SOC109 Midterm

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230 Terms

1
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What is criminology?
Criminology is the scientific study of crime, criminal behaviour, and the criminal legal system.
2
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What is the difference between deviance and crime?
Deviance is something that is deemed “bad” by society, but not actually illegal.

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Crime is actually illegal, but there are some crimes that people wouldn’t consider bad like pirating.
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How do we choose who gets to define what is a crime in our society? What factors are these driven by?
* Individual factors


* Factors in our communities
* Political factors like the functioning of the police
* What is happening in the media
4
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What aren’t criminologists?
* Forensic people who go to crime scenes and like to examine the scenes


* Criminal profilists
* They aren’t like Sherlock Holmes or Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds
* Forensic people who go to crime scenes and like to examine the scenes


* Criminal profilists
  * They aren’t like Sherlock Holmes or Spencer Reid from  Criminal Minds
5
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What are criminologists interested in?
* The social and structural causes of criminal behaviour.

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* How society views crime and people who have been criminalized.
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What is crime in terms of objectivity?
A social construct

* It is not objective FOR EX. cannabis
* We want to think about what is legal and what is illegal and why. Why it was illegal and why it is legal now and vice versa
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Is criminology interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary?
Yes.
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Where do all criminologists come from?
Criminologists come from different academic backgrounds.
9
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How was criminology before in terms of disciplines?
Before, it was multidisciplinary.

* Multidisciplinary means there are just multiple disciplines examining it “hey I am a criminologist, but I pull from other disciplines to examine my work”
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How was criminology now in terms of disciplines?
Now (contemporary) it is interdisciplinary

* Interdisciplinary means that it has more than one discipline intertwining together, coming together to make a more “holistic” definition of criminology. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they don’t
* They have a shared interest
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Does the disciplines having a shared interest mean they all agree on topics of crimonology?
No, they often disagree on its causes and consequences like “what is crime?” “what is the most effective way to deal with crime?” “what are the causes and consequences of crime?”
12
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What disciplines make up criminology? (you don’t need to know)
Sociology, geography, economics, law, medicine, anthropology
13
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Is crime complex?
Yes it is, it requires multiple perspectives and disciplines in order to examine it

ex. one person can say “we need more police to stop crimes” and the other can say “no, we need more programs that target criminals”
14
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What is criminalization?
How people are “criminals” and how they differ from the rest of society.

* Do they come from different backgrounds or neighbourhoods?
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How do we approach these issues? What is the core of what criminologists study?
The development, application and testing of theories
16
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What are some criminological interests? (the list)
* Fear of Crime


* Victimology
* Deviance
* Crime Statistics
* Crime Prevention
* Juvenile Delinquency
* Gangs and many more
17
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What is the problem with social media being the main source of communication?
There is no context, it can be distorted. They film “on-the-ground” things happening, making crime seem more high than it actually is.

When fear of crime is high, people call for punitive policies like more police and tougher sentences.
18
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_____ matter
Definitions matter

As researcher and scientists, how are you supposed to come to a conclusion on what a crime is, what makes a criminal. You can’t be speaking the same language if you have no clear definitions. Without clear definitions, you can’t accurately assess crime rates and compare them.

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ex. if you wanna compare crime rates from now and then, you can’t know how well the criminal system is working like what types of crime is happening, where it’s happening and who’s involved

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THINK OF A GANG AND WHAT IS A GANG. There is no shared consensus on what a gang is. Who defines what a gang is, the people, the media, the police?
Definitions matter

As researcher and scientists, how are you supposed to come to a conclusion on what a crime is, what makes a criminal. You can’t be speaking the same language if you have no clear definitions. Without clear definitions, you can’t accurately assess crime rates and compare them. 

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ex. if you wanna compare crime rates from now and then, you can’t know how well the criminal system is working like what types of crime is happening, where it’s happening and who’s involved 

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THINK OF A GANG AND WHAT IS A GANG. There is no shared consensus on what a gang is. Who defines what a gang is, the people, the media, the police?
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Why do definitions matter?
* Consensus definitions are essential to assess the nature and extent of crime in our society.
* Definitions are necessary to identify the behaviours, individuals, and groups of study.
* Clear definitions allow for comparative scholarship.
20
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What was the research spotlight for lecture 1?
* 2012 Study published Canadian Journal of
Criminology and Criminal Justice.
* Employs content analysis to explore how
Canadian journalists use the term ‘gang’.
* Sample of nearly 3,900 occurrences in the Globe
and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, and
Montreal Gazette.
* The authors found there was a lack of clarity and consistency in how journalists discuss gangs. They used it for different people at different times which was inconsistent.
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What does the spotlight research show?
There is a collective fear of gangs, but people can’t even stay consistent with what a gang is

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The problem with this is when we used that term too broadly, political parties, the police and the media can label certain groups as gangs for their own purpose.
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What does it mean when something is mala in se mean?
It’s when things are bad in in of themselves. These are crimes that for the most part, everyone agrees is wrong and should be illegal. In every legal system across the world, these would be crimes in those legal systems

Ex. murder, rape, assault
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What does it mean when something is mala prohibitum mean?
Offences like piracy, drug sales or involvement in prostitution

* They are illegal b/c the state has declared them as illegal, but there isn’t really a shared consensus that this should be illegal
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Is the law reenforced proportionately?
No, they target marginalized groups and they are more likely to keep watch of marginalized groups

* It is not fair or neutral
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When activities are deemed illegal, or people are treated as criminals they are ____
criminalized
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What have commonly held definitions of crime failed to do?
capture deviant acts
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What can actions violate?
commonly held mores or folkways but still not be criminal
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What are mores?
Mores extend to informal codes related to right or wrong or ethical or unethical actions.

* They can make people uncomfortable or upset
* Mores may extend to crime
* ex. stealing and lying
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What are folkways?
Folkways represent the customs and norms that structure daily life.

ex. greeting each other when we see each other in the streets or seeing someone for the first time

* wearing certain clothes for certain events
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What is Hagan’s typology of deviance?
Hagan considers the degree of social harm, the severity of the social response, and agreement about the norm.

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* While some crimes are widely seen as \n harmful, there is a lack of consensus about \n many others.

ex: consensus crimes are infrequent

conflict crimes: less consensus like drugs, involvement in prostitution (usually targeting marginalized groups)

social deviations: workplace harassment
Hagan considers the degree of social harm,  the severity of the social response, and agreement about the norm.

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* While some crimes are widely seen as  \n harmful, there is a lack of consensus about  \n many others.

ex: consensus crimes are infrequent 

conflict crimes: less consensus like drugs, involvement in prostitution (usually targeting marginalized groups)

social deviations: workplace harassment
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What are conflict crimes and consensus crimes in terms mala ___?
Consensus is mala in se

Conflict is mala prohibitum
32
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How do we usually learn about crime?
Social media

* this is bad because b/c it exaggerates our idea of how much crime there ACTUALLY is
* it distorts our view of crime
* people do not know that violent crime rates are actually declining
33
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How SHOULD we learn about crime and why?
* Crime data helps to shape our perceptions of crime and the criminal justice system.
* Crime data came from official and unofficial sources, as well as personal and vicarious experiences.
* Narratives about crime don’t always align with expert knowledge.
34
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What is the difference between official data and unofficial data?
* Official data can include Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), data collected by the courts, and correctional data. (goes to a database in Canada to be analyzed and every police person has to report it)
* UCR data includes reporting by all Canadian police agencies to a central reporting system.

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* Unofficial data can include victimization and self-report surveys, academic studies, and studies by NGOs.
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What are the benefits of official data?
* Standardized reporting practices.
* The ability to make comparisons over time.
* The ability to track crime trends and patterns.
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What are the weaknesses of official data?
* ‘Missing’ or ‘unfounded’ cases. (dark figure of crime)
* Sensitivity to police practices.
* Changes in law can impact the data.
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What are the benefits of unofficial data? (bottom of the iceberg; trying to fill in what the official data can’t)
* Accounts for crimes not reported or detected to the police.
* Allows for more accurate tracking of crime trends.
* Not subject to the same reporting issues as UCR data.
* Provides more detailed information on victims and offenders.

THINK OF THE SURVEYS
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What are the weaknesses of unofficial data?
* Problems with sampling and ‘missing cases’. (refers to a process of selecting a smaller group from a larger group)
* Might lead to ‘over-reporting’ or ‘under-reporting’.
* Question design and sampling strategy subject to human biases. (can under or over estimate the crime, can mess up the times, can mess up details)
39
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Crime is both ___ __and__ ___ relative.
* historically; culturally
* As society changes we see that certain behaviours have become legal while others have been made illegal.
* The concept of criminalization captures how crime and criminals are socially constructed.
* For the purposes of this course, we will consider crime and deviance sociologically.
40
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How do certain disciplines differ from criminology?
The common agreement of their subject matter gives each discipline its central focus (ex. psychology, the study of psyche) regardless of what social or legal context in which they are practiced. Even though there can be social and legal contexts that change the analysis of it. (like psychology is still the study of the psyche regardless of what type of psychologist is studying it. Psychology is still psychology regardless of whether it is studied in France or Africa)

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Criminology is in some aspects its focus is dependent upon how crime itself is brought into being in THESE DIFFERENT social and legal contexts. FOR EX. what might be understood as a crime, and as criminal, in France may vary from how that is understood in the United States.
41
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Why does Paul Rock call criminology a “rendevous” subject? Why is this bad?
* It is hard to pinpoint what binds all criminologists together

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* Criminologists are interested in crime, but it is more complex than that. Economists study economic systems, historians are interested in how what happened in the past but within these boundaries of what they study, they can STILL be interested in crime.

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* So what binds criminologists together is that they share an interest in the same subject matter, crime, but importantly they do not necessarily share the same way of thinking about how to study that subject matter.

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* They can all be criminologists, but looking at crime in different lens.
42
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What is the debate usually between criminologists?
Criminology, as a consequence, is characterised by debate. Usually about “what is crime?”
43
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We all know that crime is behaviour that breaks the law BUT what is the first issue if we take law-breaking behaviour as the starting point for understanding how we understand crime AKA what criminologists study?
* If the law separates what a criminal is and what deviates from that, it removes the emotional use of the term BUT by doing this, the term criminal prejudges the guilt or innocence of the offender, and on the other it can also tap into notions of ‘wickedness’ or ‘evil’ doing.

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* It is more helpful to say that criminals are interested in law-breaking behaviour, but this gives law a label of being above being social constructed and above the social processes that made the law
* ex. levels of tolerance and acceptability of \n different behaviours.
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What is the second issue if we take law-breaking behaviour as the starting point for understanding how we understand crime AKA what criminologist study? What questions should we be focused on?
* It puts law at the center of the criminological stage. Even though the laws define what is and what isn’t a crime, laws are subject to change. Some behaviours are newly defined as criminal (law breaking) others are decriminalised (defined as non-law breaking).
* FOR EX. Think, for example, about the changing \n legal status of ‘being gay’ over time and in different places.

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* The key questions that follows is:
* what processes produce such changes?
* who influences such changes and how are they implemented?
* is it an understanding of these processes that produces an understanding \n of crime?

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* This is different from what a psychologist may be interested in, they would be interested in criminal behaviour and the personality types that constitute that
45
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What is the third issue if we take law-breaking behaviour as the starting point for understanding how we understand crime?
If law-breaking is a defining characteristic of what crime is, does that mean that criminologists then can only legitimately study those who have been found guilty of transgressing the law?

* For many criminologists, this kind of position would prove to be highly problematic given its inherently narrow focus on those individuals who have been caught and successfully prosecuted.
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What is the fourth issue if we take law-breaking behaviour as the starting point for understanding how we understand crime?
The extent to which crime has a reality above and beyond the processes that bring crime into being: the law and the criminal justice process. This has led some criminologists to argue that because this is so variable in different social contexts crime has no real meaning outside of those contexts.

* For them, sometimes referred to as zemiologists, harm \n matters more than crime.
47
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What are the six understandings of what crime is? (different ways people understand it outside of law-breaking behaviour)
* Legal: Crime that is behaviour prohibited by the criminal code.

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* Moral: Crime that is behaviour that offends the ‘collective consciousness’ and provokes punishment (usually, though not always, enshrined in the criminal law).

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* Social: Crime that is behaviour that violates social norms (including violation of the criminal law).

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* Humanistic: Crime that is behaviour of individuals, institutions or states that denies basic human rights (some of which is enshrined in human rights legislation and not necessarily criminal).

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* Social constructionist: Crime that is behaviour so defined as criminal by the agents and activities of the powerful (reflected in what is and what is not defined as criminal and what is and what is not acted upon within the legal code more generally).

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* Harm: The harm done to people. This is more inclusive because it can incorporate wrong-doings by states and large business corporations much more readily than the concept of crime on its own.
48
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What did Henry, the North American criminologist call the determining elements of crime?

1. Harm (nature, severity, extent of the act committed, and/or the kind of victim the act has been committed against).
2. Social agreement or consensus (the extent to which there is social agreement that the victim has been harmed).
3. Official societal response (whether or not there is a law that specifies the act committed as a crime or not and how those laws are enforced).
49
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What makes defining crime so complex?
what crime is, who the criminal is, and what it is that criminologists study.

* Some of this complexity relates to the fact that this is a multidisciplinary area of concern and some of it reflects the historical focus that criminology has had in trying to formulate a general theory of crime.
50
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How did Coleman and Norris identify the subject matter of criminology?
* An attempt to measure the extent of crime and offenders
* An analysis of the causes of crime
* Understanding how laws are formed
* Understanding how laws are applied
* Understanding issues around punishment
* Crime prevention
* Exploring the impact of crime on victims
* Exploring public attitudes and media presentations of crime
51
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How does Newburn define criminology?
* The study of crime
* The study of those who commit crime
* The study of the criminal justice and penal systems
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What does Walklate define criminology as a discipline of?
* Held together by one substantive concern: crime.
* It is multidisciplinary so it is important to understand the conceptual apparatus with which a particular criminologist might be working.
* Criminologists disagree with each other, especially over how to ‘solve’ the crime problem; they nevertheless are concerned to offer some advice on policy.
* What criminologists do sometimes resonates with common sense thinking about crime but often challenges that thinking.
* All of these features of criminology need to be situated within societies increasingly preoccupied with crime, risk and insecurity.
53
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How is crime data collected and what does it provide?
* it is routinely collected in cities in the course of policing functions
* record of incidents of crime, including the type of crime, and the outcome of any police investigation
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Is crime data available to the public? How?
Yes.

* refined crime data in the form of national statistics are frequently available as open data
* they are made available in reusable digital formats with few or no restrictions on reuse
* reports, tables, charts and through other modes of representation and dissemination, but some are not allowed for extraction and reuse of data LIKE visualizations (crime maps)
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What is crime linked to? What does this have to do with crime data?
* a broad range of social and economic factors that influence both victimization and involvement in criminal activity.
* crime data are frequently part of oppositional social justice or crime control narratives both within cities and at regional and national levels.
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Is crime data objective? Why or why not ?
* crime data are subjective and contested, and reveal more in their inclusions and exclusions than their account of the incidence of crime.

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* crime data represent not just a point of contact between individuals and the state, but one which depends upon human judgment for their interpretation and categorization.
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How does crime data rely on human judgement?
even though technology play a role in interpreting data decisions as to whether to record incidents as ‘crimes’ and to identify them as specific types of crimes still rely upon human judgement.

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thus, the ‘sensors’ that record crime data are human and their role is not simply to capture observations.
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What does crime data involve?
crime data involve interpretation, judgment and action; crime datasets are an artifact of the interaction of citizen and state, as understood by agents of the state operating within particular institutional cultures
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What does it mean why crime data is “capta”?
those units of data that have been selected and harvested from the sum of all potential data.

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Crime data are a good example of capta. They display considerable degrees of both choice and subjectivity in their recording and representation.
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What part of the crime data helps with interpreting it the most? Why?
The geographical reference point

* This spatial dimension makes the data more \n valuable analytically; for example, they can be used to determine crime ‘hot spots’ and to inform decisions about the appropriate allocation of police and other resources.
* The spatial dimensions of crime data also make them good candidates for visualization techniques.
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What is a downside of crime data being derived from police reports?
these data relate only to ‘crimes known to law enforcement’ (and not to unreported criminal activity)and thus represent ‘only a fraction of crimes that actually happen’

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* they are also not necessarily crimes that are adjudicated in court. so although they are typically referred to as crime data or crime statistics, these data are, more accurately, about policing.
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How do they try to correct underreporting from police reports? Why is this important?
through victimization surveys

* these surveys measure the public experience of crime.
* they are considered to provide a more accurate picture of crime trends than crime data derived from police-reported crimes because they include crimes that have not been reported to the police, and \n they are not subject to variations in police data recording practices.
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What ways are crime data presented to the public?
* in the form of statistics compiled and generated by national statistical (or other) agencies
* as part of visualizations such as crime maps produced or commissioned by police forces (less widely available)
* accessible and open data
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What are the limits of crime data?
Institutional factors

Police as sensors

Choosing data points
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What can change over time?
the objectives for collecting crime statistics can \n change over time, and these changes can impact the nature and quality of the statistical information.
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How has crimes change from inputs to outputs?
* prior to that time, crime data were recorded as measures of police workload (input); that is, how much crime do police encounter.

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* crime data shifted to a measure of police performance \n (output); that is, how do police activities impact the incidence of certain crimes

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* BASICALLY they were only underreporting crimes to look good and not because they were actually encountering the crime
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Why did performance-led policing increase?
because of a fear of crime, drive for greater police managerial accountability, and enhanced business-oriented police operations
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Why has UK Statistics Authority ruled that crime statistics were no longer to be designated as national statistics?
some aspects of the police’s recording of crime data

* these data may be specifically manipulated in \n ways that fit a public narrative around crime control and public money well spent.
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What two key factors are crime data dependent on?
* the willingness of a victim to report the crime to \n police


* the responding officers’ assessment of the incident
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Give an example of sexual assault when it comes to using police as sensors.
* reluctance to report may be linked to police attitudes towards victims; it may also be linked to concerns over the shortcomings of the justice system in dealing with such crimes. In some cases, shame or fear may prevent reporting. Whatever the reason, the substantial under-reporting of sexual assault is well-documented
* even if a sexual assault is reported to police, how that incident is recorded may be highly dependent upon factors that are unrelated to what actually occurred
* FOR EX. a subjective belief on the part of the responding officer that women tend to fabricate stories of sexual assault can lead to the recording of incidents as ‘unfounded’
* Victim characteristics such as race, gender, socio-economic status or sexual orientation may also affect how complaints are dealt with and recorded. In some cases, police officers may be influenced by their perception of whether a conviction is likely in deciding whether to ‘unfound’ a complaint
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What is responsible for police force being heavily private-based?
a result of neoliberal trends that shift the responsibility for security to the private sector and to ordinary individuals

* a poor victim experience in a private context may also discourage the victim from taking his or her complaint to the police.
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How has data points been contested?
Concerns over these issues led to data on race/ethnicity being excluded from official crime data in Canada, although some advocates have called for a return to the recording of race-based data as a means of monitoring the way in which some communities are policed
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Why is crime data available to the public?
* to improve the credibility of crime statistics
* address often over-inflated perceptions about local levels of crime
* provide crime information that engages the public on local crime issues and empowers them to make decisions that improve their personal safety
* contributes to local community safety’
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What are the two ways crime data is shown to the public?
* statistical data
* through visualizations

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* While statistical crime data are more generally available as open data, urban crime data remains largely under the control of municipal police forces. \n Even where crime data visualizations are made publicly available, the underlying data may not be. Open data allows for different analyses, mashups and alternative narratives of crime. Both open data and alternative sources of crime data, including \n crowd-sourcing, may also assist in understanding urban crime.
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What offer a better picture of the incidence of crime?
victimization surveys offer a better picture of the incidence of crime than data derived from police reports
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What can critical analysis of crime data?
More critical analyses of crime data can be used to build arguments about the fairness of resource allocation, police practices, or about failures of the system to properly address certain types of crimes.

FOR EX., comparisons between crime data derived from police reports and victimization surveys can reveal problems such as a marked gap between the experience of certain types of crime such as sexual assault and the actual reporting of such crimes to police.
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Are crime trends always a result of just the crime?
A sharp rise in lesser theft offences accompanied by a surprising decrease in more serious related offences may be an indicator of changes not in crime itself but in the \n way in which it is being recorded, and may thus support critical challenges to the integrity of the data regarding police activity, as well as to the effectiveness of police efforts to control crime.
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Can certain communities report crime data?
Community or advocacy groups may also compile and publish their own statistics. For example, many rape crisis centres provide data regarding how many calls they received or women they assisted creating sexual assault data that can reveal important gaps in official crime data .
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Is crime data fully transparent?
as public and private sectors become further intertwined in delivering ‘smart cities’ to the urban public, the clash between the need for data transparency and claims to confidential business information will need to be addressed
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What is crowd-sourcing?
the crowd-sourcing of unofficial crime maps has been used as a means of providing a counter-narrative to official visualizations. For example, HarassMap3 invites women to map and describe incidents of sexual harassment in Egypt, within a cultural context in which such harassment typically remains invisible and unreportable
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What are the problems with crowd-sourcing?
Stability and continuity are one challenge – both in terms of management of the project as well as in terms of public participation. In the case of crimes like sexual assault there are also significant privacy issues, risks of further victimization, other liability issues, as well as risks that first-person reports could be used by defence lawyers in criminal prosecutions to discredit victim witnesses.
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How do we move past the superficiality of data? How does open data help us?
A critical perspective on how, by whom, and for what purposes data are collected is essential to moving past the superficial objectivity of data. Further, open data at all levels of government is crucial to allowing diverse perspectives and analyses that can inform public discourse and challenge official narratives.
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Are crime and law different?
No, they are like two sides of a coin
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How is crime and law like two sides of a coin?
* Interest in how ‘deviance’ is defined and punished
* Emphasis on how courts administer justice
* A concern for social inequalities that derive from the criminal justice system (we also talk about how these same institutions are also perpetrators of these inequalities ex. George Floyd)
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How are crime and law best understood? Should we separate them?
No, we don’t want to separate them because they are best understood dynamically

* As a convo, back and forth, asking different questions to each other
* Law isn’t just this external big guy that dictates everything you do, crime and law are conversating
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Is there only one definition of law? Why or why not?
* No, they are definition(s) plural
* Scholars have disagreements on how the law works and how to comes together to help regulate society. They argue on what its purpose is, whether it is a mirage or has true purpose in society (like a divine authority)
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Should we refer to it as Law and Society or Law in Society? Why would we think either or?
Law and society

* We would think it is law in society because law is canonized. It has a places in texts, in statutes, in codes, and in judicial rulings.
* But it isn’t (just) society’s referee! Law draws from, and reshapes norms actively in society. You change a law, you change behaviour
* (ex. people used to say “look at cannabis use right now” in 2010, but when cannabis was legalized LOOK at how many people decided that it wasn’t such a bad idea and loosened up. Once the law deems something as ok, people change their attitudes around it)
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What else do people think about law and society?
* “Society” is always calling from inside the house

They treat the law as society and society as being distinct from them

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* “Society made me act this way” “That’s just society”

But we make society, we are not distinct from society. We behave more or less like the rest of society.

We are participants in producing norms ex. you are dressing like a cis female
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What does it mean when law is: “...but a response to social needs.” (Hoebel, 1954)?
* Functionalist perspective
* Law is not a response to a need of society. When something happens, we just try to replace it through law. There was a privacy law, but there was no social need for a privacy law until the president got pics of him being undressed posted and then he made a privacy law
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What does it mean when law is “...the organization of human happiness.” (Ward, 1906)?
* Law comes in after things have changed and try to make it regular. It isn’t the change
* Law is forward-thinking and has an idea of what society should be and would be good. Society is progressing and law progresses with it.
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What does it mean when law is: “...the story of a nation's development through many centuries.” (Holmes, 1963)?
* Law is not a forward-thinking process, but a random process.
* every legal system stands in close relationship to the ideas, aims, and purposes of society. Law reflects the intellectual, social, economic, and political climate of its time.
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What does it mean when law is: “...the most specialized and highly furnished engine of control employed by society.” (Ross, 1922)?
* Pushed against
* Having control means that it is coercing, an outside thing just controlling you. Some people have more influence than others but there are no scheming higher-ups trying to control society
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What does it mean when law is: ...a form of *government* action that aims to *specify*, *stabilize*, and *regulate* relationships in society.” (Richer, just now)?
* government: organized by the state, it has a monopoly over what law is. you can’t just form laws out of nowhere
* specify: any time you have a relationship with anyone, it is specified through the law. you have social roles like wife
* stabilize: not just to describe relationships but stabilize them. to make normal, predictable, dependable, and reliable, so these roles are not out of place unpredictable or unreliable
* regulate: to make standard
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What is legal culture?
those attributes of behaviour and attitudes that make the law of one society different from that of another-that make, for example, the law of the Inuit different from the law of the French
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What is sociological jurispurdence?
the study of law and legal philosophy, and the use of its ideas in law to regulate conduct

* it is based on a comparative study of legal systems, legal doctrines, and legal institutions as social phenomena and considers law as it actually is
* the "law in action" as distinguished from the law as it appears in books
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What is law on the books and law on the streets? (1st core commitment of the law)
THERE IS A GAP

Law in the books is law on paper AND law on the streets is in real life (who is more likely to be criminalized? where are inequalities?)

we should not only think of law as outside and enforcing, but inside and influencing
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What are the 3 core commitments of the law?
* Law is an artifact (It is subject to change depending on time and people. “God was killed by law” b/c of how secular the world became. think of Nietzche)
* Law is an instrument (We do things with the law)
* Law is just one way that social conduct is regulated
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What are other ways that society is regulated? (Emile Durkheim)
* It is not through coercion
* Norms: rules that prescribe the appropriate \n behaviour for people in a given situation (a classic criminological/Law & Society key concept)
* Strong violations of our shared norms typically become crimes.
* Crimes only become crimes when they offend us and there is a collective understanding against it
* But if a norm is strong enough, laws might be unnecessary!
* The relationship between norms and laws is a big area of study in Law & Society research
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What happens when law is too strict or punitive?
It causes people to engage in chaos and question the legitimacy of the law
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What is the difference between norms and laws? (Max Weber)
For sociologist Max Weber, it is about who does the regulating and the kind of sanctions.

* For laws, it is the higher class or religious authority
* For norms, it is normal people around us