This chapter examines the emergence of the concept of corporate crime, discussing its meaning and reviewing the extent to which it represents a crime problem. It then considers various dimensions of corporate crime—its visibility, causation, and control—questioning society's will to censure and punish company directors and other ‘rogue’ capitalists.
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11. Corporate crime
Steve Tombs
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12. Cybercrime
Matthew Williams and David Wall
This chapter examines the nature of cybercrime and its implications for criminology. It is organized as follows. The first part traces the evolution of the Internet as an environment for the emergence of cybercrime. The second considers the various conflicting definitional problems of cybercrime and offers a method of resolving them. The third part outlines the problems with measuring cybercrime before providing an indication of the scale of the problem. The fourth part briefly explores how those problems are being resolved. The fifth part looks at the governance and regulation of cybercrime, while the final part provides an overview of the various theoretical explanations.
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17. Young people and crime
Derek Kirton
This chapter examines youth crime and responses to it. It discusses the key principles around which youth justice has evolved and how the balance between them has changed over time. The chapter considers some of the main theories and models that have been put forward to explain youth crime, including patterns linked to social divisions based on class, ethnicity, and gender. Attention is also given to recent ‘moral panics’, such as young people's use of weapons, gang activity, and involvement in the 2011 riots. Finally, a review of contemporary youth justice policy and debate regarding its future direction is provided.
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7. Crime and media: understanding the connections
Chris Greer
This chapter examines the link between crime and media. It summarizes major themes and debates that have shaped the research agenda, and considers some less well-rehearsed issues such as the changing global communications marketplace, the development of new media technologies, and the significance of these for understanding the connections between crime and media. The chapter is organized as follows. The first section offers some background information and addresses the crucial question of why exploring media images of crime and control is important. The second section considers how scholars have researched crime and media, and presents an overview of the main findings. The third section examines the dominant theoretical and conceptual tools that have been used to understand and explain media representations of crime. The final section considers the evidence for the influence of media representations, both on criminal behaviour and fear of crime.
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8. Drugs, alcohol, and crime
Emma Wincup and Peter Traynor
This chapter examines the relationship between crime and drug and alcohol use. The first part focuses on drug use and addresses three key issues: (a) the nature and extent of drug use; (b) the relationship between drug use and crime; and (c) strategies for reducing drug-related crime. The second part explores the same issues in relation to alcohol use.
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19. The politics of law and order
Marian FitzGerald and Chris Hale
This chapter traces the breakdown in the consensus among political parties that decision making within the criminal justice system should appear to be ‘above politics’ and considers the ways in which crime became an increasingly contested arena of political competition. The discussions cover the politics of law and order in the UK since 1945, and during the periods 1945–70, 1970–92, and post-1992.
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14. Economic marginalization, social exclusion, and crime
Chris Hale
This chapter considers the debates surrounding the relationships between economic conditions and crime. It examines the links between poverty, inequality, and crime, and discusses concepts such as the underclass and social exclusion. For many, integrating people into work is central to combating social exclusion. At the centre of this debate lie not only matters of power and inequality, but also the need to question the nature of paid work and the position it takes within capitalist society.
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16. ‘Race’, ethnicity, and crime
Marian FitzGerald
This chapter begins by exploring notions of ‘race’ and ethnicity. It then provides some background on how particular groups have come to be defined as ‘ethnic minorities’ in Britain and what the official statistics on these groups say about the differences between them—with particular reference to known risk factors for offending. After outlining the history of these groups' relations with the police and public perceptions of their involvement in crime and disorder, it considers trends in the official statistics on ethnicity and offending. The chapter argues that criminologists must interpret crime statistics in the light of relevant criminological theories rather than giving primacy to explanations which treat the experiences of different ‘ethnic’ groups as if they were unique.
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6. Psychology and crime: understanding the interface
Keith Hayward and Craig Webber
This chapter, which introduces the ways in which psychological research has contributed to the understanding of crime and the criminal justice system. It combines a general review of some of the more prominent psychological explanations of criminal behaviour with some brief examples of how this work came to be employed in criminological theory and practice. At various intervals, the chapter also adopts a more reflexive stance in a bid to develop some critical insights into the way that ‘criminological psychology’ is portrayed and perceived within the popular imagination.
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18. Crime, culture, and everyday life
Jeff Ferrell and Jonathan Ilan
This chapter focuses on the cultural significance of crime. It examines the way in which crime and culture intertwine within the lived experiences of everyday life, and argues that a host of urban crimes are perpetrated by actors for whom transgression serves a number of purposes. The chapter charts a world of underground graffiti artists, gang members, street muggers, and other ‘outsider’ criminals, whose subcultures are increasingly the subject of media, corporate, and political interest.
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15. Personality theories
This chapter discusses the term ‘personality’, which is used to describe an individual’s temperamental and emotional attributes that are relatively consistent and that will influence behaviour. It also considers the extent to which the leading psychological explanations of personality development can be related to criminal behaviour. Psychologists use different classifications—some might include considerations of biological factors or aspects of mental disorder such as psychopathy within the category of personality—and refer to a persistent or stable personality characteristic as a trait. For many years, they have devised tests aimed at measuring personality traits in an attempt to test the hypothesis that people who are prone to act in an antisocial way are distinguishable from ‘normal’ people.
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2. The statistics on crime and their meaning
This chapter discusses crime statistics, which, as with any other form of statistical information, are often referred to by the media as if they provide a true measurement of crime. It is now increasingly accepted that criminal statistics provide a deficient guide to both the level of crime and trends in criminal behaviour. There has been a massive increase in the amount of statistical information promulgated about crime in the past few years. This reflects in part the greater sophistication in statistical techniques, but is mostly a consequence of the growing political interest in the criminal justice system and an accompanying call for greater accountability and openness. However, there are some facts that appear incontrovertible from all measurements of crime in England and Wales.
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7. Subcultural theories
This chapter discusses Robert Merton’s anomie theory, which indicated several possible forms of reaction by individuals who had suffered from the strain of being unable to attain society’s ultimate goal by the institutionalised means made available to them: typically, regular, productive work. For some, the reaction could involve engaging in deviant or criminal behaviour. Merton’s approach was adopted and modified by other sociologists and criminologists, who were interested in studying the behaviour of groups—usually of young people—within a society, which deviate from or totally reject the views of the majority. Such groups are referred to by sociologists as subcultures. The use of the term ‘subculture’ has largely centred on juvenile delinquent gangs. This restriction is unfortunate because subculture is a sociological concept that has a wide application and the relationship with the emotive topic of gangs has, in many ways, proved to be counterproductive.
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2. What is ‘crime’?
This chapter discusses what crime is. No matter how universally its ideas and regulations are accepted, it is important to understand and not lose sight of the fact that crime is a social construct. Because crime is socially constructed, ideas of unacceptable and criminal behaviour alter across cultures and over time. Many suggest that what is known as the ‘harm principle’ might be the best standard by which we should decide whether an activity should be criminal. This principle holds that if conduct is not harmful to others it should not be criminal, even if others strongly dislike it. The chapter also looks at the concept of deviance and identifies: what kinds of activities are disapproved of (seen as deviant) and why; which of these are criminalised and why; what the criminal law may reveal about society and what matters to it.
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10. Sex crime
Terry Thomas
This chapter examines the nature of sexual offending and the forms it takes, as well as the enhanced social response being made. The discussions cover forms of sexual offending; criminal processes; civil measures for public protection; public access to the sex offender register; and mental health and sexual offending.
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15. Gender and Crime
Azrini Wahidin
This chapter explores the links between gender and crime, charts the emergence of feminist perspectives within criminology, examines the different kinds of crimes in which men and women are involved, and considers the complex and changing relationship between masculinity(ies), femininity(ies), and crime. It deconstructs how these relations have been typically understood in criminological theory, and looks at the different ways in which men and women are dealt with by the criminal justice system.
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14. Intelligence, mental disorder and crime
This chapter presents the concept of mental disorder, in contrast to the possible physiological influences in criminal behaviour. The idea behind the concept is that the underlying causes are not physical in nature, but are due to the workings of the ‘mind’. The chapter begins with a consideration of whether differences in individuals’ cognitive capacity—or, as it is usually called, intelligence—can have any bearing on the likelihood of their acting in an antisocial manner. It also discusses the definition of ‘learning disability’, a legal classification defined as a state of arrested or incomplete development of the mind, which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning.
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Introduction—Criminology: its origins and research methods
This chapter discusses the origins of the term ‘criminology’, which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century because a group of theorists laid claim to systematic knowledge as to the nature of criminal behaviour, its causes and solutions. Prior to this, commentaries on crime largely arose out of other enterprises. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the administration of criminal justice in most European countries had been influenced by the views of several writers whose approach, although differing in certain respects, has come to be referred to as ‘classicism’. The basic view as to the organisation of society adopted by the classicists was influenced by the social contract theories of Hobbes and Rousseau. Individuals agree to join together to form a society and there is a consensus within the society for the private ownership of property and the protection of its members from harm.
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16. Biological and psychological positivism
This chapter discusses how theories from biology and psychology can help in understanding crime. It studies individual positivism: that is, those aspects of positivist criminological explanations that look for differences between criminal and non-criminal populations. Biological and psychological positivists believe that by measuring biological and psychological differences between offenders and non-offenders they will discover a clear explanation of criminal behaviour, a truth that explains criminal actions. When researchers discovered physical or biological differences between offenders and non-offenders they tended to assume that those characteristics were causative and explained the behaviour. However, there is a big jump between finding differences and assuming that the difference explains the behaviour. The chapter traces the journey of biological and psychological positivist thinking from its roots in the 19th century through to the approaches in the 21st century where these biological and psychological traits are merely seen as one factor which may increase the likelihood of criminality rather than causing it.
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17. Sociological positivism
This chapter examines sociological positivism, studying how society or social processes might affect behaviour. Decisions by governments and companies and sociological issues (such as poverty) affect individuals but may also affect whole communities; they may influence the likelihood of many people to choose to offend or be law-abiding. Therefore, the health of the economy or the rate of unemployment, for example, may influence the behaviour of an entire population not just one individual and so may lead to a rise or fall in criminal behaviour. If we can identify which factors in society influence crime, and how they do so, it may be possible to alter those social factors and so decrease criminal behaviour. The chapter looks at three types of sociological theory: social interaction or social process theories, social structural theories, and social conflict theories.
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