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Soc 313 22 Lesson 1

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Soc 313 22 Lesson 1

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stevenstefan2019
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SOCIOLOGY OF CRIME AND DELINQUENCY I (SOC 313) 2012/22

LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION:

A. What is crime?
 Crime is the only way to get ahead, Duke. You’ll never have anything if
you live your life within the law… Dialogue from the NBC TV movie
Beyond Suspicion. A motivational drift to crime committal
 Much is already known about the phenomenon of crime. Further
development in theoretical criminology will result primarily from making
sense out of what we already know… George B. Vold and Thomas J.
Bernard.
 Crime is any human conduct that violates the criminal laws of a state that
has powers to make such laws. It follows that crime is any act or
omission in contravention of extant laws which is punishable by the very
dictates of the said laws.

B. What is Delinquency:
 Delinquency (mainly juvenile) refers to the participation in illegal
behaviour by a minor who falls under a statutory age limit. Put simply, it
is any criminal behaviour committed by a juvenile under the legal age of
adulthood.

C. What is Criminology?
 Criminology stems from two Latin words, namely: crimen which means
accusation, charge or guilt; and ology which refers to a scientic/logical
study of something. Thus, criminology refers to the scientific/logical
study of crime. Such studies emphasize on types, rates, theories, causes,
consequences, making laws, breaking the laws, and the society’s
response/reaction to crime, etc. It is, therefore, a specific and specialized
genre of discourse and inquiry about crime; a genre that has been evolved
in the contemporary times with distinct qualities from other ways in
which people talk and think about crime and criminal conduct.
 Crime is a social construct. It is a label and a product of culturally
bounded social interaction. Its social contexts include: gender, age, social
class, race, ethnic group, political leanings, socio-economic status,
religious leanings, etc.

D. What Do Criminologists Do?


 They study crimes, criminals, criminal behaviour, and criminal justice
system. This is incumbent on the growing tendency to limit the sphere to
academics, researchers, and policy analysts with higher degrees and
involved in the study of crime, crime trends, and the analysis of society’s
reaction to crime.

E. Criminology as a Science: it is a science because it is:


 Theory based – utilizes theories in its studies. As advanced by John H.
Laub, science must be theoretical and our theories must be scientific.
Science and theory cannot be divorced. They are two sides of the same
coin.
 Logical – it is intellectually rigorous and faultless in terms reasoning in
an orderly cogent fashion (logical sequence and flow).
 Analytical – every aspect or part is interrelatedly studied.
 Systematic – understands the many parts with the view to understanding
the whole; for the good of the whole.
 Factual – not built on falsehood, but on truths and faultless data.
 Replicable – capable of repeated elsewhere with likely similitude of
results.
 Public – the approaches, methods, and results are not hoarded but
accessible to interested researchers and institutions/agencies.
 Problem-Solving – it is aimed at solving problems.
It could be safely submitted that Criminological research is most frequently
concerned with the discovery of the causes of crime and the effect of various
methods of treatment (Hermann Mannheim).
LESSON II: UNDERSTANDING CRIME, CRIMINOLOGY, AND
CRIMINOLOGY I

A. Crime and Punishment:


For it to be a crime, it means it is punishable. Punishments are as
informed by societal realities. They, thus, vary from one society to
another. Punishments are also evolutionary in nature. This gives credence
to the need to emphasize history as crime experiences historical change.
History holds that the earliest set of laws was raised by the cave dwellers
from which offenders were dispensed with from the communities.
Thereafter, Hammurabi, king of Babylon, came with the earliest form of
codified laws, wherein the punishment was summarized into the phrase:
An Eye for An Eye. Through the Egyptian Maat, the Draconian code of
Ancient Greece, jus civile (civil law) of the Romans, to the Frankpledge
system in England in which members of the society were mutually
responsible for the behaviour of their peers, and the Magna Carta (which
harbingered constitutionalism), and the reforms in policing by the Sir
Robert Peel Commission in Britain (1829), punishments have evolved.
Beyond jungle justice and extra-judicial killings, the punishment
disposition in Nigeria is fashioned after the British system. Note that the
philosophy of law in Nigeria is that an alleged offender is presumed
innocent until proven otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction.
Punishment is now within the context of restitution and retributive.

B. Data and Trends:


Data are units of facts (singular is datum). Secure in the fact that crime is
socially constructed, the questions to ask are:

 Do people know about criminal activities?

 If they do, do they consider them worth doing anything about (such as
reporting to the authorities, like the police)? and
 And if they do, do the authorities act upon, or are they able to act upon
what has been reported?
The situation calls for measurement which has two major strands,
namely: Official Crime Records and mere estimations and victimization
surveys.
Trends in crime are best understood over a relatively extended period of
time – immediate run, short run, and the long run.
In the face of data shortcomings, seven (7) reasons to be weary of
assuming accuracy are advanced by Maguire (2018):
i. Coverage (ii). Counting Rules (iii). Redefinitions (iv) Behaviour
(v) Recording Rates (vi) Reporting Rates, and (vii) At-Risk
Populations (Demographic Changes).

The legal versus the sociological definition/debate of crime is here


intensified.

C. Crime and the Media:


The media come in the print, broadcast, and social/soft forms. An aspect
of the media is the mass media with an operational definition of the
dissemination of mass information, to mass group(s) of people, who are
scattered over mass expanse of land, often involving mass money, to
make mass money.
The potency of the media is evident in their agenda-setting,
representational, and gate-keeping virtues. The challenges of news
worthiness, content allowance, and criminogenic dispositions of specific
media outfits are factorial to data bases of crimes.
Government policies also play huge roles in the media colouration of
crime. Some media outfits also create fear and moral panics.
The Police-Media interact is also a topic in relationship and
representation of policing.
The evolution of the social media has added a new twist in the
motivational and perceptional realities of crime.
D. Politics of Crime and its Control:
Society prepares the crime: the criminal commits it – Chinese Proverb.
Unemployment and economic hardship are on the rise and members of
the society arguably become motivated to device extra-legal means of
survival. This amounts to crime.

 Penal Welfarism: pre-industrial preference of shaming, expressions of


guilt, remorse, and repentance. Loss of freedom through imprisonment
was not central. It was reasoned that the “soft gloves” could not deter
people from committing crime. As a result, welfaism has been relegated.

 Penal populism: popularizing harsh terms of penalties to criminals.

 Double values for punishment: operating and administering different


rules to different people, depending on some socio-cultural differences.

 The politicization of the Criminal Justice System: Politics seems to have


permeated the entirety of the society. The Police, Courts, and the
Correctional Centers are now tangibly responding to partisan political
dictates.

 The zonalization and ownership of crime: In Nigeria, geo-political zones,


ethnic groups, and religious strands have now owned crimes. For
instance, in the North-East, it is insurgency; North-West, it is banditry; in
the North-Central, it is Farmers-Herders Clashes; South-East, it is
Insurrections (IPOB and UGM); South-South, it is militancy; and South-
West, it is agitations, forest robbery, and social unrest. Ethnic groups see
crimes committed by their own differently from the ways others see
same. Same applies when considering religion.

 The Policy of Prerogative of Mercy: politically motivated for political


capital. Dariye, O. U. Kalu, Jolly Nyamwen, etc.
 War on Drugs: Senator Kashamum Buruji.

 Internationalization of Crime and Control: Buruji Kashamu

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