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KempaLecture1--Overview.ppt
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What Is Criminology?
- A rendezvous point for many disciplines, providing unique perspectives (each of which includes strengths and liabilities) on issues of crime, criminality, criminal justice, security, and public safety.
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Your textbook, by Rick Linden, defines criminology in the following way (page 9):
“The body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes the processes of making laws, breaking laws, and reacting to the breaking of laws. Its objective is the development of a body of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime, and treatment.”
Why are we here?
- Objective One: Conceptualization/Categorization
Individualistic versus macro accounts
Consensual versus conflict perspectives
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Situate what you read and therefore what you think somewhere in this grid – what kind of theory is this? What kind of theorist am I?
Typology of Theories/Approaches to Criminology
macro
Micro/individualistic
consensualist
conflict
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| systems analysis | systems critique |
| why do people offend? | how are individuals harmed by crime and criminal processes? |
Objective two: Denaturalization
- All aspects of society are social inventions: many of them are recent inventions!
- Inventions should be maintained when they are useful; they should be changed when they prove to no longer be useful
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Objective three: getting smart and getting real
- We need to understand how power and knowledge shape the world around us in order to bring about change.
- There is therefore no need to draw a sharp divide between “academic” and “applied” criminology: they are mutually dependent.
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The standards of good social science / evidence must apply in both domains!
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