CRIM1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Inequality, Corporatism, Left Realism
27 Jul 2018
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Document Summary
Criminological theories have been developed to understand criminal behaviour, not to defend the criminal. Social harm: cross-cultural universal norm, human rights, human diversity. Basic criminological theories: classical theory: humans have free will, marxist: crime is an outcome and reflection of basic class divisions in society. Positivism: crime is externally caused by biological problems or internal psychological factors. Strain: crime is essentially a social phenomenon (linked to positivism) Labelling: crime and criminal behaviour are social processes (linked to positivism) example, youth crime. Republican: crime is seen as the denial of personal autonomy: critical: concerned with structures of power. Increases fear among certain populations, especially elderly and vulnerable: moral panics. Problems relying on media representations: occurrence vs. prevalence, crime trends, official data - police reports, victim surveys, dark figure of crime. Individual: something about the criminal or victim, personal characteristics or background. Situational: something about the immediate situation in which the crime occurred, interactions, contacts and their influence.
