CRM 100 Lecture 1: CRM100LECTURE1

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Criminology
• Course: CRM 100
• Professor: Kelly De Luca

Document Summary

Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes the processes of making laws, of breaking laws, and of reacting to the breaking of laws . Assumes that criminologists take a scientific approach to crime, evaluate different theories. A social science, we can only understand crime with the backdrop of society as an influence. We have to look first at the law that is made and why it exists in order to understand the full scope of the issue. And we have to look at the crime after it has been committed. We see the crime in what was embedded before and after the crime was committed. Government, police force established to maintain order, law enforces the rules we have in society in order to keep individuals in place, provide an incentive for following rules and punishments for breaking them. Sometimes societal change influences the legal change (legalizing marijuana)