Criminology chapter 1 & 2

Actus Reus

Literally guilty act, it refers to the principle that a person must commit some forbidden act or neglect some mandatory act before he or she can be subjected to criminal sanctions.

Arraignment

A court proceeding in which the defendant answers to the charges against him or her by pleading guilty, not guilty, or no contest (nolo contendere).

Arrest

The act of being legally detained to answer criminal charges based on an arrest warrant or a law enforcement officer’s probable cause to believe the person arrested has committed a felony crime.

Causation

A legal principle stating that there must be an established proximate causal link between the criminal act and the harm suffered.

Concurrence

The legal principle stating that the act (actus reus) and the mental state (mens rea) concur in the sense that the criminal intention actuates the criminal act.

Constrained Vision

One of the two so-called ideological visions of the world. The constrained vision views human activities as constrained by an innate human nature that is self-centered and largely unalterable.

Corpus Delicti

Refers to the five elements of criminal liability that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict a person of a crime.

Crime

An intentional act in violation of the criminal law committed without defense or excuse and penalized by the state.

Criminality

A continuously distributed trait composed of a combination of other continuously distributed traits that signals the willingness to use force, fraud, or guile to deprive others of their lives, limbs, or property for personal gain.

Criminology

An interdisciplinary science that gathers and analyzes data on crime and criminal behavior.

Grand Jury

An investigatory jury composed of seven to 23 citizens before which the prosecutor presents evidence that sufficient grounds exist to try the suspect for a crime. If the prosecutor is successful, he or she obtains an indictment from the grand jury listing the charges a person is accused of.

Harm

The legal principle stating that a crime must have a negative impact on either the victim or the general values of the community to be a crime.

Hypotheses

Statements about relationships between and among factors we expect to find based on the logic of our theories.

Ideology

A way of looking at the world, a general emotional picture of “how things should be” that forms, shapes, and colors our concepts of the phenomena we study

Level of Analysis

A framework used in criminology to examine crime from different perspectives, such as individual, social, and structural levels, helping to understand the complexities of criminal behavior.

Mala in Se

Universally condemned crimes that are “inherently bad.”

Mala Prohibita

Crimes that are “bad” simply because they are prohibited.

Mens Rea

“Guilty mind.” Criminal liability does not attach based on actions alone; there must also be criminal intent.

Policy

A course of action designed to solve some problem and selected by appropriate authorities from among alternative courses of action.

Theory

A set of logically interconnected propositions explaining how phenomena are related and from which a number of hypotheses can be derived and tested.

Unconstrained Vision

One of the two so-called ideological visions of the world. The unconstrained vision denies an innate human nature, viewing it as formed anew in each culture.

Cleared Offense

A crime is cleared by the arrest of a suspect or by exceptional means (cases in which a suspect has been identified but he or she is not immediately available for arrest).

Crime Mapping

The use of modern technology such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by police departments to “map” and analyze patterns of crime.

Crime Rate

The rate of a given crime is the actual number of reported crimes standardized by some unit of the population.

Dark Figure of Crime

The dark (or hidden) figure of crime refers to all of the crimes committed that never come to official attention.

Financial Crimes Report

The FBI’s annual tally of financial (“white-collar”) crimes in the United States.

Hierarchy Rule

A rule requiring the police to report only the most serious offense committed in a multiple-offense single incident to the FBI and to ignore the others.

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

A biannual survey of a large number of people and households requesting information on crimes committed against individuals and households (whether reported to the police or not) and circumstances of the offense (time and place it occurred, perpetrator’s use of a weapon, any injuries incurred, and financial loss).

National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

A comprehensive crime statistic collection system currently a component of the UCR program and eventually expected to replace it entirely.

Part I Offenses (or Index Crimes)

The four violent (homicide, assault, forcible rape, and robbery) and four property offenses (larceny/theft, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson) reported in the Uniform Crime Reports.

Part II Offenses

The less serious offenses reported in the Uniform Crime Reports and recorded based on arrests made rather than cases reported to the police.

Self-Report Surveys

The collecting of data by criminologists themselves asking people to disclose their delinquent and criminal involvement on anonymous questionnaires.

Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)

Annual report compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) containing crimes known to the nation’s police and sheriff departments, the number of arrests made by these agencies, and other crime-related information.