CRIM 101 Lecture Study Guide: Weeks 1-4 and Week 6

Vocabulary study flashcards for CRIM 101 covering Weeks 1 through 4 and Week 6, defining foundational criminology concepts, media theories, racialization and colonialism, sociological theories of crime, and critical criminology.

Malum in se

Conduct considered inherently wrong by its very nature, independent of whether regulations prohibit it.

Malum prohibitum

Conduct considered criminal because it is prohibited, rather than because it is inherently wrong.

Actus reus

The guilty action.

Mens rea

The guilty mind.

Legalistic approach to crime

An approach focused on violations of the legal code and crimes as offences against society.

Sociological approach to crime

An understanding that crime is connected to society and social structures rather than being reducible to the individual.

Durkheim's concept of crime normality

The idea that crime is a product of society and a social fact rather than simply something located within an individual.

Conflict Theory of crime

A theoretical perspective that asks who makes the law, whose interests it serves, which groups it protects or disadvantages, and who has the power to define crime and victims.

Settler colonialism

The movement of colonizers who intend to remain permanently in a new homeland and replace the Indigenous population.

Social construction of criminal law

The principle that the process of defining acts and people as criminal depends upon law for legitimation.

Robbery

A violent crime classified by the use of force, violence, or threats during the commission of a theft.

Break and enter (B&E)

Entering someone's property with the intention of committing an indictable offence.

Fraud

An offence distinguished from ordinary theft by the involvement of deception or trickery to obtain material benefits.

Organized crime

Groups of three or more people committing serious offences likely to generate direct or indirect material benefits.

Traditional (legacy) media

Newspapers, magazines, radio, film, and television.

Market Model of media

A model where media is treated as a business providing a product according to market demand and audience preferences.

Newsworthiness criteria

Characteristics used by news media to determine which stories will interest audiences and therefore be reported.

Media framing

Fitting a story into a ready-made social construction that makes it easier for audiences to understand and interpret.

Public Sphere (Social Responsibility) Model

The perspective that media should give the public what it needs, serve democracy, and hold authorities accountable.

Propaganda Model

A perspective holding that media content is influenced by media ownership and reflects the interests of powerful groups.

Media agenda-setting

The media's role in influencing which topics receive the most attention and are therefore considered important.

Organizational Model of news

The perspective that day-to-day routines of news production, including deadlines and pressure to produce content, shape news.

Cultural Studies Perspective

A perspective examining how media constructs and reproduces cultural meaning, particularly through representation.

Moral panic

A period of intense public concern that is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the issue.

Folk devil

The person or group perceived as the menace at the centre of a moral panic.

Episodic frame

A frame presenting crime as an individual event without broader social context.

Thematic frame

A frame placing an event within its broader social context.

Backwards law of crime reporting

The tendency for media representations of crime and justice to be opposite to how those phenomena actually occur in real life.

Racialization of crime

The assumption that crimes committed by racial minorities can be explained by their race.

Ideal victim

A socially constructed victim perceived as weak, blameless, sympathetic, respectable, and typically unacquainted with the perpetrator.

Hierarchy of credibility

The tendency of journalists to prefer sources in powerful positions and portray their views as more credible.

Primary definers

Sources, such as police, whom media consult first to define and explain situations.

Scientific racism

Pseudoscientific attempts to classify supposed races using physical characteristics and measurements.

Doctrine of discovery

A doctrine based on terra nullius, the idea that newly discovered territory belonged to nobody and could therefore be claimed through occupation.

Racialization

The process of treating race as something people or institutions actively create through categorization, comparison, and othering rather than as a biological reality.

Racial profiling

Police or border-security practices that subject racialized individuals to different levels of surveillance or scrutiny based on racial categorization.

Intersectionality

Kimberle Crenshaw's concept that categories such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability are interlocked and operate together rather than independently.

Overt racism

Direct interpersonal racism experienced as personal insult or injury.

Institutional racism

Racist practices or policies embedded in institutions even when individual employees are not personally behaving in overtly racist ways.

Systemic racism

Racial inequality produced through interacting social structures and conditions across areas such as education, incarceration, and health.

Deviance

Departure from a norm that evokes a negative reaction from others.

Crime

Deviance that breaks a law.

Law

A norm stipulated and enforced by government bodies.

Informal punishment

A mild sanction imposed through face-to-face social interaction rather than through the judicial system.

Formal punishment

Penalization by the judicial system for breaking a law.

Stigmatization

Negative evaluation of people because of visible characteristics distinguishing them from others.

Uniform Crime Report (UCR)

Police-collected information that serves as a main source of Canadian crime statistics.

Self-report surveys

Surveys in which respondents report their own involvement in crime as perpetrators or victims.

Victimization surveys

Surveys asking people whether they have experienced crime.

Structural-functionalist view of crime

Durkheim's perspective that crime and deviance can be functional because they reinforce social solidarity, clarify moral boundaries, and help society adapt to change.

Strain Theory

Merton's theory that deviance can result when culturally valued goals such as material success conflict with people's legitimate opportunities for achieving them.

Conformity (Merton)

An adaptation to strain defined by accepting both society's cultural goals and legitimate means.

Innovation (Merton)

An adaptation to strain defined by accepting cultural goals but rejecting legitimate means of achieving them.

Ritualism (Merton)

An adaptation to strain defined by continuing to accept conventional means while rejecting cultural goals.

Retreatism (Merton)

An adaptation to strain defined by rejecting both society's goals and its accepted means.

Rebellion (Merton)

An adaptation to strain defined by rejecting existing goals and means and putting forward new ones.

Social Control Theory

A sociological perspective that asks why people do not engage in criminal behaviour and posits that weakened social bonds increase the likelihood of crime.

Attachment (Hirschi)

A social bond consisting of emotional ties with others, particularly parents.

Commitment (Hirschi)

A social bond involving time and energy invested in conventional goals such as education or building a career or business.

Involvement (Hirschi)

A social bond formed through participation in conventional activities, leaving less opportunity to plan or commit crime.

Belief (Hirschi)

A social bond defined as acceptance of society's common value system and the legitimacy of its laws and norms.

Social disorganization theory

A theory connecting crime and delinquency with disordered ecological characteristics of neighbourhoods, such as higher residential mobility, ethnic heterogeneity, and lower socioeconomic status.

Subcultural Theory (Cohen)

Albert Cohen's theory explaining non-utilitarian crime by examining how lower-class youth, struggling to meet middle-class standards, find alternative values and status in delinquent subcultures.

Symbolic Interactionism

A sociological perspective explaining that people learn deviant and criminal behaviours through their interactions with others.

Labeling Theory

A theory positing that deviance results partly from how other people respond to and label a rule breaker.

Dramatization of evil

Tannenbaum's concept that a stigmatizing label can lead a person to begin seeing themselves as criminal.

Critical Criminology

An approach that examines inequality and the potentially oppressive nature of criminal justice agencies, law, legal practices, criminalization, and marginalization.

Marxist criminology

A critical perspective arguing that the powerful create laws to control the working class and protect capitalist interests.

Repressive state apparatus

A government or state body legally authorized to use physical force to control the population, such as the police and the military.

Instrumental Marxist perspective

The view that criminal justice systems function directly because of capitalism.

Structuralist Marxist perspective

The view that governments have autonomy rather than simply serving capitalists, but law nevertheless helps maintain conditions for capitalist accumulation.

Hegemony

The dominance of one group's ideas over another, including circumstances where dominant-class ideas become accepted more broadly.

Archaeological method (Foucault)

Examining law as a discourse or mechanism used to categorize and classify people.

Genealogical method (Foucault)

Examining how classifications and discourses develop into mechanisms of discipline and normalization.

Governmentality

A complex array of programs and techniques used for governing people and things, relying on knowledge of populations to regulate processes like health, longevity, and labour.

Discipline (Foucault)

A technology of governance that establishes norms and employs techniques designed to produce conformity and create docile, obedient subjects.

Panopticon

Bentham's model of total surveillance in which inmates do not know when they are being watched, encouraging them to regulate their own behaviour.

Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)

A concept emphasizing interconnected relationships among political, legal, penal, corporate, and other actors surrounding correctional institutions and practices.

Penal abolitionism

A perspective that seeks to eliminate prisons, afflictive sanctions, and forms of confinement.

Abolitionist criminology

The study of harms caused by police and prison institutions and efforts to dismantle and rethink responses to transgression.

Negative reform

A reform intended to reduce the power of the state and carceral institutions.

Convict Criminology

An approach that gives voice to people who have been criminalized and examines the destructive effects and conditions of prisons from an experiential perspective.

Police abolitionism

The position that policing enforces social order without providing genuine safety, can cause harm, and that resources could instead be directed toward communities.