CRIM 220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Theoretical Definition, Shoplifting, Homicide
21 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Crime is a fundamental variable for criminology: descriptive and exploratory studies: count the number of crimes, explanatory studies: seek to learn the causes of crime, applied studies: focus on effective ways to reduce crime. Regardless of the purpose or which kind of study you"re interested in, your measures must be clearly outlined. However, measuring crime is difficult to do, and it remains a key issue in criminology and criminal justice research. Any act committed in violation of a law that prohibits it and authorizes punishment for its commission. We face difficulties when trying to measure crime: Different types of behaviours and actions are included in our conceptualization of crime (broad definitions) As such, we must decide what crimes will be included. The specific entities that researchers collect information about (e. g. individuals, groups, social artifacts, etc. ) How we measure crime requires us to think about these units of analysis. Offenders without offenders, there is no crime.
