Crime and Criminology
1. What is crime?
2. What is deviance?
Crime can be defined…
 Form of normal behavior
 Violation of behavioral norms
 Form of deviant behavior
 Legally defined behavior
 Violation of human rights
 Social harm/injury
 Form of inequality
Social,
Legal, and
Moral
dimensions
involved
Emile Durkheim (1893)
 Made three specific claims about the
nature of crime:
1. Crime is normal
2. Crime is inevitable
3. Crime is useful
Crime is normal
 As normal as birth and marriage
 Crimes occur in all societies.
 They are closely tied to the facts of collective
life.
 Crime rates tend to increase as societies
evolve from lower to higher phases.
Crime is normal
 In societies with mechanical solidarity
punishment was more severe.
 Criminal acts offend the strong, well-defined
common consciousness.
 A crime against another person=crime
against the entire society.
 Rejection was the most terrible punishment.
Crime is inevitable
 No society can ever be entirely
rid of crime.
 Imagine a community of saints in a perfect and
exemplary monastery:


Faults that appear small to the ordinary person will
arouse the same scandal as does normal crime
Absolute conformity to rules is impossible
 Each member in society faces variation in
background, education, heredity, social influences
Crime is useful

Crime is indispensable to the
normal evolution of law and morality.
Crime often is a symptom of individual
originality and a preparation for changes in
society.
Rosa Parks (was a criminal) is a hero now.



Her simple act of protest galvanized
America's civil rights revolution.
What is crime?
 Crime can be defined in a variety ways
 At least four definitional perspectives
1. Legalistic
2. Political
3. Sociological
4. Psychological
Crime as legally defined behavior
 Rooted in the criminal law…without law there
can be no crime
 The Legalistic definition:

Classic definition of crime is often quoted
from Paul Tappan’s writings “crime is an
intentional act in violation of the criminal
law committed without defense or excuse,
and penalized by the state as a felony”
(1947)
Legalistic definition
 Crime is human conduct in violation of the
criminal laws of state, the federal
government, or a local jurisdiction that has
the power to make such laws
 Is anything wrong with this definition?
 Moral definitions of crime suggests that a lot
more victimization and injury occurs than is
accounted for by the legal order.
Violence against women
 Twenty-five years ago, police, prosecutors,
and judges did not view rape and battering as
real crimes but rather as private matters
where the woman was to blame.
 As women gained the same rights as men,
these views on the treatment of women
changed.
 There are still some problems in ensuring this
equal treatment.
Shortcomings of Legalistic Definition
 Some activities are not crimes even though
they are immoral (watching pornography,
torturing animals, creating poor working
conditions)
 Powerful individuals are able to influence the
making laws
 Powerful individuals may escape the label
“criminal”
Poor working conditions -Crime?
 For many years, human rights groups have
attacked Nike for the low pay and terrible
working conditions and for the use of child
labor.
 Over half of its employees in Asia work more
than sixty hours a week and have no day off.
Nike
Up to fifty percent of workers
cannot drink water or go to the toilet
when they want.
A quarter of workers receive less than the legal
minimum wage, even though Nike makes huge
profits.
“Abusive treatment", physical and verbal, is
exercised in more than a quarter of its south
Asian plants.
Gap
 The clothing company Gap
 Report revealed terrible working conditions in
its factories in Mexico, China, Russia, and
India
 Report disclosed details of child labor, the
virtual slavery of workers, and working weeks
in excess of 80 hours.
Political definition of crime
 Powerful groups of people label selected
undesirable forms of behavior as illegal.
 Powerful individuals use their power to
establish laws and sanctions against less
powerful persons and groups.
 Official statistics indicate that crime rates in
inner-city, high-poverty areas are higher than
those in suburban areas.
 Self-reports of prison inmates show that
prisoners are members of the lower class.
Political perspective
 Crime of inequality includes a lot of behaviors
that are omitted by legalistic definition.
 Crime is a political concept used to protect
powerful people.
 Crimes of power = price fixing, economic
crimes, unsafe working conditions, nuclear
waste products, war-making, domestic
violence, etc.
'‘Eco-mafia''
 The developing South (particularly African
countries like Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Algeria
and Mozambique) has become the dump for
hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive
waste from the world's rich countries
 A colossal business which is linked to money
laundering and gunrunning
Nuclear waste drums
found by Greenpeace
 IIlegal dumps - among the largest in the world
- in Somalia, where workers handle the
radioactive waste without any kind of
safeguard or protective gear - not even
gloves!
 The workers do not know what they are
handling, and if one of them dies, the family is
persuaded to keep quiet with a small bit of
cash.
Sociological definition
 A more comprehensive sociological definition
of crime was offered by Julia and Herman
Schwendinger (1975):
 “Crime encompasses any harmful acts,
including violations of fundamental
prerequisites for well-being (such as food,
shelter, clothing, medical service,
challenging work and recreational
experiences, as well as security from
predatory individuals or repressive and
imperialistic elites.”
Sociological perspective
 Schwendingers have challenged
criminologists to be less constrained in what
they see as a crime
 Violation of human rights
 A man who steals a paltry sum can be called
a criminal while agents of the State can
legally reward men who destroy food so that
the price level can be maintained while a
sizable portion of a population suffers from
malnutrition.
Psychological definition (moralistic
view)
 Any behavior which stands in the way of
an individuals developing to his/her fullest
potential would be considered crime.
 If criminologists adopted this view of crime,
the scope of criminology would be greatly
expanded..
Social Context of crime
 Crime is socially constructed (Burger, 1968
on social construction of reality)
 A criminal act can be the same but the
interpretation of it can be different
The vocabulary of Homicide
 Murder is the name for legally unjustified, intentional
homicide (legal and moral meanings)
 Execution is the name for justified homicide (when
terrorists kill their enemies)
 Journalist Ambrose Bierce: “Homicide is the slaying
of one human being by another. There are four kinds
of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and
praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the
slain whether he fell by one kind or another-the
classification is for the purposes of the lawyers”.
Defining crime
 Anthropologists have been unable to find
behavior that is universally defined as
crime.
 Every society sets boundaries of life and
death, justifiable homicide and murder.
 Societies disagree over what constitutes
murder.
Suicide Bombers
 They claim that it is merely a tactic of war in
defense of their land and homes.
 They see it as a heroic act of martyrdom, not
suicide, and not murder.
What is deviance?
 Deviance involves the violation of group
norms which may or may not be
formalized into law.
 Some examples: criminals, alcoholics,
people with tattoos, compulsive gamblers,
and the mentally ill
Howard Becker (1966)
 “It is not the act itself, but the reactions to
the act, that make something deviant.”
 People in different societies react differently
to the same behavior.
 Moreover, within the same society at a given
time the perception of deviance varies by
class, gender, race, and age.
Deviance is commonplace
 We are all deviant from time to time.
 Each of us violates common social norms in
certain situations.
 Being late for class is categorized as a
deviant act.
Deviance
 Deviation from norm is not always negative:
 A member of an exclusive club who speaks
out against its traditional policy of excluding
women or poor people is a social deviant.
 Rosa Parks was a social deviant. She
deviated from the accepted social norms of
the culture in which she was living.
Deviance
 Deviant behavior is human activity that is
statistically different from the average.
 Deviance and crime are concepts that do not
always easily mesh.
 Some forms of deviance are not violations of
the criminal law and the reverse is true as
well.
Relationship between crime and deviance
ILLEGAL
ILLEGAL
And
DEVIANT
DEVIANT