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Criminology Today
An Integrated Introduction
CHAPTER
Criminology Today: An Integrated Introduction, 8e
Frank Schmalleger
Copyright © 2017 by Pearson Education, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
What is
Criminology?
1

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Frank Schmalleger
Introduction
• Crime-related entertainment is
extremely popular today.
• Inexplicability of crime fascinates
people.
• This text examines causative factors in
effect when a crime is committed.
• It encourages an appreciation of the
challenges of crafting effective crime-
control policy.

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Frank Schmalleger
What is Crime?
• Four definitional perspectives
 Legalistic
• Used in this book
 Political
 Sociological
 Psychological
• Perspective determines assumptions
about how crime should be studied.

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Frank Schmalleger
Legalistic Perspective
• Crime
 Human conduct in violation of the
criminal laws of a state, the federal
government, or a local jurisdiction that
has the power to make such laws
continued on next slide

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Frank Schmalleger
Legalistic Perspective
• Key shortcoming
 Yields moral high ground to powerful
individuals who can influence lawmaking
 Allows them to escape the label of
"criminal"
• Laws are social products.
 Crime is socially relative, created by
legislative activity.

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Frank Schmalleger
Political Perspective
• Crime
 The result of criteria that have been
built into the law by powerful groups
and are then used to label selected
undesirable forms of behavior as illegal
• Laws serve the interests of the
politically powerful.
• Crimes are behaviors those in power
perceive as threats to their interests.

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Frank Schmalleger
Sociological (Sociolegal)
Perspective
• Crime
 An antisocial act of such a nature that
its repression is necessary or is
supposed to be necessary to the
preservation of the existing system of
society
• Crime is an offense against human
relationships first, a violation of law
second.

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Frank Schmalleger
Psychological (Maladaptive)
Perspective
• Crime
 A form of social maladjustment
 Problem behavior, especially human
activity that contravenes the criminal
law and results in difficulties in living
within a framework of generally
acceptable social arrangements

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Frank Schmalleger
Psychological (Maladaptive)
Perspective
• Any maladaptive behavior would be
considered crime.
• Could include any harmful or potentially
harmful behaviors

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Frank Schmalleger
Crime and Deviance
• Deviant behavior
 Human activity that violates social
norms
• Deviance and crime overlap but are not
identical.

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Frank Schmalleger
Figure 1–2 The Overlap between Deviance and Crime
Source: Schmalleger, Frank, Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey ISBN0132966751.

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Frank Schmalleger
What Should Be Criminal?
• "What is crime?" not the same as
"What should be criminal?"
• Lack of agreement in society about
appropriate legal status of many
behaviors (drug use, gambling, etc.)
• Two contrasting perspectives
 Consensus perspective
 Pluralist perspective

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• Consensus
 Laws enacted to criminalize behaviors
when members of society agree
 Applies to homogeneous societies
 Consensus hard to achieve in diverse
multicultural societies

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• Pluralist
 Behaviors criminalized through a
political process, after debate over
appropriate course of action
 Involves legislation, appellate court
action
 Most applicable to diverse societies

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Frank Schmalleger
What Is Criminology?
• Many definitions available
• Text definition
 An interdisciplinary profession built
around the scientific study of crime and
criminal behavior, including their forms,
causes, legal aspects, and control
• Includes consideration of possible
solutions to crime problem

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Frank Schmalleger
Criminology's Basic Questions
• Why do crime rates vary?
• Why do individuals differ as to
criminality?
• Why is there variation in reactions to
crime?
• What are the possible means of
controlling criminality?

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Frank Schmalleger
Key Terms
• Criminology
• Criminality
• Crime
• Deviance
• Criminal behavior

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Frank Schmalleger
What Is Criminology?
• An interdisciplinary social science
• Contributes to criminal justice
 Application of the criminal law and study
of the components of the justice system
 Focus on control of lawbreaking

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Frank Schmalleger
Figure 1–3 Criminology’s Many Roots
Source: Schmalleger, Frank, Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

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Frank Schmalleger
What Do Criminologists Do?
• Criminologist
 Studies crime, criminals and criminal
behavior
• Criminalist
 A specialist in the collection and
examination of the physical evidence of
crime

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• Criminal Justice Professionals
 Do the day-to-day work of the criminal
justice system

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• Academic/research criminologists
 Ph.D. in criminology, CJ, related field
 Teach in universities
 Conduct research to advance
criminological knowledge
 Publish in journals

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• Other career tracks
 Work in CJS
 Private security or private investigation
 Law school
 Work for legislative bodies, provide
expertise to civic organizations

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Theoretical Criminology
• Subfield of general criminology mainly
found in colleges and universities
• Posits explanations for criminal
behavior
• Theory
 Made up of clearly stated propositions
that posit relationships between events
and things under study

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Theoretical Criminology
• General theory
 Tries to explain all/most forms of crime
through a single overarching approach
• Unicausal theory
 Posits a single identifiable source for all
serious deviant and criminal behavior
• Integrated theory
 Tries to explain crime by merging
concepts from different sources

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Criminology and Social Policy
• Translational criminology
 Focuses on translating research results
into workable social policy
• Sound social policy needs to be linked
to objective findings of well-conducted
criminological research.

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The Theme of This Textbook
• Social Problems
 Crime a manifestation of underlying
social problems
 Public health model to deal with crime
 Macro approach

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The Theme of This Textbook
• Social Responsibility
 Crime a matter of individual
responsibility
 Personalized crime-reduction strategies
 Micro approach
 Substantially influenced national crime-
control policy

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Frank Schmalleger
Figure 1–6 The Theme of This Text: Social Problems versus Social Responsibility

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The Social Context of Crime
• Crime does not occur in a vacuum;
every crime has a unique set of:
 Causes
 Consequences
 Participants
• Crime provokes reactions from many
sources.
• Reactions to crime may affect future
criminal events.

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Frank Schmalleger
The Causes and Consequences
of the Criminal Event
• Crime is a social event, not an isolated
individual activity.
• Apply concept of social relativity
 Social events interpreted differently
according to cultural experiences of
initiator, observer, or recipient of
behavior
 Crime means different things to
offender, criminologist, police, victim.

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Frank Schmalleger
The Causes and Consequences
of the Criminal Event
• Crime results from the coming together
of inputs provided by the offender, the
victim, the criminal justice system, and
society.
 Foreground
• Features that immediately determine the
nature of the crime (inputs)
 Background causes
• Generic contributions to the crime

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Crime and the Criminal Justice
System
• Background
 CJS contributes to crime through failure
to:
• Prevent crime
• Identify/inhibit specific offenders
• Prevent release of recidivists

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Frank Schmalleger
Crime and the Criminal Justice
System
• Foreground
 Proper system response may reduce
crime.
 Presence/absence of police officers
 Availability of official assistance
 Willingness of officers to intervene pre-
crime
 Response time

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Crime and the Victim
• Background
 Passive presence
 Lifestyle
• Foreground
 Victim precipitation
• Active victim participation in initial stages
of criminal event
• Victim instigates chain of events resulting
in victimization

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Frank Schmalleger
Crime and Society
• Background
 Legislation defining crime
 Generic social practices and conditions
 Socialization process
• Foreground
 Distribution of resources
 Accessibility of services

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Frank Schmalleger
The Consequences of Crime
• Outputs/immediate consequences
affect those parties directly involved.
• Real impact mediated by perceptual
filters
 Results in ongoing interpretations
before, during, after crime
 Everyone associated with a crime
engages in interpretations.

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Frank Schmalleger
Integrative Approach to Crime
• Text takes a 3-D integrative view of
crime.
 Try to identify, understand causes of
crime
 Highlight processes involved in the
criminal event
 Analyze interpretation of the crime
phenomenon

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Frank Schmalleger
Integrative Approach to Crime
• Crime viewed along temporal
continuum as emergent activity that:
 Arises out of past complex causes
 Assumes a course building on
immediate interrelationships
 Elicits formal response from CJS, shapes
public perceptions, may lead to changes
in social policy

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Frank Schmalleger
The Primacy of Sociology?
• Many disciplines have made important
contributions to criminology.
• Primary perspective today is
sociological.
• Many modern theories of criminal
behavior based in sociology
• New and emerging perspectives being
recognized, but sociological perspective
dominates

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