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Chapter 1 An Overview of Crime and Criminology

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In 1996, Iraqi refugees Majed Al-Timimy, 28, and Latif Al-Husani, 34, married the daughters, aged 13 and 14, of a fellow Iraqi refugee in Lincoln, Nebraska. The marriages took place according to Muslim custom, and everything seemed to be going well for a while until one of the girls ran away and the concerned father and her husband reported it to the police. It was at this point that American and Iraqi norms of legality and morality clashed head-on. Under Nebraska law, people under 17 years old cannot marry, so both grooms and the girls’ father and mother were arrested and charged with a variety of crimes from child endangerment to statutory rape.

According to an Iraqi woman interviewed by the police (herself married at age 12 in Iraq), both girls were excited and happy about the wedding. The Iraqi community was shocked that these men faced up to 50 years in prison for their actions, as would have earlier generations of Americans who were legally permitted to marry girls of this age. The men were sentenced to 4 to 6 years in prison and paroled in 2000 with conditions that they have no contact with their “wives.” Thus something that is legally and morally permissible in one culture can be severely punished in another. Were the actions of these men child sex abuse or simply unremarkable marital sex? Which culture is right? Can we really ask such a question? Is Iraqi culture “more right” than American culture given that marrying girls of that age was permissible here too at one time? Most important for our purposes, how can criminologists hope to study crime scientifically if what constitutes a crime is relative to time and place?

Learning Objectives ❖ Be able to describe the difficulties attached to defining crime and the difference between crime and criminality ❖ Explain the difference between mala in se and mala prohibita crimes ❖ Understand the legal process required to “officially” become criminal ❖ Realize how thinking about crime and criminality is time and culture bound ❖ Understand what theory is, how it is formulated, and how theory functions in science ❖ Be aware of the role of ideology in criminology ❖ Understand the relationship between theory and policy in criminology

What Is Criminology? The 19th-century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850/2003) opens his famous book The Scarlet Letter with these words of wisdom: “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison” (p. 1). Hawthorne is reminding us of two things we cannot avoid—death and human vice—and that we must make provisions for both. Perhaps

because criminals reveal humanity’s dark side, people are drawn to endless movies and television shows that explore the darker side of human nature (wasn’t Breaking Bad’s Walter White much more interesting as a methamphetamine peddler than as a high school chemistry teacher?). It is this dark but fascinating side of the human character that criminology explores.

Criminology is an interdisciplinary science combining insights from the social, psychological, and biological sciences. Science is a method of acquiring reliable knowledge that has two components: theory and research. Theory is the explanatory component of science that fits a set of facts together in a logical and harmonious way; research is the process of finding those facts. The facts that criminologists seek are, of course, facts about various aspects of criminal, delinquent, and general antisocial behavior. It is different from the discipline of criminal justice, which is concerned with how the criminal justice system investigates, prosecutes, and controls or supervises individuals who have committed crimes. Criminology examines why those individuals committed crimes that got them ensnarled in the criminal justice system in the first place. As with all scientific disciplines, the goal of criminology is to understand its subject matter and to determine how that understanding can benefit society. In pursuit of this understanding, criminologists ask questions such as the following:

Why do crime rates vary from time to time and from culture to culture? Why are some individuals more prone to committing crime than others? Why do crime rates vary across ages, genders, and racial/ethnic groups? Why are some harmful acts criminalized and not others? What can we do to prevent crime?

By a scientific study of crime and criminal behavior, we mean that criminologists use the scientific method to try to answer their questions rather than just philosophizing about them from their armchairs. The scientific method is a tool for separating truth from error by demanding evidence for any conclusions criminologists arrive at. Evidence is obtained by formulating hypotheses derived from theory that are rigorously tested with data in such a way that others following the same method can replicate the study. By following the scientific method, criminologists hope to build a body of verified knowledge that may help policymakers and police and correctional officials in their battle against crime.

What Is Crime? The term criminal can be and has been applied to many types of behavior, some of which nearly all of us have been guilty of at some time in our lives. We can all think of acts that we feel ought to be criminal but are not or acts that should not be criminal but are. The list of things that someone or another at different times and at different places may consider to be crimes is very large, with only a few being defined as criminal by the law in the United States at this time. Despite these difficulties, we need a definition of crime in order to proceed. The most often quoted definition is that of Paul Tappan (1947), who defined crime as “an intentional act in violation of the criminal law committed without defense or excuse, and penalized by the state” (p. 100). A crime is thus an act in violation of a criminal law for which a punishment is prescribed; the person committing it must have intended to do so and must have done so without legally acceptable defense or justification.

Criminology: An interdisciplinary science that gathers and analyzes data on crime and criminal behavior.

Crime: An intentional act in violation of the criminal law committed without defense or excuse and penalized by the state.

Tappan’s definition is strictly a legal one that reminds us that the state, and only the state, has the power to define an act as criminal. Hypothetically a society could eradicate crime tomorrow simply by canceling all of its criminal statutes. Of course, this would not eliminate the behavior specified by the law as crimes; in fact, the behavior would doubtless increase since the behavior could no longer be officially punished. While it is absurd to think that any society would try to solve its crime problem by eliminating its criminal statutes, legislative bodies are continually revising, adding to, and deleting from their criminal statutes.

Crime as a Moving Target Almost every vice is somewhere and sometimes a virtue. There are numerous examples of acts defined as crimes in one country being tolerated and even expected behavior in another, as demonstrated in the vignette at the beginning of this chapter. We might congratulate ourselves for protecting young girls from the kind of fate that befell the 13- and 14-year-old girls in the vignette, but in 1885 no state in the United States had an age of consent above 12 (Friedman, 2005). Laws also vary within the same culture from time to time as well as across different cultures. Until the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, there were few legal restrictions in the United States on the sale, possession, or use of most drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Following the Harrison Act, many drugs became controlled substances and their sale and possession became a crime, and a brand-new class of criminals was created overnight.

Crimes pass out of existence also, even acts that had been considered crimes for centuries. Until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated sodomy (anal or oral sex) statutes in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, sodomy was legally punishable in many states, even between consenting spouses. Likewise, burning the American flag had serious legal consequences until 1989 when the Supreme Court ruled anti-flag-burning statutes unconstitutional in Texas v. Johnson. What constitutes a crime, then, can be defined in or out of existence by the courts or by legislators. As long as human societies remain diverse and dynamic, there will always be a moving target of activities with the potential for nomination as crimes as well as illegal activities nominated for decriminalization.

If what constitutes crime differs across time and place, how can criminologists hope to agree on a scientific explanation for crime and criminal

behavior? Science is about making universal statements about stably defined phenomena. Atoms, the gas laws, DNA, the laws of thermodynamics, photosynthesis, and so on are not defined or evaluated differently by scientists around the globe according to local customs or ideological preferences. But what we call “crime” keeps moving around, and because it does some criminologists have declared it impossible to generalize about what is and is not “real” crime.

What these criminologists are saying is that crime is a socially constructed phenomenon that lacks any “real” objective essence and is defined into existence rather than discovered. Of course, in a trivial sense everything is socially constructed. Nature does not reveal herself to us sorted into ready-labeled packages, so humans must do it for her. Social construction means nothing more than humans have perceived a phenomenon, named it, and categorized it according to some classificatory rule that makes note of the similarities and differences among the things being classified. Most classification schemes are not arbitrary; if they were, we would not be able to make sense of anything. Categories have empirically meaningful referents and are used to impose order on the diversity of human experience, although arguments exist about just how coherent that order is.

Crime as a Subcategory of Social Harms So, what can we say about crime; how can we conceive of it in ways that at least most people would agree are logical, are consistent, and correspond with their view of reality? When all is said and done, crime is a subcategory of all harmful acts that range from simple things like smoking to very serious things like murder. Some harmful acts such as smoking tobacco and drinking to excess are not considered anyone’s business other than the actor’s if they take place in private or even in public if the person indulging in those things creates no annoyance to others.

Socially (as opposed to private) harmful acts are those deemed to be in need of regulation (e.g., health standards, air pollution), but not by the criminal law except under exceptional circumstance. Private wrongs (such as someone reneging on a contract) are socially harmful, but not sufficiently so to require the heavy hand of the criminal law. Such wrongs are regulated by the civil law in which the wronged party (the plaintiff) rather than the state initiates legal action and the defendant does not risk deprivation of his or her liberty if the plaintiff prevails.

Further along the continuum we find a category of harmful acts considered so socially harmful that they come under the scope of the criminal justice system. Even here we are still confronted with the problem of human judgment in determining what goes into this subcategory. But this is true all along the line; smoking was once actually considered rather healthy, and air pollution and other unhealthy environmental conditions were simply facts of life about which nothing could be done. Categorization always requires a series of human judgments, but that does not necessarily render the categorizations arbitrary.

The harm caused by criminal activity is financially and emotionally very costly. The emotional pain and suffering borne by crime victims is obviously impossible to quantify, but many estimates of the financial harm are available. Most estimates focus on the costs of running the criminal justice system, which includes the salaries and benefits of personnel and the maintenance costs of buildings (e.g., offices, jails, prisons, stations) and equipment (e.g., vehicles, weapons, uniforms). Added to these costs are the costs associated with each crime (the average cost per incident multiplied by the number of incidents as reported to the police). All these costs combined are estimates of the direct costs of crime.

The indirect costs of crime must also be considered as part of the burden. These costs include all manner of surveillance and security devices, protective devices (e.g., guns, alarms, security guards) and insurance costs, medical services, and the lost productivity and taxes of incarcerated individuals. From a variety of government sources, McCollister, French, and Fang (2010) estimate that each year crime results in $15 billion in economic losses to victims and $179 billion in government expenditures on police protection, judicial and legal activities, and corrections. The tangible and intangible financial cost per murder is estimated at $8,982,907, and per rape it is $240,776. These figures do not reflect the severe psychological and emotional costs to victims and their families.

Beyond Social Construction: The Stationary Core Crimes Few people would argue that an act is not arbitrarily categorized or is not seriously harmful if it is universally condemned. That is, there is a core of offenses defined as wrong at almost all times and in almost all cultures. Some of the strongest evidence in support of the stationary core perspective comes from the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) headquartered in Lyon, France. INTERPOL serves as a repository for crime statistics from each of its 188 member nations. INTERPOL’s data show that such acts as murder, assault, rape, and theft are considered serious crimes in every single country (Walsh & Ellis, 2007). Individuals or groups may differ on the ordering of the seriousness of these crimes, but the crimes are still universally condemned. There are societies in which so-called honor killings are culturally accepted, but this does not contradict the contention that murder is inherently wrong. Even in countries in which the practice exists, honor killing is contrary to the law, although it is rarely prosecuted or is treated leniently if it is. Honor killings typically involve parents murdering their daughters, or brothers murdering their sisters, mostly because they have “dishonored” the family by engaging in an unsanctioned sexual relationship or because they are romantically involved with someone the family’s culture deems undesirable.

Criminologists call these universally condemned crimes mala in semala in se (“inherently evil”). Crimes that are time and culture bound are described as mala prohibitamala prohibita (“evil because they are prohibited”). But how can we know that an act is inherently bad? The litmus test for determining a mala in se crime is that no one except under the most bizarre of circumstances would want to be victimized by one (see Box 1.1). While millions of people seek to be “victimized” by prostitutes, drug dealers, and bookies, no one wants to be murdered, raped, or robbed or to have their property stolen. Being victimized by such actions evokes physiological reactions (anger, helplessness, sadness, depression, a desire for

revenge) in all cultures and would do so even if the acts were not punishable by law or custom. Mala in se crimes engage these emotions not because some legislative body has defined them as wrong but rather because they hammer at our deepest concerns. Evolutionary scientists propose that these built-in emotional mechanisms exist because mala in se crimes threatened the survival and reproductive success of our distant ancestors (the ultimate concerns of all sexually reproducing animals) and that they function to strongly motivate people to try to prevent such acts from occurring and to punish them if they do occur (O’Manique, 2003; Walsh, 2000).

Box 1.1 Mala in SeMala in Se or Mala Prohibita?Mala Prohibita? The Cannibal and His Willing Victim We have said that the litmus test for a mala in se crime is that no one would want to be a victim of such a crime. You would think that killing, butchering, and eating another human would certainly pass such a test. But what if the cannibal’s dinner was a willing victim and the country in which the cannibal and his victim lived had no law forbidding cannibalism? This strange state of affairs existed in Rotenburg in central Germany in 2001. Germany’s own Hannibal Lecter, one Armin Meiwes, had advertised online seeking volunteers for “slaughter and consumption.” Among the more than 200 replies Meiwes received was an e-mail from Bernd-Jurgen Brandes (a successful software engineer) stating, “I am your meat.” Meiwes and Brandes videotaped their agreement, and Meiwes taped the subsequent killing and butchering of Brandes. Brandes stated on the tape that being eaten would be the “fulfillment of my dream.”

The prosecution in this case argued for a conviction of murder and “disturbing the peace of the dead,” which would have gotten Meiwes a life sentence. The defense argued that what Meiwes had done was simply to assist Brandes in his suicide, which carried a 5-year sentence. The panel of judges hearing the case agreed that Meiwes could not be convicted of murder, split the difference, and handed Meiwes an 8½-year prison sentence in January 2004. However, the prosecution appealed the case, and on retrial Meiwes was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In common law countries such as the United States, Meiwes would have been convicted of murder because one person cannot give another the consent to kill him or her—you can give your consent to many things, but not this. What Meiwes committed was clearly a mala in se crime, and Brandes’s consent doesn’t change that at all. The behavior of both men was obviously bizarre, and just because we find instances in which people do want to be victimized by acts that 99.9% of their fellow humans would find repugnant does not change the inherent badness of those acts.

M a l a i n s e :M a l a i n s e : Universally condemned crimes that are “inherently bad.”

M a l a p ro h i b i t a :M a l a p ro h i b i t a : Crimes that are “bad” simply because they are prohibited.

Figure 1.1 illustrates the relationship of core crimes (mala in se) to acts that have been arbitrarily defined (mala prohibita) as crimes and all harmful acts that may potentially be criminalized. The figure is inspired by John Hagan’s (1985) effort to distinguish between “real” crimes and “socially constructed” arbitrary crimes by examining the three highly interrelated concepts of consensus (the degree of public agreement on the seriousness of an act), the severity of penalties attached to an act, and the level of harm attached to an act.

Figure 1.1 Mala in Sein Se and Mala ProhibitaMala Prohibita Crimes as Subsets of All Harms

Criminality

Perhaps we can avoid altogether the problem of defining crimes by studying individuals who commit predatory harmful acts regardless of the legal status of the acts. Criminologists do this when they study criminality. Criminality is a clinical or scientific term rather than a legal one and one that can be defined independently of legal definitions of crimes. Crime is an intentional act of commission or omission contrary to the law and is a property of society; criminality is a property of individuals that signals the willingness to commit crimes and other harmful acts. Criminality is a trait that lies on a continuum ranging from saint to sociopath and is composed of a mixture of other traits such as callousness, low empathy, impulsiveness, and negative emotionality that also vary greatly among people. People can use and abuse others for personal gain regardless of whether the means used have been defined as criminal; it is the propensity to do this that defines criminality independent of the labeling of an act as a crime or of the person being legally defined as a criminal.

Defining criminality as a continuous trait acknowledges that there is no sharp line separating individuals with respect to this trait—it is not a trait that one has or does not have. Just about everyone at some point in life has committed an act or two in violation of the law, perhaps even a mala in se act. But that doesn’t make us all criminals; if it did, the term would become virtually synonymous with being human. The point is, we are all situated somewhere on the criminality continuum, just as our heights range from the truly short to the truly tall. Some are so extreme in height that any reasonable person would call them “tall.” Likewise, a small number of individuals have violated so many criminal statutes over such a long period of time that few would question the appropriateness of calling them “criminals.” Thus both height and criminality can be thought of as existing along a continuum, even though the words we use often imply that people’s heights and criminal tendencies come in discrete categories (tall/short and criminal/noncriminal). In other words, just as height varies in fine gradations, so too does involvement in crime.

The Legal Making of a Criminal Regardless of any criminal traits a person may possess or what criminal acts he or she may have engaged in, that person is not “officially” a criminal until he or she has been defined as such by the law, which makes it necessary to briefly discuss the process of arriving at that definition. The legal answer to the question “Who is a criminal?” is that he or she is someone who has committed a crime and has been judged guilty of having done so. Before the law can properly call a person a criminal, it must go through a series of actions governed by well-defined legal rules guiding the serious business of officially labeling a person a criminal. The upcoming section, An Excursion Through the American Criminal Justice System, shows the processing of a suspect in the American criminal justice system from arrest to trial and beyond, illustrated in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 The Sequence of Events Leading to a Person Being Labeled a Criminal

Note: This chart gives a simplified view of caseflow through the criminal justice system. Procedures vary among jurisdictions. The

weights of the lines are not intended to show actual size of caseloads.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998

What Constitutes a Crime? Corpus delictiCorpus delicti is a Latin term meaning “body of the crime” and refers to the elements of an act that must be present in order to legally define it as a crime. All crimes have their own specific elements, which are the essential constituent parts that define the act as criminal. In addition to their specific elements, all crimes share a set of general elements or principles underlying and supporting the specific elements. There are five principles to be satisfied before a person is “officially” labeled a criminal, but in actuality it is only necessary for the state to prove actus reus and mens rea to satisfy corpus delicti. The other principles are typically automatically proven in the course of proving actus reus and mens rea.

Criminality: A continuously distributed trait composed of a combination of other continuously distributed traits that signals the willingness to use force, fraud, or guile to deprive others of their lives, limbs, or property for personal gain.

C o r p u s d e l i c t i :C o r p u s d e l i c t i : Refers to the five elements of criminal liability that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict a person of a crime.

A c t u s re u s :A c t u s re u s : Literally guilty act, it refers to the principle that a person must commit some forbidden act or neglect some mandatory act before he or she can be subjected to criminal sanctions.

Actus reusActus reus means ”guilty act” and refers to the principle that a person must commit some forbidden act or neglect some mandatory act before he or she can be subjected to criminal sanctions. In effect, this principle of law means that people cannot be criminally prosecuted for thinking something or being something, only for doing something. This prevents governments from passing laws criminalizing statuses and systems of thought they don’t like. For instance, although drunken behavior may be a punishable crime, being an alcoholic cannot be punished because “being” something is a status, not an act.

Mens reaMens rea means “guilty mind” and refers to whether or not the suspect had a wrongful purpose in mind when carrying out the actus reus. For instance, although receiving stolen property is a criminal offense, if you were to buy a stolen television set from an acquaintance without knowing it had been stolen, you would have lacked mens rea and would not be subject to prosecution. If you were to be prosecuted, the state would have to prove that you knew the television was stolen. Negligence, recklessness, or carelessness that results in some harmful consequences, even though not intended, does not excuse such behavior from criminal prosecution under mens rea. Conditions that may preclude prosecution under this principle are self-defense, defense of others, youthfulness (a person under 7 years of age cannot be held responsible), insanity (although being found insane does not preclude confinement), and extreme duress or coercion.

Concurrence means that the act (actus reus) and the mental state (mens rea) concur in the sense that the criminal intention actuates the criminal act. For instance, if John sets out with his tools to burglarize Mary’s apartment and takes her television set, he has fused the guilty mind with the wrongful act and has therefore committed burglary. However, assume John and Mary are friends who habitually visit each other’s apartment unannounced. One day John decides to visit Mary, finds her not at home, and walks in and suddenly decides that he could sell Mary’s television for drug money. Although the loss to Mary is the same in both scenarios, in the latter instance John cannot be charged with burglary because he did not enter her apartment “by force or fraud,” the crucial element needed to satisfy such a charge. In this case, the concurrence of guilty mind and wrongful act occurred after lawful entry, so he is charged only with theft, a less serious crime.

Causation refers to the necessity to establish a causal link between the criminal act and the harm suffered. This causal link must be proximate, not ultimate. Suppose Tony wounds Frank in a knife fight. Being macho, Frank attends to the wound himself. Three weeks later, the wound becomes severely infected and results in his death. Can Tony be charged with murder? Although the wounding led to Frank’s death (the ultimate cause), Frank’s disregard for the seriousness of his injury was the most proximate cause of his death. The question the law asks in cases like this is, “What would any reasonable person do?” Most people would agree that the reasonable person would have sought medical treatment. This being the case, Tony cannot be charged with homicide; the most he could be charged with is aggravated assault.

Harm refers to the negative impact a crime has either to the victim or to the general values of the community. Although the harm caused by the criminal act is often obvious, the harm caused by many so-called “victimless” crimes is often less obvious, although some such crimes can cause more social harm in the long run than many crimes with obvious victims.

An Excursion Through the American Criminal Justice System The best way to explain the process of becoming a legal criminal is to follow the processing of felony cases from arrest to trial and beyond. There are many points at which the arrested person may be shunted off the criminal justice conveyor belt via the discretionary decisions of a variety of criminal justice officials. This process varies in some specifics from state to state, but the principles underlying the specifics are uniform. Presented here are the stages and procedures that are most common among our 50 states’ court systems.

M e n s re a :M e n s re a : “Guilty mind.” Criminal liability does not attach based on actions alone; there must also be criminal intent.

Concurrence: The legal principle stating that the act (actus reus) and the mental state (mens rea) concur in the sense that the criminal intention actuates the criminal act.

Causation: A legal principle stating that there must be an established proximate causal link between the criminal act and the harm suffered.

Harm: The legal principle stating that a crime must have a negative impact on either the victim or the general values of the community to be a crime.

Arrest: The act of being legally detained to answer criminal charges on the basis of an arrest warrant or a law enforcement officer’s probable cause to believe the person arrested has committed a felony crime.

Arrest. A felony suspect first enters the criminal justice system by arrest. When a person has been legally detained to answer criminal charges, he or she has been arrested. Some arrests are made on the basis of an arrest warrant, which is an official document signed by a judge on the basis of evidence presented by law enforcement indicating that the person named in the warrant has probably committed a crime. The warrant authorizes the police to make an arrest, although the great majority of arrests are initiated by the police without a warrant. A police officer making a warrantless arrest is held to the same legal constraints involved in making application for a warrant. To make a legal felony arrest, the officer must have probable cause. Probable cause means that the officer must possess a set of facts that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the arrested person had committed a crime. Although a person can be stopped on the basis of an officer’s suspicion and frisked for a weapon, he or she cannot be arrested on the basis of suspicion alone. It is only after an arrest that the Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination comes into play.

Preliminary hearing. After arrest and booking into the county jail, the suspect must be presented in court for the preliminary hearing before a magistrate or judge at the earliest opportunity. The preliminary hearing has two purposes: to advise suspects of their constitutional rights and of the charges against them and to set bail. The suspect may be released on monetary bail or on his or her “own recognizance.” If bail is denied, it is usually because of the gravity of the crime, the risk that the suspect poses to the community, or the risk that the suspect might flee the court’s jurisdiction. There is no constitutional right to bail. The Eighth Amendment states only that “excessive bail shall not be required.” The traditional assumption has been that bail is designed only to ensure the suspect’s appearance at the next court hearing and that excessive means that the amount set should be within the suspect’s means.

Preliminary arraignment. The preliminary arraignment is a proceeding before a magistrate or judge in which three major matters must be decided: whether or not a crime has actually been committed, whether or not there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person before the bench committed it, and whether or not the crime was committed in the jurisdiction of the court. These matters determine if the suspect’s arrest and detention are legal. The onus of proving the legality of the suspect’s arrest and detention is on the prosecutor, who must establish probable cause and present the court with evidence pertinent to the suspect’s probable guilt. This is usually a relatively easy matter for the prosecutor since defense attorneys rarely cross-examine witnesses or introduce their own evidence at this point, with their primary use of the preliminary hearing being only to discover the strength of the prosecutor’s case.

The grand jury. If the prosecutor is successful, the suspect is bound over to a higher court for further processing. Prior to the suspect’s next court appearance, prosecutors in some states must seek an indictment (a document formally charging the suspect with a specific crime or crimes) from a grand jury. The grand jury, so called to distinguish it from the “petit” or trial jury, is nominally an investigatory body and a buffer between the awesome power of the state and its citizens, but some see it as a historical anachronism that serves only prosecutorial purposes. The grand jury is composed of citizens chosen from voter or automobile registration lists and numbers anywhere from 7 to 23 members.

Photo 1.1 Police officer takes suspect into custody. A felony suspect enters the criminal justice system by arrest.

© Doug Menuez/Photodisc/Thinkstock

Grand jury: An investigatory jury composed of 7 to 23 citizens before which the prosecutor presents evidence that sufficient grounds exist to try the suspect for a crime. If the prosecutor is successful, he or she obtains an indictment from the grand jury listing the charges a person is accused of.

Arraignment. Armed with an indictment (or an information in states not requiring grand jury proceedings), the prosecutor files the case against the accused in felony court (variably called a district, superior, or common pleas court), which sets a date for arraignment. The arraignment proceeding is the first time a defendant has the opportunity to respond to the charges against him or her. After the charges are read to the defendant, he or she must then enter a formal response to them, known as a plea. The plea alternatives are guilty, not guilty, and no contest. A “guilty” plea is usually the result of a plea bargain agreement concluded before the arraignment. About 90% of all felony cases in the United States are settled by plea bargains in which the state extends some benefit to defendants, such as reduced charges, in exchange for their cooperation. By pleading guilty, defendants give up their right to be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” their right against self- incrimination, and the right to appeal.

Arraignment: A court proceeding in which the defendant answers to the charges against him or her by pleading guilty, not guilty, or no contest (nolo contendere).

A “not guilty” plea results in a date being set for trial; a “guilty” or “no contest” plea results in a date being set for sentencing.

The trial. A trial by a jury of one’s peers is a Sixth Amendment right and is an examination of the facts of a case by a judge or jury for the purpose of reaching a judgment. The trial is an adversarial process pitting the prosecutor against the defense attorney, with each side trying to “vanquish” the other. There is no sense that each side is interested in seeking truth or justice in this totally partisan process. It is the task of the judge to ensure that both sides play by the rules. The prosecution’s job is a little more difficult than the defense’s since it must “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that the accused is indeed guilty. Except in states that allow for non-unanimous jury decisions, the defense need only plant the seed of reasonable doubt in the mind of one stubborn juror to upset the prosecution’s case.

Having heard the facts of the case, and having been instructed by the judge on the principles of law pertaining to it, the jury is charged with reaching a verdict. The jury’s verdict may be guilty or not guilty, or if it cannot reach a verdict (a “hung” jury), the judge may declare a mistrial. A hung jury results either in dismissal of the charges by the prosecutor or in a retrial. If the verdict is guilty, in most cases the judge will delay sentencing to allow time for a presentence investigation report to be prepared. It is at the point of conviction (or entering a plea of guilty) that the person officially becomes a criminal.

Probation. Presentence investigation reports (PSIs) are prepared by probation officers and contain a variety of information about the crime and the offender’s background (criminal record, education and work history, marital status, substance abuse, and attitude). On the basis of this information, the probation officer offers a sentencing recommendation. The most important factors influencing these recommendations are crime seriousness and the defendant’s criminal history. A judge may place the offender on probation, the most common sentence in the United States today. A probation sentence is a suspended commitment to prison, and if at any time during their probationary period offenders do not abide by the imposed probation conditions (consisting of a variety of general and offender-specific conditions), they may face revocation of probation and the imposition of the original prison sentence. Probation officers supervise and monitor offenders’ behavior and ensure that all conditions of probation are adhered to. Probation officers thus function as both social workers and law enforcement officers, sometimes conflicting roles that officers may find difficult to reconcile.

Incarceration. If the sentence imposed for a felony conviction is some form of incarceration, the judge has the option of sentencing the offender to a state penitentiary, a county jail, or a county work release program. The latter two options are almost invariably imposed as supplements to probation orders.

Parole. Parole is a conditional release from prison granted to inmates prior to the completion of their sentences. An inmate is granted parole by an administrative body called a parole board, which decides for or against parole based on such factors as inmate behavior while incarcerated and the urgency of the need for cell space. Once released on parole, parole officers, whose job is almost identical to that of probation officers, supervise parolees. In many states, probation and parole officers are one and the same. The primary difference between probation and parole is that probationers are under the supervision of the courts and parolees are under the supervision of the state department of corrections. Revocation of probation is a judicial function; revocation of parole is an executive administrative function.

A Short History of Criminology

The Supernatural Era Criminology is a young discipline, although humans have probably been theorizing about crime and its causes ever since they first made rules and observed others breaking them. What and how people thought about crime and criminals (as well as all other things) in the past was strongly influenced by the social and intellectual currents of their time. This is no less true of what and how modern criminologists think about crime and criminals. In prescientific days, explanations for bad behavior were often of a religious or spiritual nature. Disastrous natural events such as famines and floods were seen as divine punishment for some transgression, and criminals were considered to be possessed by evil spirits. The standard of innocence for an accused person was the survival of some sort of ordeal such as being bound hand and foot and thrown into a river. If the accused survived the ordeal (which few, if any, ever did), he or she was considered under God’s protection and therefore innocent. At other times, survival was a viewed as a sign of evil (the devil’s protection), and the person was executed (Drapkin, 1989).

Photo 1.2 The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to trial by an impartial jury.

© Stockbyte/Thinkstock

The Renaissance The Renaissance was a period lasting approximately from 1450 to 1600 that saw a change in thinking away from the pure God-centered supernaturalism of the Middle Ages to more human-centered naturalism. Renaissance literally means “rebirth” and refers to the rediscovery of the thinking traditions of the ancient Greeks. The sciences and arts were becoming important, the printing press was invented, and Christopher Columbus “discovered” America during this period. In short, the Renaissance began to mold human thinking away from the absolute authority of received opinion and toward a way that would eventually lead to the modern scientific method. Many during this period believed that the human character and personality are transparent in physical appearance. Such folk wisdom was systematized by an Italian physician named Giambattista della Porta, who developed a theory of human personality called physiognomy in 1558. Porta claimed that the study of physical appearance, particularly of the face, could reveal much about a person’s personality and character. Thieves, for instance, were said to have large lips and sharp vision.

The Enlightenment Another major thrust toward the emergence of the modern world was the Enlightenment, a period approximately from 1650 to 1800. It might be said that the Renaissance provided a key to the human mind and the Enlightenment opened the door. Whereas the Renaissance is associated with advances in art, literature, music, and philosophy, the Enlightenment is associated with advances in mathematics, science, and the dignity and worth of the individual as exemplified by a concern for human rights. This concern led to reforms in criminal justice systems throughout Europe, a process given a major push by Cesare Beccaria’s (1764/1963) work On Crime and Punishment that ushered in the so-called classical school. The classical school emphasized human rationality and free will in its explanations for criminal behavior.

The Industrial Revolution and the Age of Science

Modern criminology began to take shape during the 19th century with the increasing faith that science could provide answers for everything. This period saw the harnessing of the forces of nature to build and operate the great machines that drove the Industrial Revolution and the strides made in biology by Charles Darwin’s works on evolution. Criminology saw the beginning of the so-called positivist school during this period. Theories of character, such as phrenology, abounded. The basic idea behind phrenology was that cognitive and personality functions are localized in the brain and that the parts regulating the most dominant functions were bigger than the parts regulating the less dominant ones. Criminals were said to have large bumps on parts of the skull thought to regulate craftiness, brutishness, and moral insensibility and to have small bumps in such “localities” as intelligence, honor, and piety. The biggest impact during this period, however, was made by Cesare Lombroso’s theory of atavism or the born criminal. Criminologists from this point on were obsessed with measuring, sorting, and sifting all kinds of data about criminal behavior. The main stumbling block to criminological advancement during this period was the inadequacy of its research. The intricacies of scientifically valid research design and measurement were not appreciated, and statistical techniques were truly primitive by today’s standards. The early classical and positivist thinkers are discussed at length in Chapter 4.

Photo 1.3 One of Giambattista della Porta’s illustrations. Physiogonomists were fascinated by the apparent similarities of some people’s faces with animals.

U.S. National Library of Medicine

The Progressive Era The so-called Progressive Era, approximately from 1890 to 1920, ushered in new social ideologies and new ways of thinking about crime. It was an era of liberal efforts to bring about social reform as unions, women, and other disadvantaged groups of people struggled for recognition. Criminology largely turned away from what was disparaged as “biological determinism,” which implied that nothing could be done to reform criminals, and turned to cultural or social determinism. If behavior is caused by what people experience in their environments, it was thought

that all we had to do to change their behavior was to change their environment. It was during this period that sociology became the disciplinary home of criminology. Criminology became less interested in why individuals commit crime from biological or psychological points of view and more concerned with aggregate-level data (e.g., social structures, neighborhoods, subcultures); that is, where is crime most prevalent and among what groups? It was during this period that the so-called structural theories of crime (discussed in Chapter 6), such as the Chicago school of social ecology, were formulated. Anomie strain theory was another structural/cultural theory that emerged somewhat later (1938). This theory was doubtless influenced strongly by the American experience of the Great Depression and by the exclusion of African Americans from many areas of American society.

The period from the 1950s through the early 1970s saw considerable dissatisfaction with the strong structural approach, which many viewed as proceeding as if individuals were almost irrelevant to explaining criminal behavior. Criminological theory moved toward integrating psychology and sociology during this period and strongly emphasized the importance of socialization. Control theories were highly popular at this time, as was labeling theory; these are addressed in Chapter 7.

The Critical Period Because the latter part of this period was a time of great civil unrest in the United States (the anti-Vietnam War, civil rights, women’s, and gay rights movements), it also saw the emergence of several theories, such as conflict theory, that were highly critical of American society. These theories extended to earlier works of Marxist criminologists, who tended to believe that the only real cause of crime was capitalism. These theories provided little new in terms of our understanding of “street” criminal behavior, but they did spark an interest in white-collar crime and how laws were made by the powerful and applied against the powerless. These theories are addressed in Chapter 8. Perhaps in response to these theories, and perhaps because of a new conservative mood in the United States, theories with the classical taste for free will and rationality embedded in them reemerged during the 1980s. These were rational choice and routine activities theories, discussed in Chapter 5.

The Modern Period The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a resurgence of biosocial theories. These theories view behavior as the result of biological factors interacting with past and present environments. Biosocial theories have been on the periphery of criminology since its beginning but have been hampered by perceptions of them as driven by an illiberal agenda and by the inability to “get inside” the mysteries of hereditary and the workings of the brain. The truly spectacular advances in the observational techniques (e.g., brain scan methods, $10 cheek swabs to test DNA) in the genetic and neurosciences over the last three decades have made these things less mysterious, and social scientists are increasingly realizing that there is nothing illiberal about recognizing the biology basis of human nature.

Photo 1.4 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines can tell us a lot about the functioning of the brain and how that functioning is related to behavior.

© Ablestock.com/Thinkstock

Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (2007) note that the most dramatic developments in science come most often from new observational techniques rather than new developments in theory. No science advances without the technology at its disposal to plumb its depths. Many chemists in the late 19th century refused to accept the existence of atoms, but chemistry advanced by leaps and bounds when the discipline as a whole finally accepted the atomic theory of matter (we are even able to see atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope, invented in 1981). Criminology is in a position today similar to that of chemists 150 years ago. The concepts, methods, and measuring devices available to us today may do for the progress of criminology what physics did for chemistry, what chemistry did for biology, and what biology is doing for psychology. Exceptionally ambitious longitudinal studies carried out over decades in concert with medical and biological scientists, such as the Dunedin

Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (Moffitt, 1993), the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Udry, 2003), and the National Youth Survey (Menard, Mihalic, & Huizinga, 2001), are able to gather a wealth of genetic, neurological, physiological, psychological, and sociological data. Paus (2010) discusses four evolving long-term studies that are brain imaging 400 to 2,000 subjects at a time and collecting large volumes of behavioral and cognitive data (e.g., socioeconomic status, maternal smoking and drinking, stressful life events, antisocial behavior, IQ, personality profiles). Three of these four studies are also collecting DNA data. Integrating these hard data into criminology will no more rob it of its autonomy than physics robbed chemistry or chemistry robbed biology. For those who agree with this assessment, this is an exciting time to study criminology!

The Role of Theory in Criminology When an FBI agent asked the Depression-era bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, Sutton replied, “Because that’s where the money is” (Sutton & Linn, 1976, p. 120). In his witty way, Sutton was offering a theory explaining bank robbery: If we put a certain kind of personality and learning together with opportunity and coveted resources, we get bank robbery. This is what theory making is all about: trying to grasp how all the known factors related to (or correlated with) a phenomenon such as crime are linked together in noncoincidental ways to produce an effect.

Just as medical scientists want to find out what causes disease, criminologists are interested in finding out factors that cause criminal behavior. Just as there are risk factors related to becoming ill, there are a variety of risk factors that may lead to criminal behavior. The first step in a long chain leading to the detection of causes is to discover correlates related to the phenomenon of interest. To discover if two things (we call them factors or variables) are co-related, we have to determine if they vary together, that is, if one of the variables changes (goes up or down) when the other variable changes.

Take gender, the most thoroughly documented correlate of criminal behavior ever identified. Literally thousands of studies throughout the world, with some European studies going back five or six centuries, consistently report strong gender differences in criminal behavior, and the more serious the crime, the greater the difference (Ellis & Walsh, 2000). In other words, as we move from one category of the gender variable (female to male), the prevalence and incidence of crime rises dramatically. However, establishing why gender is such a strong correlate of crime is the real challenge. Of course, variables can vary together coincidentally rather than causally. When we consistently find correlations between criminal behavior and some other factor, it is tempting to assume that something causal is going on, but a correlation suggests causation; it does not establish it. Resisting the tendency to jump to causal conclusions from correlations is the first lesson of statistics. Establishing causal connections between and among correlates is the business of theory.

Photo 1.5 Bank robber Willie Sutton at the courthouse for his trial.

© Allan Grant/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Research Snippet: Criminology’s Performance Review Criminologists are in the business of explaining criminal behavior. This begs the question: How well do criminologists explain crime? Noted scholars David Weisburd and Alex Piquero sought to answer this question. Weisburd and Piquero (2008) examined all empirical tests of the various criminological theories published in Criminology (the discipline’s top journal) between 1968 and 2005. They estimated the explanatory power of criminological theories by assessing how much criminal behavior they can account for. The study found that, overall, extant criminological theory accounted for only a small portion of the criminal behavior observed, leaving as much as 80% of criminality unaccounted for or unexplained. The study also found that individual-level theories perform more poorly than macro-level theories and that theories have not become better at explaining or predicting crime over the decades. These findings suggest that criminologists still have a lot of work to do and need to think outside the box of traditional theorizing to address the large portion of unexplained criminal behavior.

Weisburd, D., & Piquero, A. R. (2008). How well do criminologists explain crime? Statistical modeling in published studies. Crime and Justice, 37, 453–502.

What Is Theory? A theory is a set of logically interconnected propositions explaining how observed facts within an area of interest are related and from which a number of hypotheses can be derived and tested. Theories should provide logical explanations of an area of interest by fitting discovered facts into a coherent pattern. Not only should they be capable of making sense of relevant empirical facts so far discovered, they should also provide practical guidance for researchers looking for yet undiscovered facts. The best example of such a theory is one you have all seen on the walls of classrooms across the nation in the form of the periodic table of the elements. This powerful icon of science rests on the atomic theory of matter. Chemists knew about the properties of many of the elements displayed on these charts for centuries, but their relationship was not known until the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev placed them into a logical order in 1869. Mendeleev arranged the 63 known elements at the time in order of their “relative atomic mass.” This fit in nicely with atomic number, which is the number of protons in the core of the element (Mendeleev did not know about protons, of course), increasing from top to bottom and from left to right, starting with hydrogen. Mendeleev also noticed that some elements had similar characteristics to others and grouped these in columns and found that they fit into regular intervals (periods) of eight, hence the name periodic table.

Theory: A set of logically interconnected propositions explaining how phenomena are related and from which a number of hypotheses can be derived and tested.

Hypotheses: Statements about relationships between and among factors we expect to find based on the logic of our theories.

In addition to being backward looking to fit current facts into a harmonious pattern, theories must also be forward looking, telling researchers where they might look to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Mendeleev left gaps in his table that indicated to chemists that there had to be other elements that fit the properties of others in its group. Chemists have filled in the gaps, and the table now includes an additional 55 elements that have since been discovered or synthesized in labs. Thus, good scientific theories are always open to adjustment as new facts are discovered. Of course, we don’t have anything in criminological theory as neat and precise as the periodic table, nor will we ever. If we could fit humans into the kind of tidy categories found in the periodic table, we would be little more than automatons. The discussion is meant only to illustrate the ideal of scientific theorizing.

Looking forward requires that we have the excellent knowledge behind us in the form of a theory. Mastering theory allows us to form a series of statements that can be logically deduced from the assertions of the theory called hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements about relationships between and among relevant factors we expect to find based on the logic of our theories. Theories provide the raw material (the ideas) for generating hypotheses, and hypotheses support or fail to support theories by exposing them to empirical (based on experiment and observation) testing.

Theories are devised to explain how a number of correlates may actually be causally related to criminal behavior rather than simply associated with it. When we talk of causes, we do not mean that when X is present, Y will occur in a completely prescribed way. We mean that when X is present, Y has a certain probability of occurring and perhaps only then if X is present along with factors A, B, and C. Criminologists have never uncovered a necessary cause (a factor that must be present for criminal behavior to occur and in the absence of which criminal behavior has never occurred) or a sufficient cause (a factor that is able to produce criminal behavior without being augmented by some other factor).

Theories thus both help us to make sense of a diversity of facts and even tell us where to look for more facts. We all use theory every day to fit diverse facts together. A detective confronted with a number of facts about a mysterious murder must fit them together, even though their

meaning and relatedness to one another is ambiguous and perhaps even contradictory. Using years of experience, training, and good common sense, the detective constructs a theory linking those facts together so that they begin to make some sense, to begin to tell their story. An initial theory derived from the available facts then guides the detective in the search for additional facts in a series of “if this is true, then this should be true” statements (this is what scientists call hypotheses). There may be many false starts as our detective misinterprets some facts, fails to uncover others, and considers some to be relevant when they are not. Good detectives, like good scientists, will adjust their theory as new facts warrant; poor detectives and poor scientists will stand by their favored theory by not looking for more facts or by ignoring, downplaying, or hiding contrary facts that come to their attention.

What Is a Good Theory? The physical and natural sciences enjoy a great deal of agreement about what constitutes the core body of knowledge within their disciplines and thus have few competing theories, especially at the most general levels. Within criminology, and the social/behavioral sciences in general, there is little agreement about the nature of the phenomena we study, and so we suffer an embarrassment of theoretical riches (see Table 1.1). Given the number of criminological theories, students may be forgiven for asking which one is true. Scientists never use the term truth in scientific discourse; rather, they tend to ask which theory is most useful. Criteria for judging the merits of a theory are summarized here from Ellis, Hartley, and Walsh (2010).

1. Predictive accuracy. A theory not only must be backward looking in the sense that it harmoniously fits known facts together, but it also must be forward looking, telling researchers where they should find new facts. That is, a theory has merit and is useful to the extent that it accurately predicted what is later observed; it has generated a large number of research hypotheses that have supported it. This is the most important criterion and is the one illustrated by chemists’ periodic table.

2. Predictive scope. This refers to the scope or range of the theory and thus the scope or range of the hypotheses that can be derived from it. That is, how much of the empirical world falls under the explanatory umbrella of Theory A compared with how much falls under Theory B. As the predictive scope of a theory widens, it tends to get more complicated. The atomic theory illustrated in the periodic table enables chemists to predict almost all chemical phenomena.

3. Simplicity. If two competing theories are essentially equal in terms of the first two criteria, then the less complicated one is considered more “elegant.” The periodic table is the essence of elegant simplicity.

4. Falsifiability. A theory is never proven true, but it must have the quality of being falsifiable or disprovable. If a theory is formulated in such a way that no amount of evidence could possibly falsify it, then the theory is of little use. Nothing could really falsify atomic theory; it has been well established over literally hundreds of thousands of experiments. However, it is “in principle” falsifiable, although it is difficult to image how. This is a problem for the idea of falsifiability because theories are used in science because of their successes, and the atomic theory has never failed.

How to Think About Theories You will be a lot less concerned about the numerous theories in criminology if you realize that different theories deal with different levels of analysis. A level of analysis is that segment of the phenomenon of interest that is measured and analyzed. We can ask about causes of crime at the levels of whole societies, subcultures, neighborhoods, families, or individuals. If the question asks about crime rates in societies (such as Japan vs. the United States), the answers must address sociocultural differences among different societies or in the same society at different times. Conversely, if crime rates are found to be related to the degree of industrialization or racial and ethnic diversity in societies, this tells us nothing about why some people or groups in an industrialized and racially heterogeneous society commit crimes and other people and groups in the same society do not. To answer questions about individuals and groups, we need theories about individuals and groups. Generally speaking, questions of cause and effect must be answered at the same level of analysis at which they were posed; thus different theories are required at different levels. This is not to say, however, that we do not have theories that attempt to span multiple levels of analysis.

To span different levels of analysis, we have to understand how factors included in different levels interact (how each is both affected by and affects the other). Crime rates can change drastically from time to time without any corresponding change in the gene pool or personalities of the people in the population. Because causes can be sought only among factors that vary, changing sociocultural environments must be the only causes of changing crime rates. What environmental changes do, however, is raise or lower individual thresholds for engaging in crime, and some people have lower thresholds than others. People with weak criminal propensities (or high prosocial propensities) require high levels of environmental instigation to commit crimes, but some individuals engage in criminal behavior in the most benign of environments. Whether an individual crosses the threshold to commit criminal acts depends on where his or her personal threshold is set interacting with where the environmental threshold is set. At this level, then, we need to have a firm grasp on both individual characteristics and how they interact with a variety of environmental conditions.

Level of analysis: That segment of the phenomenon of interest that is measured and analyzed; e.g., individuals, families, neighborhoods, states.

Ideology in Criminological Theory In addition to criminological theorizing being linked to the social and intellectual climate of the times, it is also strongly linked to ideology. Ideology is a way of looking at the world, a general emotional picture of “how things should be.” It is often so strongly held that it narrows the mind and inflames the passions, leading to a selective interpretation and understanding of evidence rather than an objective and rational evaluation of it. Ideology forms, shapes, and colors our concepts of crime and its causes in ways that lead to a tendency to accept or reject new evidence according to how well or poorly it fits our ideology.

A criminological theory is at least partly shaped by ideology, and those who feel drawn to a particular theory owe a great deal of their attraction to it to the fact that they share the theory’s vision (Cullen, 2005). This observation reminds us of the Indian parable of the six blind men feeling different parts of an elephant. Each man described the elephant according to the part of its anatomy he had felt, but each failed to appreciate the descriptions of the others who felt different parts. The men fell into dispute and departed in anger, each convinced of the utter stupidity of the others. The point is that ideology often leads criminologists to “feel” only parts of the criminological elephant, to confuse the parts with the whole, and even to question the intelligence and motives (e.g., having some kind of political agenda) of others who have examined different parts of the criminological elephant. Criminology is, however, slowly moving toward the realization that criminal behavior must be examined at all levels, from neurons to neighborhoods, if it is ever to come to terms with the whole.

According to economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell (1987), two contrasting visions have shaped thoughts about human nature throughout history, and these visions are in constant conflict with each other. The first of these is the constrained vision, so called because believers in this vision view human activities as constrained by an innate human nature that is self-centered and largely unalterable. The unconstrained vision denies an innate human nature, viewing it as formed anew in each different culture. The unconstrained vision also believes that human nature is perfectible, a view scoffed at by those who profess the constrained vision. A major difference between the two visions is that the constrained vision says “this is how the world is,” and the unconstrained vision says “this is how the world should be.” For instance, unconstrained visionaries might ask what causes crime and poverty, but constrained visionaries would ask the opposite questions—what causes a well- ordered society and wealth. Note that this implies that unconstrained visionaries believe that crime and poverty are deviations from the norm and need to be explained. Constrained visionaries see crime and poverty as historically normal and inevitable (albeit regrettable) and believe that what has to be understood are the conditions that prevent them. The major fault line in criminology lies in these visions. Theories broadly classified as social learning theories see crime as caused, and theories broadly classified as social control theories see crime as inevitable unless steps are taken to prevent it.

Ideology: A way of looking at the world, a general emotional picture of “how things should be” that forms, shapes, and colors our concepts of the phenomena we study.

Constrained vision: One of the two so-called ideological visions of the world. The constrained vision views human activities as constrained by an innate human nature that is self-centered and largely unalterable.

Unconstrained vision: One of the two so-called ideological visions of the world. The unconstrained vision denies an innate human nature, viewing it as formed anew in each culture.

Policy: A course of action designed to solve some problem and selected by appropriate authorities from among alternative courses of action.

The evidence that ideology is linked to which theories criminologists favor is strong. Cooper, Walsh, and Ellis (2010) surveyed 379 criminologists and asked them which theory best explained serious criminal behavior. As you see from Table 1.1, 24 theories were represented. Obviously, they cannot all “best explain serious criminal behavior,” so something other than evidence led them to their choices, and the best predictor was criminologists’ self-reported ideology divided into conservative, moderate, liberal, and radical. The “χ2 = 134.6, p < .001” notation means that such a result could be found by chance less than 1 time in 1,000 similar samplings. We can thus be quite confident that the finding can be generalized beyond the sample to other criminologists, especially since this study repeated a previous study of a different group of criminologists with roughly the same results (Walsh & Ellis, 2004). When reading this text, try to understand where the originators, supporters, and detractors of any particular theory being discussed are “coming from” ideologically as well as theoretically.

Connecting Criminological Theory and Social Policy Theories of crime imply that changing the conditions the theory holds responsible for causing crime can reduce it and even prevent it. I say “imply” because few theorists are explicit about the public policy implications of their work. Scientists are primarily concerned with gaining knowledge for its own sake; they are only secondarily concerned with how useful that knowledge may be to practitioners and policymakers. Conversely, policymakers are less concerned with hypothesized “causes” of a problem and more concerned with what can be done about the problem that is politically, practically, and financially feasible.

Critical Thinking The legal drinking age in America is 21 years. It is illegal for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol. However, this is a very common offense, especially on college campuses. Underage drinking is obviously a mala prohibita crime, but the penalty for underage drinking can be quite steep and burdensome for the underage starving student. However, no such penalty is incurred by the student of legal drinking age. In fact, drinking is a widely participated and even celebrated pastime. Does something significant, if not magical, occur within students’ brains the moment they turn 21 that makes them responsible enough to drink? Is the drinking age arbitrary? What is the legal drinking age in other countries? Are there legitimate reasons for having the legal drinking age be 21? What should the legal drinking age be and what penalties should violators get stuck with?

Policy is simply a decided course of action designed to solve some problem selected from among alternative courses of action. Solving a social problem means attempting to reduce the level of the problem currently being experienced or to enact strategies that try to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Social science findings can be and have been used to help policymakers determine which course of action to follow to “do something” about the crime problem, but many other concerns policymakers must consider go beyond maintaining consistency with social science theory and data. The question of “what to do about crime” involves political and financial considerations, the urgency of other problems competing for scarce financial resources (e.g., schools, highways, environmental protection, public housing, police and fire departments, national defense), and a host of other major and minor considerations deemed important by various segments of the population.

Policy choices are, at bottom, value choices, and as such only those policy recommendations that are ideologically palatable are likely to be implemented. Given all of these extra-theoretical considerations, it would be unfair to base our judgment of a theory’s power solely on its impact on public policy. Even if some aspects of policy are theory based, unless all recommendations of the theory are fully implemented, the success or failure of the policy cannot be considered evidence of theoretical failure any more than a baker can blame a recipe for a lousy cake if he or she neglects to include all the ingredients it calls for.

Connecting problems with solutions is a tricky business in all areas of government policymaking, but nowhere is it more difficult than in criminal justice. No single strategy can be expected to produce significant results, and a strategy may sometimes make matters worse. For example, President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” was supposed to have a significant impact on the crime problem by attacking what informed opinion of the time considered its “root cause.” Programs and policies developed to reduce poverty currently involve 126 federal (as well as state) programs that have spent almost $15 trillion over the past 40 years (Tanner, 2012). However, reducing poverty had no effect on reducing crime; in fact, crime rose to record levels as poverty was falling during the latter period of the 20th century (Walsh & Ellis, 2007). Another high-profile example of failed policy is the Volstead Act of 1919 that prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States. Although based on a true premise (alcohol is a major factor in facilitating violent crime), it failed because it ushered in a wild period of crime as gangs fought over control of the illegal alcohol market. The current war on drugs has had similar negative consequences. Policies attempting to control human behavior often have effects unanticipated by policymakers or by the theories that may have driven their policies. Blowback is a term that is used to identify the unintended consequences of policies implemented without sufficient knowledge and thought. Many people thought that President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 to get rid of Saddam Hussain and to help “democratize” the region was a good idea, but the blowback is that it has thoroughly destabilized the region and given birth to such terrorist groups as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; see Chapter 13).

Nevertheless, every theory has policy implications deducible from its primary assumptions and propositions. The deep and lasting effects of the classical theories on legal systems around the world have long been noted, but the broad generalities about human nature contained in those theories offer little specific advice on ways to change criminals or to reduce their numbers. Although we caution against using the performance of a theory’s public policy recommendations as a major criterion to evaluate its power, the fact remains that a good theory should offer useful practical recommendations, and we discuss the policy implications of each theory.

Summary ❖ Criminology is the scientific study of crime and criminals. It is an interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary study, although criminology has

yet to integrate these disciplines in any comprehensive way. ❖ The definition of crime is problematic because acts defined as criminal vary across time and culture. Many criminologists believe that because crimes are defined into existence, we cannot determine what constitutes real crimes and criminals. However, there is a stationary core of crimes that are universally condemned and always have been. These are predatory crimes that cause serious harm and are defined as mala in se, or “inherently bad” crimes, as opposed to mala prohibita, or “bad because they are forbidden” crimes. ❖ A person is not “officially” a criminal until such time as he or she has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of having committed a crime. In order to prove that the person did commit a crime, the state has to prove corpus delicti (“the body of the crime”), which essentially means that he or she committed a criminal act (actus reus) with full awareness that the act was wrong (mens rea— guilty mind). Other basic principles—concurrence, harm, and causation—are proven during the process of proving corpus delicti. ❖ The history of criminology shows that the cultural and intellectual climate of the time strongly influences how scholars think about and study crime and criminality. The Renaissance brought more secular thinking, the Enlightenment more humane and rational thinking, the Industrial Revolution more scientific thinking, and the Progressive Era a reform-oriented criminology reminiscent of the classical school. ❖ Advances in any science are also constrained by the tools available to test theories. The ever-improving concepts, methods, and techniques available from modern genetics, neuroscience, and other biological sciences should add immeasurably to criminology’s knowledge base in the near future. ❖ Theory is the “bread and butter” of any science, including criminology. There are many contending theories seeking to explain crime and criminality. Although we do not observe such theoretical disagreement in the more established sciences, the social/behavioral sciences are young, and human behavior is extremely difficult to study. ❖ When judging among the various theories, we have to keep certain things in mind, including the predictive accuracy, scope, simplicity, and falsifiability. We must also remember that crime and criminality can be discussed at many levels (society-wide, subcultural, family, and individual) and that a theory that may do a good job of predicting crime at one level may do a poor job at another level. ❖ Theories can also be offered at different levels of analysis—whole societies, subcultures, neighborhoods, families, and individuals. They may focus on the evolutionary history of the species, the individual’s subjective appraisal of a situation, or any other temporal level in between. A full account of an individual’s behavior may have to take all these levels into consideration because any behavior arises from an individual’s propensities interacting with the environmental situation as that individual perceives it. This is why we approach criminology from social, psychosocial, and biosocial perspectives. ❖ Criminologists have traditionally examined only aspects of criminal behavior that they find congenial to their ideology and, unfortunately, often malign those who focus on other aspects. The main ideological dividing line in criminology is between constrained visionaries (primarily conservatives who tend to favor explanations of behavior that focus on the individual) and unconstrained visionaries (mostly liberals who tend to favor structural or cultural explanations). ❖ All theories have explicit or implicit recommendations for policy since they posit causes of crime or criminality. Removing those alleged causes should reduce crime if the theory is correct, but the complex nature of crime and criminality make policy decisions based on them very risky indeed. Policymakers must consider many other issues demanding scarce resources, so the policy content of a theory should never be used to pass judgment on the usefulness of theory for criminologists.

Exercises and Discussion Questions 1. Which of the following acts do you consider mala in se crimes, mala prohibita crimes, or no crimes at all? Defend your choices.

A. drug possession. B. vandalism. C. drunk driving. D. collaborating with the enemy. E. sale of alcohol to minors. F. fraud. G. spouse abuse. H. adult male having consensual sex with underage person. I. prostitution. J. homosexual behavior. K. pornography.

2. Why are new observational techniques such as DNA testing and brain scans useful to criminologists? 3. Discuss the relationship among theories, facts, and hypotheses. 4. Why is it important to consider ideology when evaluating criminologists’ work? Is it possible for criminologists to divorce their ideology

from their work? 5. Large-scale policies aimed at reducing crime (think of Prohibition and the War on Poverty) rarely have the desired effect. Can you think

of any good reasons why this is so? 6. Go to www.lsus.edu/offices-and-services/community-outreach/the-journal-of-ideology/archives for the online Journal of Ideology

(formerly Quarterly Journal of Ideology). Click on archive and find and read “Ideology: Criminology’s Achilles’ Heel.” What does this article say about the “conflict of visions” in criminology?

Useful Websites Conflict criminology. http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/criminology/theories/ Critical criminology. www.critcrim.org Learning theories of crime. http://criminology.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Learning_Theory Links to criminological theory. http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/criminology/theories/

Chapter Terms Actus reus 6 Arraignment 10

Arrest 8 Causation 8 Concurrence 8 Constrained vision 18 Corpus delicti 6 Crime 2 Criminality 6 Criminology 2 Grand jury 9 Harm 8 Hypotheses 15 Ideology 18 Level of analysis 17 Mala in se 4 Mala prohibita 4 Mens rea 8 Policy 19 Theory 15 Unconstrained vision 18

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