Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The General Theory of Crime and the Psychoanalytic
Frank Trippett, in his excerpt from “A Red Light for Scofflaws”, claims that these days, every law-abiding citizen commits crimes no matter how big or how small. First, he provides general facts about the average citizen and what they do that goes against the law. He continues by stating that more and more people are becoming criminals by their actions. Trippett’s goal is to inform the public that whether a bank is being robbed or trash is being thrown out the window, it is still a crime. The author asserts an informative and knowledgeable tone for anyone who may think the word “crime” only has a strong meaning when it is related to a life-threatening or dangerous act.
In F. T. Cullen, J. P. Wright & K. R. Blevins (Eds.), Taking stock: The status of criminological theory, advances in criminological theory (Vol. 15, pp. 251–273). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Kramer, R. C. (1985). Defining the concept of crime: A humanistic perspective. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 12(September), 469–487.
Hyde, H. Montgomery. Crimes and Punishment. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1985. Print.
Within the past couple of decades, criminologists have developed different criminological theories that apply to the social behaviors and decisions of criminals. One of the earliest theories developed regarding criminality is the rational choice theory, in which describes the rationalization of determining if the rewards from committing the crime outweigh the consequences. In Scarver’s case, his decision to engage in criminal activities outweighed the potential consequences, or the other alternatives if he did not engage in such criminal activities. In addition to the rational choice theory, Scarver’s criminality can be related to the social disorganization theory, which describes the influence of one’s social and physical environment on one’s decision to commit a crime. Lastly, the strain theory can be related to Scarver’s criminality as well, as it is used to describe an individual who lacks the means to obtain such goals, and aspirations, so therefore, he or she engages in criminal activities to acquire the goals.
Integrated theory does not necessarily attempt to explain all criminality but is distinguishable by the idea of merging concepts drawn from different sources. Integrated criminology tries to bring together the diverse bodies of knowledge that represents the full range of disciplines that study crime (Schmalleger, 2012). Integrated theories provide wider explanatory power (Schmalleger, 2012). Integrative theories are like diversified theories and focus on criminal behavior and criminal activity while other theories focus on punishment and crime control (Jeffery, 1959). Integrated approach combines concepts and propositions from two or more prior existing theories into a single new set of integrated concepts and propositions (Elliot, 2017).
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Edmund Burke Perhaps, I would describe the situation with the Criminal Justice Reform in our country with the words of Irish politician Edmund Burke. We have no right to miss the vital "reboot" process of the judicial authorities at this stage. The conception of the law-governed state cannot be achieved until the country has a clear mechanism of protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms that are the key objects when deciding the fate in criminal matters.
It does not consider other factors such as criminal associations, individual traits, and inner strains, which plays a significant role in determining punishment for the individuals in committing crimes. It is observed that this theory endeavours to know that whether the activities of crime as well as the victim’s choice, criminals commit the activities on start from rational decisions. The theory also determines that criminals consider different elements before committing crime. They engage in the exchange of ideas before reaching on any final decision. These elements consist of consequences of their crimes, which include revealing their families to problems or death, chances of being arrested, and others elements, which comprises of placement of surveillance systems (Walsh & Hemmens, 2010; Lichbach,
Crime causation theories present society with a viewpoint, whereby criminal suspects are seen not for the crimes they
Cultural criminology’s “framework is concerned with meaning, power and existential accounts of crime and punishment and control” (Hayward, 2016:300). Which allows cultural criminologist to study crime in the relation to culture and its impact on criminality. Cultural criminology believes it is always “necessary to state and restate what crime is, if nothing else a human activity” (Presdee, 2004:276). The commodification of culture relates to Cultural Criminology in the sense of the many faucets of crime and deviance and what is getting exploited through the media to the public. Commodification of crime is becoming more prevalent as time goes on as the media has such a large influence on society.
Why do people commit crimes? What goes through their minds before they actually commit a crime? These are questions asked from society to criminologist every time one decides they want to commit a crime. Criminologists has given us different crime causations, theories, to explain the answer to these questions. A theory is a speculation about how phenomena, behavior, or process are caused and what takes place after the cause is determined (Anderson, 2015).
Assignment Nine Critical criminology is the idea that the media and the criminal justice system are the things that shape the publics view on crime. These sources influence our ideas of who commits crime and who is victimized by crime. These sources use their influence of crime to continue to control how the public sees crime and uses that to further their own agenda. Whereas, left realism is the idea that the depicted visions of crime are somewhat true. Some people are more likely to be victimized, however the media and criminal justice systems over exaggerate these crimes in order to instill higher levels of fear.
It has been observed that there are numerous researches conducted on youth crime particularly in the United Kingdom which gave the emphasis on young individuals as offenders instead of victims of crime. Moreover, radical criminology significantly contributed to understand the youth crime through different theories. According to Yar (2012), radical criminology is known as the conflict philosophy. It centres its perceptions on crime and on regulation in the faith that capitalist civilisations precipitate as well as describe crime as the possessors by sense of production utilise their influence to endorse commandments that would regulate the working class and suppress intimidations to the supremacy of the governing class. Radical criminology draws together the studies of interactionism, labelling, Marxism, critical criminology and gender which provide the understanding of youth crime from different perspective as discussed in the paper.
Deviance and crime and how a society deals with the issues raised by these acts can inform a sociologist about a society’s culture. Sociologists who study different theories have different views of deviance and crime. Additionally, globalization has led to an increase in cross-border crimes of many types. A key concept of this chapter is the difference between deviance and crime.
As far as crime is concerned, it is defined by the law. Deviance is unexpected behaviour, but not exactly considered criminal. Many consider crime as a social problem – a problem as defined by society, such as homelessness, drug abuse, etc. Others would say crime is a sociological problem – something defined as a problem by sociologists and should be dealt with accordingly by sociologists. This essay attempts to discover the boundaries between these two and ultimately come to an appropriate conclusion.