Criminology Flashcards

Flashcards to help review lecture notes.

Workhouse

A place where people unable or unwilling to support themselves were required to work.

Women’s house of detention protest of 1970

A protest held in 1970 at the Women's House of Detention, likely addressing issues of incarceration and justice for women.

Welfare mothers

A term referring to women receiving public assistance, often stigmatized in discussions around poverty and social welfare.

Warehouse prisons

Prisons designed for long-term storage of inmates, often characterized by minimal programming and poor conditions.

War on crime

A political initiative to reduce crime. It led to increased incarceration rates and punitive measures.

Urban crisis

A period of decline in urban areas, often characterized by poverty, crime, and social unrest.

“Toxic cocktail” of mass incarceration

The combination of factors that contribute to and exacerbate the negative effects of mass incarceration.

Total incapacitation

A strategy of crime control that seeks to prevent offenders from committing future crimes by physically removing them from society through imprisonment.

Surpluses (of the California prison boom)

Excesses or unintended consequences resulting from the rapid expansion of prisons in California.

Sterilization

The process of making someone unable to reproduce, historically used in eugenic programs.

Sovereignty

Supreme power or authority; in this context, often related to governmental control and jurisdiction.

Social uplift

Efforts to improve the social and economic status of marginalized communities.

Social control

Mechanisms used to regulate individual and group behavior in order to maintain social order.

Security housing unit (solitary confinement e.g., Pelican Bay)

A high-security prison unit where inmates are isolated from the general population, such as at Pelican Bay State Prison.

Rights movements

Organized efforts to advocate for and secure legal and social rights for specific groups, such as prisoners.

Revolutionary politics

Political movements and ideologies that seek radical social and political transformation.

Resistance (prisoner)

Acts of defiance or opposition by incarcerated individuals against the prison system.

Reformist reforms

Changes to the criminal justice system that seek to improve conditions or practices without fundamentally altering the system itself.

Reentry

The process of transitioning incarcerated individuals back into the community after release.

Reconstruction

The period after the Civil War focused on rebuilding and reintegrating the Southern states, also related to penal labor.

Recidivism

The tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend.

Realignment

The shifting of responsibilities and resources between state and local governments, particularly in the context of criminal justice.

Racial profiling

The discriminatory practice by law enforcement of targeting individuals based on their race or ethnicity.

Racial disparity in punishment

The disproportionate impact of the criminal justice system on certain racial groups.

Racial capitalism

The process by which capitalism is structured to exploit non-white people.

Quantitative face of mass incarceration

Measurable aspects of mass incarceration, such as incarceration rates and prison populations.

Qualitative face of mass incarceration

The more nuanced and experience-based aspect of mass incarceration, such as the impacts on families, communities, and individuals.

Punitive myths

Misconceptions or exaggerated beliefs that justify harsh punishment.

Proposition 47

A California ballot initiative passed in 2014 that reclassified some nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.

Progressive era

A period of social activism and political reform in the United States from the 1890s to the 1920s.

Probation

A sentence that allows an offender to remain in the community under supervision instead of being incarcerated.

Prisoners’ rights litigation

Lawsuits filed by incarcerated individuals challenging prison conditions or policies.

Prison overcrowding

A situation in which a prison exceeds its capacity, leading to inadequate resources and deteriorating conditions.

Prison Litigation Reform Act

A federal law passed in 1996 that restricts the ability of prisoners to file lawsuits challenging prison conditions.

“Prison fix”

Reliance on imprisonment as a primary solution to social problems.

Prison conditions

The environmental and social circumstances within a correctional facility.

Principle of least eligibility

The concept that conditions inside prisons should be worse than the conditions faced by the poorest law-abiding citizens.

Primitive accumulation

The historical process by which common resources and land were transformed into private property, often through violent and coercive means.

Preservation through transformation

The idea that institutions adapt and change in order to maintain their fundamental purpose.

Political technologies

Methods and tools used by those in power to control and influence populations.

PIC Abolition

Prison Industrial Complex Abolition. A movement that seeks to dismantle and replace the prison system with alternative forms of justice and community support.

Penal devolution

The transfer of penal responsibilities and authority from central to local governments.

Penal colony

A settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population.

Peculiar apparatus

A distinctive or unique mechanism or system; often used to critically describe the criminal justice system.

Panopticon

A circular prison design where inmates are constantly visible to a central watchtower, symbolizing constant surveillance.

Non-Reformist reforms (Abolitionist reforms)

Changes to the criminal justice system that seek to undermine and dismantle the system, rather than simply improve it.

Neoliberalism

An economic and political ideology that emphasizes deregulation, privatization, and free markets.

Negative eugenics

Practices aimed at reducing the reproduction of individuals deemed to have undesirable traits.

Myth of repayment

The false idea that incarceration serves as a form of restitution or amends for the harm caused by crime.

Myth of removal

False idea that incarceration effectively removes dangerous individuals from society, thereby increasing safety.

Myth of reinforcement

The inaccurate belief that punishment and incarceration deter future crime.

Myth of reform/rehabilitation

The false idea that prisons are primarily focused on rehabilitating offenders.

Myth of racial threat

The belief that people of color, and in particular the African American population, is a threat to the white majority and need to be placed under control.

Moral panic

A widespread fear, often irrational, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large.

McCleskey v. Kemp (Supreme Court 1986)

A Supreme Court case that addressed racial bias in the application of the death penalty.

Mass migration

The movement of large groups of people from one place to another, often due to economic, social, or political factors.

Mass incarceration (mass imprisonment)

The substantial increase in the rate of imprisonment in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Los Angeles (Watts) riot/uprising

A series of riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965, sparked by racial tensions and police brutality.

Life Without Parole (LWOP)

A sentence in which a person is imprisoned for the rest of their life without the possibility of parole.

Law and order

A political emphasis on strict law enforcement and punitive measures to reduce crime.

Labor markets

The availability of jobs and the demand for workers in a given economy.

Juvenile court (juvenile justice)

A court system that handles cases involving minors accused of crimes.

Jeremy Bentham

An Enlightenment-era philosopher and social reformer known for his utilitarianism and advocacy of the panopticon.

Indeterminate Sentencing

A system of sentencing in which a person is given a range of time they might serve, such as five to ten years.

Idleness

The state of being inactive or unemployed, historically viewed as a social problem.

Human dignity

The inherent worth and value of every individual.

Hands off doctrine

A judicial policy of non-intervention in prison administration.

Guided discretion

Sentencing reforms that seek to provide judges with more structure and guidance in their decision-making.

Great migration

The movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North and West in the early to mid-20th century.

George Jackson

A Black Panther member and prisoner who became a prominent advocate for prisoners' rights.

Furman v. Georgia (Supreme Court 1972)

A Supreme Court case resulting in the invalidation of existing death penalty laws due to their arbitrary and discriminatory application.

Fear of crime

Anxiety and apprehension about becoming a victim of crime.

Expulsion

The act of forcing someone to leave a place or organization.

Experimentation

The process of conducting controlled tests or investigations, sometimes raises ethical concerns such as medical experimentation on prisoners.

Evolving standards of decency

A legal principle used to assess whether a particular punishment violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Evidence based practices

Policies and programs that have been shown to be effective through rigorous scientific research.

European way of seeing things (Officer to the Traveler in Kafka’s In the Penal Colony)

Relates to an outside (traveler) looking at a penal colony and seeing it as normal when in fact it's barbaric.

Eugenics

A set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of a human population.

Enlightenment

An intellectual and philosophical movement that emphasized reason, individualism, and human rights.

Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia) Auburn Penitentiary (New York)

Early models of prisons in the United States, each with distinct philosophies.

Due process revolution

Expansion of legal rights for those accused of crimes.

Dr. Leo Stanley

A prison doctor who conducted controversial medical experiments on inmates in the early 20th century.

Discipline

The practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, often through punishment.

Degeneracy (degenerates)

The believe that people are devolving backwards in society to a more primitive state. Early eugenicist greatly believed that the prison population was proof of a growing number of degenerates and needed to be corrected.

Critical resistance conference of 1998

An event that brought together activists, scholars, and community members to address issues related to the prison-industrial complex.

Crisis of mass incarceration

The recognition that high rates of imprisonment create significant social, economic, and moral problems.

Crises

Situations of instability or danger, often leading to significant social or political change.

Criminal justice system

The agencies and processes involved in enforcing laws, adjudicating criminal cases, and punishing offenders.

Crack cocaine

A form of cocaine that became prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s, associated with increased arrests and incarceration rates, particularly among African Americans.

Correctional Training

The education and instruction provided to individuals working in correctional facilities.

Convict leasing

A system in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in which prisoners were leased to private companies for labor.

Common (or collective) conscience

Shared values and beliefs.