SOCI 388 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: James Franco, Lead Poisoning, Shoplifting

• School: McGill University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 388
• Professor: Jan Doering

Document Summary

It is a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and narrow field. We care about crime race, age, total income, etc. It largely focuses on the dependent variable (crime/crime rates), where independent variables can include mostly because it touches not only the victim and the offender, but their families, their ingroups, society, communities, and even laws. Law is a precondition of crime: without a law to break, there(cid:495)s no crime: criminology has a corrective intention its ultimate goal is to find ways to correct crime. This can draw particular people to the field, because some people think crime is a problem, where some don(cid:495)t as much. Criminology is the discipline that focuses not on a particular method or field of study, but around a problem crime. The study of crime is oriented not around a social system that normally functions, but on pathology. Crime is a behavior that violates the law. Law is the single best predictor of crime.