criminology

• Money laundering is a white collar crime that involves the process of making illegally-gained proceeds appear legal.
• Criminology is the study of crime and criminals
• Subfields/foci of criminology are crime, criminal law, and criminalization (law breaking, responses, law making)
• Crime is socially constructed, meaning actions are only considered crimes when given that meaning by society
• 3 dimensions/forms of social relativity are cross-cultural relativity (e.g. homosexuality, abortion, torture), related to history (e.g. witchcraft, stalking, alcohol, child abuse), and intra-social (e.g. political, police violence/murder)
• Social construction of crime is important because our knowledge of crime shapes our social actions around it, affecting social policy and law enforcement institutions
• Criminalization process involves defining acts as criminal, surveilling the behavior, and responding to the behavior
• Competing views of criminalization process: it can lead to a rational/humane society or defend the interests of some at the expense of others
• Crime as a social problem is perceived as such by society, affecting people directly or indirectly due to fear of crime
• Crime as a sociological problem explains how crime patterns arise from political, social, and cultural forces in society
• Social problems are socially constructed, e.g. child abuse wasn't recognized as a crime until the 1960s
• Knowledge of crime in everyday life comes from the mass media, but it is not always accurate
• 90% of Americans have no direct experience with street crime
• Factors influencing perception of crime as a social problem include how it is depicted in the media
• The role of the media in shaping perceptions of crime includes distorting reality by over/underrepresenting certain perpetrators and victims
• The unholy trinity consists of fear of crime, crime itself, and images of crime constructed by the media, linking to fear of crime
• News-making criminology is almost never objective, creating the perception of a violent crime problem in society
• Fear of crime and the culture of fear are important concepts that influence people's perceptions and behaviors
• Most Americans fear crimes like terrorism, serial murder, gang violence, and stranger rapes, although these crimes have actually decreased
• Americans are more likely to experience white-collar crimes like tax fraud and scams rather than street crimes
• Factors influencing fear of crime include American exceptionalism, with young people, elderly, racial minorities, and women having the highest rates of fear
• Fear of crime is related to media consumption, with most fear stemming from misrepresentations in the media
• Fear of crime can be used as a social resource for political and social control and social cohesion
• American Exceptionalism relates to fear of crime due to the misrepresentation of crime rates in the United States compared to other countries
• Stranger danger is the fear that strangers are more likely to commit crimes, although many crimes are committed by people known to the victim
• Perceptions of criminal danger do not fit empirical criminal reality, as they are based on a misrepresented version of crime from the media
• The two major paradigms/approaches to defining crime are legal and sociological, with legal being less broad and sociological exploring the politics of definitions
• Definitions of crime matter because they shape our understanding of culpability, actus reus, mens rea, strict liability, and status offenses
• Defenses of justification refer to legal arguments presented in court to justify actions, such as duress, necessity, and duty
• Negations of criminal intent include entrapment, insanity/diminished capacity, with felony and misdemeanor differing in severity of punishment
• Prison and jail differ in terms of duration and severity of offenses, with prison being long-term and jail shorter-term
• Criminal law is different from civil law, with criminal law involving actions against individuals by the government and civil law dealing with disputes between people or organizations
• Consequences for those accused of violations in criminal law include loss of liberties and public status, with sources of criminal law being statutory and common law
• Sociological approaches to defining crime help us understand social dynamics and groups' behaviors that legal approaches may overlook
• Analogous social injury/social harm refers to legally permissible acts that result in bodily harm or deprivation of rights, while crime as a violation of human rights is defined by cultural-bound categories of rights
• Global/international approach to crime involves institutions like the International Crime Court (ICC) that prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression
• Globalization is the process of increasing interconnectedness and interdependence driven by capitalism and the search for profit in the global economic market
• Event or proto-criminal event is how law enforcement views an act/event, with reportability determining if it becomes a criminal incident
• Rate is preferred over incidence for comparison purposes, as rates standardize numbers for different populations
• TRC, DARK FIGURE, CKP, CCA are related to each other in measuring known and unknown crimes, with TRC being the true rate of crime