Crime and Criminal Justice

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• Crime and Criminal Justice

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Crime and Deviance

• Crime is a type of deviant behavior, but not all
  deviant behavior would be called crime.
• Deviance becomes crime when it is designated by
  the institutions of society as violating such a
  law or laws.
• Criminology is the study of crime from a
  scientific perspective.

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How Much Crime Is There?

• Data about crime come from two major sources
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) distributes
  an annual report Uniform Crime Report.
• National Crime Victimization Surveys published by
  Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Department of
  Justice.
• Both reports are subject to underreporting about
  half to two-thirds of all crimes.
• Certain serious crimes, such as rape, are
  significantly underreported. Victims may be too
  upset to report a rape to the police or they
  believe the police will not believe them.
• The official statistics also inflate picture of
  index crime, but underreport elite crime.

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Classifications of Crimes

• Personal crime directed against people
• murder, aggravated assault, rape, robbery
• Property crime involve theft or change of
  property without bodily harm
• burglary, larceny, auto theft, arson
• Victimless crime violate laws not listed in the
  FBIs serious crime index
• gambling, illegal drugs use, and prostitution
• Hate crime refer to assault and other malicious
  acts (including crimes against property)
  motivated by various bias, including but not
  limited to
• Based on race, religion, sexual orientation

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Classifications of Crimes

• Elite crime (white collar crime) refers to
  criminal activities by persons of high social
  status who commit their crimes in the context of
  their occupation
• Embezzlement, insider trading, variety of
  violations of income tax law
• White-collar crime has traditionally generated
  less concern in the public mind than street
  crime. In terms of total dollars, however,
  white-collar crime is far more consequential for
  society than street crime.
• Organized crime committed by organized groups,
  typically involving the provision of illegal
  goods and services to others.
• Mafia, but it can refer to any group that
  exercises control over large illegal enterprises,
  such as the drug trade, prostitution, money
  laundering
• Corporate crime wrongdoing that occurs within
  the context of a formal organization or
  bureaucracy and is actually sanctioned by the
  norms and operating principles of the
  organization
• Assault of youths by Catholic priests, Enron,
  Worldcom
• This can occur in any organization corporate,
  educational, religious, or governmental

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Violent Crime in the United States
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Race, Class, Gender and Crime

• One of the most important areas of sociological
  research on crime is the relationship committed
  between crime, social class and race.
• Certain groups are more likely than others to
  commit crime given that crime is linked to
  patterns of inequality in society.
• Sociologist Ramiro Martinez Jr. explored the
  connection between rates of violence in Latino
  communities and the degree of inequality in 111
  U.S. cities.
• His research shows a clear link between
  likelihood of lethal violence and socioeconomic
  conditions for Latinos in these different cities.

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Race and Crime

• Minorities constitute 25 of the population of
  the United States but are more than 33 of the
  people arrested for property crimes and almost
  50 of the people arrested for violent crimes.
• Arrest statistics show a strong correlation
  between social class and crime, with the poor
  more likely than others to be arrested.
• Sociological research has shown that police
  discretion is strongly influenced by class and
  race judgments.

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Victimization by Crime A Class Phenomenon
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Arrests by Race
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Factors in Increase in Crime By Women

• Changes brought about by the womens movement
  made women more likely to be employed in jobs
  that present opportunities for crimes such as
  property theft, embezzlement, and fraud.
• The images women have of themselves are changing,
  making new behaviors possible.
• Women on average remain in disadvantaged low-wage
  positions in the labor market.

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Crime Victimization by Race and Gender
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The Policing of Minorities

• Minority communities are policed more heavily
  than White neighborhoods.
• Numerous studies have also documented the severe
  treatment that Native Americans, Mexican
  Americans, and African Americans receive from the
  police.
• Increasing the number of minority police officers
  has some effect on police brutality. However,
  simply increasing the number of African-American
  police officers does not decrease the number of
  crime dramatically because it does not change the
  material conditions that create crime to begin
  with.
• Racial profiling, the use of race alone as the
  criterion for deciding whether to stop and detain
  someone, such as the driver of an automobile, on
  suspicion of committing a crime.
• While the crime rate for Blacks and Hispanics is
  higher than that of Whites, the majority of
  Blacks or Hispanics do not commit any crimes.
• On a given day, there is roughly a 90 chance
  that an African American in a car has not
  committed a crime.

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Race and Sentencing

• Extensive research finds that once on trial,
  minority defendants are found guilty more often
  than White defendants.
• At sentencing, Blacks and Latinos are likely to
  get longer sentences than Whites for the same
  crimes.
• A study of Hispanic and White judges found that
  White judges sentence White defendants less
  severely than Hispanic defendants.

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Race and the Death Penalty

• Of the over 3500 prisoners currently on Death
  Row, 44 are Black.
• Research shows that when Whites and minorities
  commit the same crime against a White victim,
  minorities are more likely to receive a more
  severe sentence.
• Someone who kills a White person is also three
  times more likely to get the death penalty than
  someone who kills an African American, regardless
  of the race of the perpetrator.

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Prisons

• More than half of the federal and state male
  prisoners in the United States are racial
  minorities.
• Blacks have the highest rates of imprisonment,
  followed by Hispanics, then Native Americans and
  Asians.
• The United States and Russia have the highest
  rates of incarceration in the world.
• In theory, the criminal justice system is
  supposed to be unbiased, able to be objectively
  weigh guilt and innocence. In reality, the
  criminal justice system reflects the racial and
  class stratification and bias in our society.
• The use of race alone as the criterion for
  deciding whether to stop and detain someone, such
  as the driver of an automobile, on suspicion of
  committing a crime.
• While the crime rate for Blacks and Hispanics is
  higher than that of Whites, the majority of
  Blacks or Hispanics do not commit any crimes.
• On a given day, there is roughly a 90 chance
  that an African American in a car has not
  committed a crime.

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Ten Leading Nations in Incarceration Rates
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State and Federal Prison Population
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Terrorism

• Terrorism is a crime that violates both
  international and domestic laws.
• Terrorists crosses national borders and its
  understanding requires a global perspective.
• Terrorism, whether domestic or international, is
  best understood not only as individual insanity,
  but also as a politically, economically, and
  socially oriented form of violence.

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Sociological Theories of Crime
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Sociological Theories of Crime
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Sociological Theories of Crime