Criminal Justice Exam 1 Key Terms & Definitions

Vocabulary flashcards generated for Criminal Justice Exam 1 key terms and definitions.

Murder

Unlawful killing of another with malice aforethought (intent to kill formed before acting).

Malice aforethought

Conscious intent to kill, formed prior to acting.

Premeditation

Deliberating or reflecting on the decision to kill before acting; distinct from malice aforethought.

First-degree murder

Malice aforethought + premeditation ("cold blood").

Second-degree murder

Malice aforethought without premeditation (impulsive); includes depraved heart murder.

Felony murder

Murder charge with no requirement of intent to kill — only intent to commit an underlying felony (e.g., robbery); death occurs during the felony.

Depraved heart murder

A form of second-degree murder involving extreme recklessness / total disregard for human life, without reasonable provocation.

Non-negligent (voluntary) manslaughter

Unlawful killing without malice aforethought, committed in response to reasonable provocation (sudden quarrel / heat of passion).

Negligent (involuntary) manslaughter

Unlawful killing due to gross negligence; NOT counted as a violent crime by the FBI.

Justifiable homicide

Killing in self-defense (e.g., "stand your ground") or a legally justified police shooting.

Excusable homicide

A true accident causing death, with no negligence or illegal act involved.

Aggravated assault

Attack with a weapon (regardless of injury), an attack without a weapon causing serious injury, or threatening someone with a weapon.

Simple assault

Attack without a weapon causing no or minor injury; a misdemeanor, NOT counted as a violent crime by the FBI.

Intimidation

A threat without a weapon; a separate (non-violent-crime) offense from assault.

Battery

Legal term for assault involving actual physical contact or injury, not just a threat.

Robbery

Taking or attempting to take property from a person by force or threat of force.

Burglary

A property crime involving unlawful entry to steal, without threatening any person directly.

Rape (pre-2013 FBI definition)

"Carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will" — excluded male victims, required force, excluded other penetration types.

Rape (post-2013 FBI definition)

Penetration (any body part or object) of vagina/anus, or oral penetration by a sex organ, without consent — gender-neutral, doesn't require force.

Instrumental violence

Violence used as a means to achieve another goal (e.g., robbery for money).

Expressive violence

Violence used to express or release emotion (e.g., rage, jealousy).

Offensive violence

Violence in which the person is the instigator.

Defensive violence

Violence in response to someone else's provocation (not necessarily legally "justifiable").

UCR (Uniform Crime Reports)

Older, voluntary law enforcement crime reporting system; tracked only 8 crime types; used the hierarchy rule.

Hierarchy rule

UCR rule that only the single most serious crime in a multi-crime incident gets reported.

NIBRS

National Incident-Based Reporting System; tracks ~46 crime subtypes and every crime in an incident (no hierarchy rule); replacing the UCR.

SHR (Supplementary Homicide Reports)

More detailed, homicide-specific version of UCR data.

NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey)

Federal self-report survey of ~150,000 households every 6 months; not official/police data.

Law enforcement discretion

An officer's choice of whether to make an arrest; a source of bias in official crime data.

Social desirability bias

Tendency to answer survey questions in a way that looks good to the interviewer, reducing survey accuracy.

Rate per 100,000

$\text{Rate per 100,000} = \left(\frac{\text{Number of incidents}}{\text{total population}}\right) \times 100{,}000$ — used to fairly compare crime across areas of different size.

Incidents vs. victimizations

Incidents = number of criminal events; victimizations = number of people harmed (can differ, e.g., a mass shooting).

Phrenology

Debunked 19th-century theory (Cesare Lombroso) that skull shape predicts criminality; discredited biological theories of crime for decades.

Amygdala

Brain region for emotional processing (fear, guilt, empathy); processes fear differently in people with psychopathy.

Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)

Brain region for impulse control and decision-making; damage linked to impulsive, antisocial behavior.

Phineas Gage

Case study of OFC damage from a workplace accident that turned a mild-mannered man impulsive and antisocial.

Testosterone

Hormone associated with aggression; causal direction unclear, and levels fluctuate with environment/status.

Postpartum psychosis

Rare hormonal condition after childbirth linked to extreme violence (e.g., the Andrea Yates case).

MAOA gene ("warrior gene")

Gene whose low-activity variant is linked to violence, but only in combination with a history of childhood abuse (gene x environment interaction).

Gene x environment (GxE) interaction

When a gene's effect on behavior depends on environmental conditions (e.g., MAOA + child abuse).

Epigenetics

The study of how environmental factors influence gene expression.

Neuroplasticity

The brain's ability to physically change/reshape itself in response to behavior and environment.

Serious mental illness (SMI)

DSM category for conditions causing serious functional impairment (schizophrenia, severe bipolar, major depression); ~5-6% of adults.

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)

A real DSM diagnosis; ~3-5% of the general population, about half of the incarcerated population.

Psychopathy

NOT a DSM diagnosis (unreliable criteria); described as "intra-species predators" with a "mask of sanity"; measured by the PCL-R.

PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised)

Robert Hare's tool for scoring psychopathy across two factors: personality and lifestyle/case history.

PCL-R Factor 1

Personality traits: superficial charm, grandiosity, manipulation, lack of remorse; correlates with narcissistic personality disorder.

PCL-R Factor 2

Lifestyle/case history traits: impulsivity, irresponsibility, criminal versatility; correlates with ASPD.

Sociopathy

Not a DSM diagnosis; implies an environmental origin ("made," not "born"); correlates more strongly with ASPD/lifestyle traits.

Squares and rectangles (ASPD/psychopathy)

Nearly all psychopaths qualify for ASPD, but not all people with ASPD are psychopaths (psychopathy is the narrower category).

Pseudo-psychopath

Someone with psychopathic personality traits (charm, callousness) but no criminal/violent behavior.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Extremely rare condition; little to no evidence links it to violent behavior despite common TV/movie tropes.

Anomie (Merton)

Disconnect between culturally approved goals (e.g., the American Dream) and legitimate means to achieve them.

Criminal innovators (Merton)

People who accept society's goals but reject the conventional means to achieve them.

General Strain Theory (Agnew)

Expands strain to include removal of positive stimuli and exposure to negative stimuli; negative emotions mediate the link to crime.

Frustration-aggression hypothesis

Psychology's version of strain/anomie theory.

Social learning theory

Theory that behavior (including violence) is learned by observing and imitating others, directly or vicariously.

Differential association theory (Sutherland)

People learn both attitudes toward crime and techniques to commit it from others.

Operant conditioning (Skinner)

Behavior shaped by reinforcement and punishment.

Bobo doll experiments (Bandura)

Classic study showing children imitate adults' modeled aggression.

Social bond theory (Hirschi)

People will offend unless constrained by bonds to society: attachment, commitment, belief, involvement.

General Theory of Crime / Self-control theory (Gottfredson & Hirschi)

Low self-control, developed (or not) in early childhood via parenting, is the primary driver of crime.

Formal social control

Written laws and sanctions enforced by institutions (criminal justice system, schools).

Informal social control

Unwritten social consequences for behavior (family disapproval, gossip, community pressure).

Social disorganization theory

Meso-level theory: neighborhood structural factors, not individual traits, drive crime/violence rates.

Concentrated disadvantage

Poverty/socioeconomic disadvantage; the strongest predictor in social disorganization theory.

Racial/ethnic heterogeneity

Mixing of different racial/ethnic groups within a neighborhood; a social disorganization factor (context-dependent).

Residential mobility

High turnover of residents moving in/out of a neighborhood; a social disorganization factor.

Code of the street (Anderson)

Subcultural theory: violence becomes tolerated/encouraged to defend turf, build status, and prevent victimization in disadvantaged areas.

Instrumentality argument

The weapon used (not offender intent) is the main determinant of whether an assault turns fatal.

Case fatality rate (CFR)

The proportion of victims who die from a given weapon type; guns have a much higher CFR than knives or personal weapons.

"Big three" of homicide (Land et al.)

Concentrated disadvantage, familial disruption (divorce rate), and population age structure — strongest structural predictors of homicide.

Racial invariance assumption

Individual-level risk factors for violence operate similarly across racial groups; disparities reflect place, not race.

Divergent social worlds (Peterson & Krivo)

Finding that predominantly Black/Hispanic neighborhoods are far more disadvantaged, on average, than white neighborhoods.

Southern culture of violence / honor culture

Cultural explanation for the South's high homicide rates — violence as a response to insults to reputation/honor.

Victim precipitation

When the eventual homicide victim is the one who initiates the conflict that leads to their own death.

Honor killings

Killings of women by male family members for perceived family dishonor; most common in parts of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia.

Instrumentality (guns)

Gun lethality drives escalation of violent encounters to death; the strongest "more guns, more crime" argument.

Great equalizer

A gun lets a physically weaker person overpower a stronger one, potentially emboldening aggression.

Weapon effect

Psychological association of guns with power/aggression that may prime aggressive behavior; the weakest "more guns, more crime" argument.

Deterrence theory (Beccaria)

Punishment must be swift, certain, and severe to discourage crime; assumes people are rational actors weighing costs/benefits.

"Good guy with a gun" / more guns, less crime (Lott)

Public gun carrying raises the perceived cost of committing crime, deterring offenders.

Intentionality / more guns, same crime

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people" — a motivated offender substitutes another weapon if a gun isn't available.

Displacement / substitution effect

A decrease in firearm homicide is partly offset by an increase in non-firearm homicide when guns are less available.

Direct (regular) causation

Gun ownership causes an increase in violence.

Reverse causation

Violence in a community causes people to buy more guns for self-defense.

Reciprocal causation

Gun ownership and violence cause each other in an ongoing, cyclical relationship.

Case-control study (guns)

Individual-level research design comparing gun-owning to non-gun-owning households, matched on other characteristics.

Ecological study (guns)

Population-level research design comparing gun ownership rates to violence rates across cities/states/countries.

Gun ownership proxy

A substitute measure for household gun ownership when survey data isn't available at a given geographic level.

FS/S (firearm suicide ratio)

The most common gun ownership proxy — the percentage of suicides in an area committed with a firearm.