Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences - Chapter 1 Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards defining foundational concepts, theoretical schools, and survey programs discussed in Chapter 1.

Uniform Crime Reporting Program

An FBI program reporting annual counts of various crimes known to police departments, historically published as Crime in the United States and now accessible through the Crime Data Explorer website.

National Crime Victimization Survey

A victim survey asking citizens over $12$ years of age whether they have been victimized, capturing unreported violent and property crimes.

Self-report surveys

Studies in which respondents (typically juveniles) are asked to report the number of illegal offenses they have committed.

White-collar crime

Crimes committed by professional people in the course of their occupations, a concept introduced by Edwin Sutherland in $1949$.

Mass shootings

Incidents commonly defined as events in which $4$ or more people are shot.

Attributions

The views or theories that ordinary citizens hold regarding why crime occurs in society.

Classical school

An Enlightenment-era criminological perspective asserting that offenders use reason to weigh costs and benefits, advocating for equal legal treatment and penalties sufficient to dissuade lawbreaking.

Positivist school

A scientific approach to criminology led by Cesare Lombroso that attributed criminal behavior to biological traits and predetermined individual differences.

Chicago school of criminology

A criminological movement rising in the $1930\text{s}$ that pioneered the study of urban areas, attributing crime to environmental breakdowns and social circumstances.

Control theory

A core mainstream criminological theory exploring how criminal conduct occurs when personal and social controls weaken.

Differential association theory

A core mainstream criminological theory examining how individuals commit crime after learning cultural definitions supportive of illegal conduct.

Anomie-strain theory

A mainstream theory originating with Robert K. Merton proposing that crime occurs when individuals experience strain from being thwarted in achieving economic or societal success.

Mainstream criminology

The collection of core theoretical perspectives—control, differential association, and anomie-strain theories—that dominated American criminology by favoring societal reform over radical transformation.

Critical criminology

A theoretical tradition emerging in the mid-$1960\text{s}$ that examines how power, conflict, and capitalist structures generate crime and disparities in the criminal justice system.

Labeling theory

A perspective within critical criminology asserting that persistent involvement in crime is driven primarily by criminal justice processing and societal stigmatization.

Feminist theory

A criminological paradigm linking female and male illegal conduct to gender roles, patriarchy, masculinities, and intersecting social factors such as race and class.

Routine activity theory

An environmental perspective asserting that a crime is an event requiring a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardianship.

Situational crime prevention

A crime control approach aimed at reducing opportunities to offend by altering specific physical and social environments.

Biosocial perspective

A contemporary criminological approach examining how biological factors, such as genetics and brain structures, interact with social environments to shape criminal behavior.

Life-course criminology

A developmental paradigm examining the childhood roots of offending and how individuals enter, maintain, or desult from criminal careers over time.

Black Criminology

A theoretical paradigm asserting that understanding offending among African Americans requires addressing historical and contemporary racial oppression, structural inequality, and systemic prejudice.