ACR101 Final: My Final Exam Notes for ACR101
ACR101 Introducing Crime and Criminology
Exam Notes
Eden Glover
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SECTION A DEFINITIONS (30 minutes):
Each are only worth one mark. Only 10 of them.
• Actus reas → a guilty act.
• Anthropocenticism → a philosophy that sees human life as paramount and greater than other
forms of life. Green criminologists argue that legal structures privilege human lives over and
above environmental life.
• Assault → the direct or indirect application of force by a person to the body, clothing or
equipment of another person, where the application of force is without lawful excuse and
intentional or reckless, and results in bodily injury, pain, discomfort, damage, insult or
deprivation of liberty.
• Burglary → entering any building as a trespasser with the intent to steal, or committing an
offence involving assault in a building entered as a trespasser, or damaging a building entered
as a trespasser.
• Cracking → in which an individual intrudes upon computer systems without permission.
• Crime → an intentional act or omission in violation of criminal law (statutory or case law),
committed without defence or justification, and sanctioned by the state.
• Dark figure of crime → a term that is used by criminologists to illustrate the number of
committed crimes that are never reported or are never discovered.
• Differential association → a criminological theory of deviance, developed by Sutherland, which
proposes that criminal behaviour is learnt through interactions with others/peers, from which
individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for such criminal behaviour.
• Displacement of crime → the relocation of crime (or criminals) as a result of police crime-
prevention efforts. Often to a different place or time or target or offence.
• Earth jurisprudence → a movement developed in response to the anthropocentric view of the
human-nature relationship. Aims to develop ecocentric theory and wild law - law that
constrains human activities so that human life is neither above nor below non-human life
• Ecocentricism → a philosophy that prioritises the environment over all other forms of life.
Flipping the way the world functions at the moment. Animals are a part of the environment.
• Embeddedness (of white collar crime) → refers to the degree to which economic activity is
constrained by non-economic institutions.
• Environmental crime → all actions and offences committed against the environment or that
directly harm the environment.
• Extraordinary rendition → the practice (employed mainly by the Bush administration) of
transferring "enemy" individuals, such as suspected terrorists, to foreign countries without
legal process, to be detained and questioned using methods such as torture and forcible
detention.
• Green capitalism → attempting to, or appearing to, protect environmental concerns without
substantially affecting the market (e.g. Ecologically Sustainable Development Principles - see
Halsey & White, 1998 cited in Grigg, 2017).
• Hacking → in which an individual uses ingenuity to refine existing computer programs;
• Homicide → the killing of a person; murder, manslaughter, defensive homicide, infanticide
and child homicide are unlawful homicides.
• Kidnapping → an act of abducting someone and holding them captive.
• Labelling theory → the view of deviance according to which being labelled as 'deviant' leads a
person to engage in more deviant behaviour.
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• Malware → malicious software. Malware consists of programming designed to disrupt or deny
operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorised
access to system resources, and other abusive behaviour.
• Mens rea → guilty mind; the intention to commit the crime.
• Murder → the unlawful killing of another person with malice aforethought, by a person who is
of the age of discretion (10 years old and over) and of sound mind.
• Official crime statistics → reflect crimes detected by and reported to police.
• Radical non-interventionism → a theory developed by Edwin Schur as an alternative way of
dealing with juvenile delinquency.
• Recidivism → the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend.
• Restorative justice → a system of criminal justice which focuses on the rehabilitation of
offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large.
• Robbery → the use of force on any person, or putting any person in fear of force being used,
immediately before or during the act of stealing.
• Secondary deviance → deviant behaviour that results from being publicly labelled as a deviant
and treated as an outsider.
• Self-report surveys → interviewing offenders and talking about what types of offences they've
committed and how and why they've done that.
• Sexual assault → unwanted sexual contact.
• Spoofing → electronically impersonating a computer to appear like another in order to gain
access without authority.
• Stalking → a course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated (two or
more occasions) visual or physical proximity, non-consensual communication, or verbal,
written or implied threats, or a combination thereof, that would cause a reasonable person
fear.
• Street Crime → acts defined as criminal and committed in public places such as streets,
shopping malls, train stations, parks and carparks. E.g. theft or pickpocketing.
• Theft → an indictable offence that involves dishonestly taking (stealing) a person's property
with the intention of permanently depriving the person of it.
• Vandalism → in which intrusions hinder a systems opeation.
• Victim surveys → a survey that asks a sample of people which crimes have been committed
against them over a fixed period of time and whether or not they have been reported to
police.
SECTION B SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS (30 minutes):
Each are two marks each. Only five of them.
• Why is crime so difficult to accurately define?
• Explain why some criminologists argue that official crime statistics tell us more about police
discretion than actual levels of crime.
• Identify two approaches to preventing crimes in the home.
• Outline two reasons why securing successful prosecutions for financial fraud by corporations
and banks (or individuals who work in them) is difficult.
• Explain the purpose of Braithwaite's Enforcement Pyramid.
• Explain the ecocentric philosophy of environmental crime and outline some of its
implications.
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• Are rates of family violence rising or falling? Why might this be?
Statistics show that reported rates of family violence are increasing, however this does not
necessarily mean that the actual rate is on the rise. The increase is arguably related to increased
willingness of victims to report incidents to authorities or better recording practices by police.
Traditionally, family violence has been difficult to measure because of victims reluctance to report
this crime for a range of reasons including fear of repercussions of the perpetrator, not recognising
that a crime has occurred, or wishing to handle the matter themselves due to lack of confidence in
the police to respond to their concerns. Since the Royal Commission into Family Violence in Victoria
however, it is feasible that victims now feel more informed about what constitutes family violence
and also more confident in police to be able to provide support and assistance when family violence
incidents occur. Such factors increase willingness to report and this may be a key driver of rising
rates being recorded, although due to the dark figure of crime, it is difficult to be completely certain
about the actual rates at which such offences are occurring.
WEEK TWO
WHAT IS CRIME AND WHO IS THE CRIMINAL: DEFINING CRIME
The definition of crime changes over time and varies from place to place. Noting there is a
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can be inexplicable as to why. Crime is often cultural and political.
CRIME CHANGES OVER TIME:
Used to be legal but now criminalised:
• Some drugs (heroin was legally available on prescription until 1953)
• Smoking on public transport (smoking in enclosed spaces criminalised 2007)
• Rape in marriage (criminalisation only began in 1981 with NSW the first state to legislate)
• Operating a tanning salon (criminalised in 2014)
Used to be criminalised but now legal:
• Mixed bathing (men & women) was only permitted from the 1940s
• Consensual homosexual sex (illegal until 1980s [Tas not until 1997])
• In QLD and WA, it was illegal to drink under 21 until 1970 and 1974 respectively
• In Victoria, marijuana for medical use (2017)
Guilty mind + guilty act = crime.
CRIME CHANGES FROM PLACE TO PLACE:
Examples of activities that are considered crime in Australia but not a crime elsewhere:
• Recreational marijuana use (now decriminalised in the Netherlands, across much of
South America, in multiple states of the US etc.)
• Owning and carrying semi-automatic guns (legal in US but very restricted in Australia)
Differences across Australia states:
• Safe injecting rooms
• Fireworks for domestic use
WHAT IS CRIME?
Crime is not simply what causes harm. Some things are harmful but not necessarily criminal.
E.g. industrial pollution, alcohol consumption. Some things are also criminal, but you may not
necessarily consider them harmful e.g. illegal downloads, trolling or free speech, assisting
suicide etc.
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Document Summary
Section a definitions (30 minutes): actus reas a guilty act, anthropocenticism a philosophy that sees human life as paramount and greater than other forms of life. Often to a different place or time or target or offence: earth jurisprudence a movement developed in response to the anthropocentric view of the human-nature relationship. Flipping the way the world functions at the moment. Labelling theory the view of deviance according to which being labelled as "deviant" leads a person to engage in more deviant behaviour: malware malicious software. Secondary deviance deviant behaviour that results from being publicly labelled as a deviant and treated as an outsider. Self-report surveys interviewing offenders and talking about what types of offences they"ve committed and how and why they"ve done that. Spoofing electronically impersonating a computer to appear like another in order to gain access without authority.
