Chapter 3- Images of Crime and Criminality Key Terms

Key terms for chapter 3 of Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice

Backwards law

The idea that media will present an image of criminality opposite that of crime-and-justice reality.

Predatory criminality

Criminals who are animalistic, irrational, and innately evil and who commit violent, sensational, and senseless crimes.

White collar crimes

A crime committed by a respectable person of high social status in the course of his or her occupation.

Popular criminology

The criminological ideas and explanation of crime that are popular with the general public and often have inferred counterparts in mass media content.

Rational choice theories

The idea that crime is a rational, free-will decision that individual will make when the gains from committing a crime outweigh the likelihood of punishment.

Biological theories

Theories of crime that hold that crime is the result of innate genetic differences or the constitutional nature of criminals.

Psychological theories

The idea that a crime is caused by defective personality development

Sociological theories

The idea that criminal environments cause crime, and that people are criminals because of the people they associate with or share a neighborhood or culture with.

Political theories

Theories that assert that the political and economic structure of a society are the root causes of crime.

Psychotic super-male criminals

A popular media frame of criminality in which criminals possess an evil, cunning intelligence and superior strength, endurance, and stealth. Crimes committed by media psychotic super-males are generally acts of twisted, lustful revenge or random acts of irrational violence.

Business and professional criminals

A media criminality frame in which criminals are characterized as shrewd, ruthless, often violent, ladies’ men for whom crime is another form of work or business, similar to other careers but more exciting and rewarding.

Victims and heroic criminals

The least common media criminality frame, it presents criminals as either victims of injustice or unrecognized good guys.