Criminology 1

Actus Reus

A voluntary, physical guilty act or unlawful omission that violates criminal law.

Mens Rea

The mental state, guilty mind, or criminal intent required to hold a person legally liable.

Concurrence

The legal requirement that the criminal intent and the physical unlawful act take place at the same time.

Causation (Criminal Law)

The legal standard requiring proof that the defendant's specific conduct directly produced the prohibited harm.

Criminal Behavior vs. Deviant Behavior

The violation of codified penal statutes carrying state sanctions versus broader violations of social norms that are not necessarily illegal.

Formal Social Control

Codified rules, statutory laws, and sanctions enforced by authorized state agents such as police, courts, and correctional systems.

Informal Social Control

Unwritten expectations and social sanctions maintained through interpersonal bonds, family, peers, and community feedback such as praise or ostracism.

Consensus View of Law

The perspective that legal statutes embody the collective values, morals, and general agreement of the majority of society.

Conflict View of Law

The perspective that statutes are instruments created by ruling elites to advance their economic interests and suppress subordinate classes.

Interactionist View of Law

The perspective that definitions of crime are subjective and created by moral entrepreneurs who label specific behaviors as socially deviant.

Mala in Se

Offenses that are inherently wrong, evil in their nature, and universally condemned across societies (e.g., murder, robbery).

Mala Prohibita

Offenses that are deemed unlawful purely because statutory law prohibits them, rather than being inherently immoral (e.g., speeding, licensing rules).

Felony

A serious criminal violation that typically carries a punishment exceeding one year of incarceration in a state or federal penitentiary.

Misdemeanor

A minor infraction generally penalized by monetary fines, community supervision, or confinement under one year in a local detention facility.

Theoretical Imagination

The capacity to look beyond immediate individual circumstances to analyze the broader social, psychological, and environmental forces shaping offending.

Criminology vs. Criminal Justice

The scientific inquiry into the etiology (causes) of lawbreaking versus the operational analysis of enforcement agencies, judicial courts, and correctional institutions.

Three Requirements for Causation

Empirical association/correlation, temporal precedence of the independent variable, and the elimination of plausible alternative explanations (non-spuriousness).

Spurious Relationship

An observed correlation between two variables that is actually produced by the hidden influence of an unmeasured third factor.

Cross-Sectional Survey Design

An empirical methodology that collects observational and self-report information from research participants at a single discrete point in time.

Longitudinal Cohort Design

A study structure that follows and repeatedly gathers data from a specific group of research subjects across a sustained duration.

Attrition

The progressive loss or withdrawal of participants over time during an extended research investigation.

Routine Activity Theory

A spatial-temporal framework asserting that crime requires the simultaneous convergence of a motivated offender, a suitable target, and an absence of capable guardianship.

General Deterrence

The crime-prevention strategy of using the threat and public awareness of legal sanctions to discourage the wider population from breaking laws.

Specific Deterrence

The direct imposition of legal sanctions on an adjudicated offender to prevent recidivism.

Three Core Elements of Deterrence

Certainty (likelihood of detection and penalization), severity (magnitude of punishment), and celerity (swiftness of administration).

Differential Association Theory

The sociological model asserting that delinquent skills, motives, and rationalizations are learned in personal groups when definitions favorable to legal violation exceed unfavorable ones.

Differential Reinforcement

The net balance of anticipated or experienced rewards and punishments tied to enacting a given behavior.

Four Elements of the Social Bond

Attachment (affective ties), commitment (rational investments), involvement (temporal demands of conventional activity), and belief (moral legitimacy of law).

Self-Control Theory

The general criminological model asserting that inadequate early-childhood socialization leaves individuals with poor impulse control, driving criminal behavior and analogous failures.

Spuriousness Thesis (Gottfredson & Hirschi)

The proposition that the correlation between negative social environments (e.g., unemployment, delinquent peers) and crime is misleading, as low self-control independently causes both.