Criminal Justice and Criminology Vocabulary Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards generated from criminal justice and criminology lecture notes covering legal models, system processes, offense definitions, and criminological theories.

Consensus Perspective

A bottom-up approach to law creation based on the assumption that most people in society share moral values and beliefs, meaning laws reflect a shared moral consensus.

Conflict Perspective

A top-down approach to law creation based on the assumption that society contains too many diverse interests for consensus, requiring legislators or those in power to establish the rules.

Social Contract

John Locke's concept stating that individuals give up certain rights to be free so that others cannot harm them, with the government's role being to protect the many from the few who break this agreement.

Crime Control Model

A criminal justice value system focused on the suppression and elimination of crime, measuring success through efficiency and favoring informal methods like plea bargains.

Due Process Model

A criminal justice value system focused on protecting individual rights, measuring success through reliability, and using formal methods to ensure legal guilt is proven.

Ex Post Facto Laws

Laws applied retroactively to punish actions that were not deemed criminal at the time they were committed.

Arrest

The act of taking an individual accused of a crime into custody after law enforcement determines that probable cause exists.

Initial Appearance

A defendant's first appearance before a judge following arrest, where rights are read, defense counsel is assigned, and bail decisions are made.

Aggravating Circumstances

Any facts or details of an offense that operate to increase its severity or increase the perceived blameworthiness of the offender.

Mitigating Circumstances

Any facts or details of an offense that operate to decrease its severity or decrease the perceived blameworthiness of the offender.

Precedent (Common Law)

A source of law where judgments in past judicial cases determine how future cases with similar legal issues will be decided.

Substantive Laws

Laws that inform citizens of specific actions they are prohibited from doing, such as defining murder.

Procedural Laws

Laws that inform criminal justice actors of the requirements and procedures necessary to achieve legal guilt and uphold citizen rights.

Mens Rea

The guilty mental state or criminal intent required for criminal liability.

Actus Reus

The physical criminal action required to establish criminal liability.

Felony Offense

A serious criminal offense generally punishable by more than $366$ days in a state or federal prison.

Misdemeanor Offense

A criminal offense generally punishable by up to $365$ days in a local jail.

Homicide

The conduct causing the death of a human being accompanied by a guilty mental state, comprising conduct, causation, and result.

First-Degree Murder

The most serious form of homicide, defined as premeditated and deliberate killing.

Second-Degree Murder

Intentional killings that are not premeditated or deliberate, or extremely reckless killings showing insane indifference to human life.

Voluntary Manslaughter

Intentional killings that occur in the heat of passion due to provocation.

Involuntary Manslaughter

Unintentional killings that are not extremely reckless, such as accidental deaths from play fighting or medical malpractice.

Assault

An intentional threat of violence that creates a well-founded fear of imminent harm in the victim, which does not require physical contact.

Battery

The intentional and unlawful physical contact with another person without their consent.

Robbery

The unlawful taking of another person's property directly from them through the use of force or the threat of force.

Burglary

The unlawful entry into a structure or conveyance with the intent to commit theft or another felony.

Criminology

The scientific study of why people commit crimes or why crime rates vary across different places.

Criminal Justice

The study of the government's response to offending.

Cesare Beccaria

A Classical Era theorist who argued that crime is a rational cost-benefit decision and proposed that effective punishment must be severe, certain, and swift.

Cesare Lombroso

Considered the father of criminology for being the first to use the scientific method to study crime, proposing that criminals are biologically different atavistic throwbacks.

Somatotypes

William Sheldon's system categorizing offenders by body type into Ectomorphs (skinny), Mesomorphs (muscular), and Endomorphs (large).

Social Disorganization Theory

Shaw and McKay's theory stating that high poverty, high residential mobility, and cultural dissimilarity in urban transitional zones lead to social disorganization and higher crime.

Merton's Strain Theory

A theory proposing that crime results from goal blockage when individuals experience strain between societal expectations for money and status and their ability to reach them conventionally.

Agnew's General Strain Theory

A theory explaining crime as a response to daily strain categorized by failure to achieve goals, removal of positive stimuli, or presence of negative stimuli.

Differential Association Theory

Edwin Sutherland's learning theory stating that criminal behavior is learned through social interactions with significant others.

Social Bond Theory

Travis Hirschi's control theory arguing that individuals refrain from crime because they are bonded to society through attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.

Labeling Theory

A theory asserting that applying a deviant label to an individual makes them more likely to self-conceptualize as bad and engage in future secondary deviance.