CRCJ 1000 Midterm: CRCJ1000 Midterm - Key Concepts
11 Feb 2017
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Defines crime as an act that violates the criminal law and is punishable with a jail term, a fine, and/or some other sanction. Crime as socially constructed: social context is extremely important in determining whether an act is deviant & how it should be classified, an act is deviant only from the pov of a set of rules & regulations. Vary widely from society to society & group to group: some broad similarities in acts that are defined as deviant. Ex. most societies disapprove of murder: differences exist between societies & within societies over time. Ex. doctor-assisted suicide is illegal in canada but legal in netherlands: nothing inherent in any act that makes it unlawful. Statistics as socially constructed: by the definition we give to something will construct it as a statistic or not. Ex. we have a definition of homelessness to give us statistics about it.
