pleasure are the two central determinants of human behavior. Crime erodes the bond that exists between individuals and society and is therefore an immoral form of behavior. It is easy to understand why the entertainment industry and the media are often targeted as the cause of crime and criminal violence. However, many other types of explanations for crime are also viable, such as genetic abnormalities, individual psychological differences, and variations in patterns of early socialization that may predispose some people to crime and violence. Likewise, it is prudent to examine social institutions such as the family, schools, and churches for their role in reducing or enhancing the likelihood of criminality among people. One thing is certain: There is no single cause of crime; it is rooted in a diversity of causal factors and takes a variety of forms, depending on the situation in which it occurs. Nonetheless, some theories of human behavior help us understand why certain people engage in acts that society defines as criminal or deviant, while others do not. A theory is a kind of model. Theories posit relationships, often of a causal sort, between events and things under study. Formally, a complete theory consists...
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...Dave Salzano November 29, 2011 Professor Barnes Criminology 11am Term Paper Part 2 In the beginning of the year I believed that criminals who committed the same type of crimes did so for similar reasons. While I still agree that there is a correlation, through the semester I have changed my view a bit. There are many different theories that can explain the possibilities of why two criminals who have committed the same crime have done so. There isn’t one theory that can explain the causation of any particular crime, but instead each crime and each criminal differs on a case by case basis. Without realizing it I believed heavily in the strain theory as the best explanation for the causation of crime, mainly the belief that people in poverty would overlook the consequences in order to attain what others in their community have. Now I see this was an extremely narrow view point and believe each crime and each criminal can be explained through a diverse and often multiple groups of theories. I underestimated the impact of biological issues that contribute to crime explained by trait theorists. They argue the individual is not the only one responsible for crime in society, but that we must look at their environment, neighborhood, economic opportunities, and family life. The focus is on how different biological factors like high testosterone levels and a person’s diet combined with their environment effects crime (Siegel, 2000). I would have agreed that higher testosterone...
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...growing figures of women implicated in the criminal-justice system and the shortage of programs and assistance that are equipped toward their necessities has encouraged criminal justice experts to investigate their sanctioning and oversight procedures in terms of gender. However, there is additionally comprehensive information concerning the attributes of women in prisons and jails, there are considerably fewer facts on female delinquents in community correctional environments. The failure of mature females in criminal-justice investigation has been substantiated on the grounds that they report for only a short fraction of apprehensions and move fewer delinquencies than males. This explanation disregards the fact that, adult females who do register in the justice system, while fewer other and less vicious than their male counterparts, generally come to be extensive users of the system. In concentrating on the devastating quantity of males in the criminal and juvenile justice organizations programs, procedures and services usually fall through to produce a mixture of options for conducting with the gender and culturally specific complications of female offenders implicated in the system. For Gottfredson and Hirschi, transgression can generally be diminished to “acts of force or fraud undertaken in pursuit of self-interest,” which is speculative of both cross-cultural and reforming authentic interpretations of crime. Besides, “similar behaviors” are enactments which though not unlawful...
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...Ari Denburger AJ-1 Mr. Lacasso 2/16/2014 Deviance related to crime Deviance is a title that insinuates the violation of social norms in society which has been defined through law. Deviance can be described as adjacent to criminal and improper behavior imposed by the people who break the social norms of a society, thus becoming subjective to a label of “deviant”. Deviants often have punishment bestowed upon them by law enforcement officers and their local court systems. The question asked by criminologist throughout time is, “what is the underlying cause of crime?” “Is crime a learned behavior forced by strain due to the depleting environment an individual inhabits?” “Are individuals with a genetic mutation destined to become deviant?” All of these may be a result of biological and social constructionist theories of deviance, this essay will define the opposing differences and the relation of the two in this essay. Both hold contributing factors to the construction of deviance in society, but are both highly conflicting theories. Before going into the theories of deviance, the definition of deviance must be further explained. The codification of deviance can vary widely between different cultures, a norm in one culture can be considered deviant in another. For example, the notion of cannibalism has been proved by anthropologists to be a spiritually divine form of ritualistic sacrifice in the ancient Aztec culture of Mexico. Yet in Western culture murder and...
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...people, blacks, women and other disadvantaged groups demanded a part in the shaping of national policy. They saw the gaps between philosophical political demands and reality: Blacks had little opportunity to advance women were kept in an inferior status; old politicians made wars in which the young had to die. Rebellion broke out, and some criminologists joined the revolution.[2] These criminologists turned away from theories that explained crime by characteristics of the offender or of the social structure. They set out to demonstrate that individuals become criminals because of what with power, especially those in the criminal justice system, do. Their explanations largely reject the consensus model of crime, on which all earlier theories rested. Their theories not only question the traditional explanations of the creation and enforcement of the criminal law but also blame that law for the making of criminals. It may not sound so...
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...collar crime can be explained relating to criminology and crime. We must look at several concepts and behaviors and take certain metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological assumption about the ultimate nature of reality and being into consideration. Example, is reality subjective or objective? Is causation simply a human construct, or is it something that can be definitively and objectively established? The latter were two questions to approach some explanation of the theories of white collar crime and the criminological concept of the offenders in this sector. There are the sociological, biogenetic, psychological, and sociogenic explanation to white collar criminology and crime. The most basic theory of criminality states that criminals are different in some fundamental way from non-criminals. Then the nature of the difference must be identified. On a Sociological level the propensity to commit crimes, is shown to vary among various segments of the population or among different organization. The biogenetic explanation of criminality became especially influential in the nineteenth century. This states that criminals are inherently different from other people, even down to their appearance. This explanation was promoted by: The Austrian anatomist Franz Joseph Gall’s phrenology and Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso’s concept of the “born criminal.” The significant of this notion is that it has persisted in the public imagination long after it was...
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...criminology views criminal conduct as a matter of human nature and believed that all human beings have free will to engage in an act (Barak, Leighton, Flavin, 2010). Early philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, believed that the guide to conduct is a balance between pain and pleasure. In other words, the punishment was to fit the crime (Raymond Paternoster, 2010). Viewing punishment as a deterrent, classical theorist believed employing severe punishment to deter potential offenders who outweighed the pleasure of crime versus the pain of the punishment. Classical theory has been a elemental part of the legal and economic thought as well as influencing the degree of punishment and sentencing in the society (Barak, Leighton, Flavin, 2010). Within criminology the classical school's importance diminished as positivist explanations of criminal behavior emerged and became dominant. However, most modern criminal justice systems have never rejected free will explanations of criminal behavior. In the United States, the classical model has been encouraged more by the system in which it is implanted than by positivism. The classical model has re-emerged in criminology as the "justice model" and rational choice explanations. The positivist criminological theory came about in the late nineteenth century which began to study crime as a social phenomenon which was scientifically based (Barak, Leighton, Flavin, 2010). Cesare Lombroso, Italian psychiatrist and criminologist, concluded that criminals are born...
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...A Changing Age-Crime Climax Criminals are in many different forms. They may differ in size, shape, and tone of skin. However, in the United States, the majority of criminals possess a similar trait. According to the uniform crime report (UCR), the overwhelming majority of criminals, leading in all offenses, are between the ages of 25 and 29 (UCR 2016). These arrest statistics show that there is indeed an age-crime curve that ultimately peaks at ages 25 through 29, and quickly declines thereafter. “For decades criminologists have debated the connection between age and crime” (Andersen 2015), and still seek explanations as to why there is such a significant curve in the data. It is important to note and examine which are the most frequent offenses...
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...Criminal Acts and Choices As children grow up they embrace a set of morals and characteristics that are embedded by their societies. Every individual in society has a set of emotions and own responses to everyday life. Every day individuals are faced with choices they will have to choose a path which can dramatically affect their life. As we walk through life we have our own behaviors. Dr. Glasser explains, “Choice Theory is an explanation of human behavior developed by Dr. William Glasser. Dr. Glasser explains that all we do all our lives is behave, and that we choose our behavior in an attempt to meet one or more of the five basic human needs that are built into our genetic structure.”( ) As we look at Dr. William Glassers explanation of human behaviors we start to determine how choice theory relates to crime. As we study choice theory we start to understand the thinking of criminals and why they commit the crimes they do. Due to our morals that have been driven into us by our society we grew up in we start to piece together the thought process that each individual goes through before and after they commit there crime. According to Choice theory “A criminal commits a crime, according to this theory, because she believes the crime will ultimately benefit her. Possible ways a crime might benefit someone might be financial gain, a sense of control, a sense of power, the mystique of the "outlaw" or just as an alternative career“ ( ). As we investigate more...
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... Sociological, and Psychological For centuries, documentation of criminal cases filled the inboxes of the numerous police officers’, investigators’, and forensic laboratory analysists’ exceeding the limits of caseloads possible for any given criminal justice professional responsible for solving criminal cases. Each giving everything they have to catch the guilty and thus, providing justice to the victims who suffered because of someone’s criminal behaviors and actions. Each with the same or similar inquiries; why do people commit the crimes they commit? Why do they behave this way? What is their purpose? Were the born this way? What, if anything, happen to them to make them behave in such a heinous manner? Are they a victim of their own environment and/or social status? Of course, these inquiries cover only a minute number of possible indications as to answering the “Why?” people commit these criminal behaviors and actions. Criminology identifies ascertains three amalgamations of theories, each of which attempt to justify inquiries by working exuberantly to establish a high level of credibility and reliability; the following will address how these biological, sociological, and psychological theories of crime causation affect human behavior and/or actions. Biological Theory of Crime Causation Biological theories of crime causation claim that one’s physical traits influence an individual in to criminal activities. The idea indicates that the physical nature of the body...
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...contemporary analysis of the term “white collar crime” is as pertinacious as various concepts within the realm of the Criminal Justice System. According to fbi.gov, there are a host of crimes ranging from health care fraud to computer crime amassed under the umbrella of white collar crime. In addition, the term is widely utilized by both criminologists and sociologists alike, incorporating a mass of non-violent behaviors related to pecuniary fraud. Beyond the fundamental description, currently there is a pervasive inaptness and disciplinary criticism of the definition and application of white collar crime. An assortment of criminologists with the focal point being on state and federal law, contend that many of the behaviors society believes to be white collar crimes are in fact not crimes at all. Short of a statute to delineate whether specific conduct is labeled as a criminal violation of law, behaviors tend to be categorized by individual standards rather than in the context. An individual evaluation of what is or is not deviant allows for a subjective approach that softens the scientific objectivity of criminology (Tappan 1977). Furthermore, the Criminal Justice system was assembled upon the foundation of individual culpability. This presents difficulties when criminal acts involve cooperative intricacies. The penalty phase in regards to the corporate criminal action was not intended to impose sanctions against groups or organizations. Rather, sociologists contend the term itself...
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...Introduction To Criminology Prof. Dr. Ayman Elzeiny A-why criminology? There is very important and critical questions , impose it self at our minds. why do people get paid to study crime and criminal behavior , and why do people engage in this area of study ? There are a variety of answers of these questions, built around many kinds of concerns , like the anxiety, anger , and fear that are common responses to crime of the future crimes . former victims of crimes may contribute of showing the importance of studying criminology by, transferring them experience and feeling of anxiety, anger, and fear which Generated from crimes to other persons . Then the need to study criminology become at the forefront of priorities , to predict and control crime; the hope of preventing crime through individual and social reform the wish to understand and explain crime and societal reactions to it; and the simple desire to learn more about crime and what it can tell us about our society . Criminologists disagree, sometimes violently, about which of these kinds of concerns are most legitimate and important . So Criminology was the composite result of the thinking and endeavors of many people, and them desire to the understanding the individual behavior and deviation and the structuring of the social order . The study of crime has engaged the interest of many academic disciplines. Building on centuries of philosophical debate, systematic attempts to explain crime emerged...
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...social learning theory has several aspects and elements that make it a formidable and studied theory by many psychologists and it is used by many while attempting to explain how exactly people become socialized. To begin with, the social learning theory takes in to account the formation of one’s identity. The identity is considered to be a learned response to social encounters. The theory “emphasizes the societal context of socialization rather than the individual mind” (Anderson, 2009) and it “postulates that an individual’s identity is not the product of the unconscious” (Anderson, 2009). The end result is the modeling of one’s self based off of the response to the influence and expectations of others. Within this theory, example of behavior and attitude develop in response to positive or negative reinforcement from the primary and secondary elements that surround us. Those who feel that the social learning theory is...
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