Criminology – Thinking about some basics no comments
It’s admittedly been a while since my last post, but I have still been a bit scattered about the nature of my topic and have been earnestly trying to refrain from focussing on Web Science issues that are too narrow and specifically, archaeological. In lieu of this I’ve been focused on getting to grips with Criminology first, a discipline which I know I want to study and apply elsewhere. I’ve been taking lots of notes along the way, but hadn’t yet transcribed them here, so here goes..
The following mostly stems from Walklate 2005: Criminology: The Basics.
What is Criminology?
Criminology as Multidisciplinary
One of the big take home points for me about Criminology as a discipline is actually how inherently multidisciplinary it is. Depending on who you ask, you might get a somewhat different take on the nature of criminological study, typically framed by the ‘other discipline’ from which the researcher stems from. This includes criminology from an economics, history, psychology, law, sociology, anthropology, and philosophical multidisciplinary stance – all researching and defining criminology somewhat differently. Yet Walklate claims all disciplines are “held together by one substantive concern: CRIME.”
What is Crime?
The question of “what is crime” within the criminology community is contested, and seems to go beyond defining crime as simply breaking the law though this is a useful starting place for most researchers, as it removes the emotive nature of studying such a subject area. But criminologists must also consider that laws change, thus understanding the processes of criminalizing and decriminalizing and the processes that influence policy can also fall under the remit of criminology. Criminologists must also consider social agreement, social consensus and societal response to crime, which extends the crime definition beyond that which is simply against the law. In addition, crime still occurs regardless of the content of the law – and this falls within a sub sect described as “deviant behaviour” which seems to lend itself more to the psychological-criminological studies.
Sociology of Crime
The sociology of crime is concerned with the social structures that lead to crime – “individual behaviour is not constructed in a vacuum” – and it takes place within a particular social and cultural context that must be examined when looking addressing criminal studies. Social expectations and power structures surrounding criminal acts are also important to the nature of studying crime in society.
Example applications and questions
- Why does there seem to be more of a certain type of crime in some societies and not others?
- Why/If the occurrence of a type of crime is changing throughout time?
- Why do societies at times focus efforts on reducing/managing/effecting certain types of crimes?
feminism – forced a thinking about the “maleness of the crime problem”, and question of masculinity within society – “search for transcendence” (to be master and in control of nature)
Counting Crime
Sources for analyzing crime
- direct experiences of crime
- mediated experiences of crime
- official statistics on crime – Criminal Statistics in England and Wales, published yearly a good starting point. Home Office, FBI, EuroStat
- research findings of criminologists
“the dark figure of crime” – the criminal events only known to the offender and the victim – e.g. those that don’t get caught, or not reported/recorded.
Not all recorded offenses have an identifiable offender/not all offenders are convicted – partiality
The 3 R’s: recognising, reporting, recording.
Reporting – criminologists must understand reporting behaviour and reasons for not reporting crime, and then how that effects the results/statistics upon analysis.
- behaviour may be unlawful but witnesses may not recognise it as such, thus not report it
- witnesses may recognise an act as criminal but consider it not serious enough to report
- judicial process – and numbers of tried vs convicted, the politics of this and its subsequent effects in reporting
- police discretion on recording crime – e.g. meeting and reporting to targets
identifying trends – it’s important to understand crime statistics over time
- understand whether crime and terms for crime change over time, changes to how an offense is defined
- criminal victimisation surveys – do these exist for Internet fraud
- crimes against the personal vs crimes against property
the Problem of Respondents – getting people to respond to surveys can be challenging.
- big difference between crimes known to police and the dark figure of crime
- big difference between crimes made visible by criminal victimisation surveys and those that remain invisible (e.g. tax fraud)