Forensic Psychology - what is crime and how common is it?

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What is crime?

  • In legal terms, a 'criminal' is someone who has been apprehended, prosecuted and convicted of a crime 
  • However, not everyone who breaks the law is aprehended, prosecuted and convicted - does this mean that they haven't comitted a crime?
  • and not everyone who has been apprehended, prosecuted and convicted has broken the law - does this still mean that they have committed a crime?
  • 'crime' is more than just the law
  • will the victim notice the crime? e.g. vandalism there may not be an obvious victim
  • will the victim report the crime? e.g. having extra trauma in going to police, may not know what happened to them is a crime. 
  • will the offender be caught by the police? clear up rates high for serious crimes, when obvious suspect however, less serious crimes entail massive police work to detect
  • will the police record the 'crime'? unaware of certain sanctions against certain activities? more likely to record racial abuse if there is current political initiative against racism 
  • will the offender be prosecuted? reluctant to prosecute if chances of conviction are low 
  • will the perpertrator be found guilty?
  • will the perpertrator recieve an appropriate sentence? will victims of the family see sentence as appropriate?
  • Sometimes victims may not report the behaviour, may be caught 20 years after, e.g. grooming, suffering from low self-esteem due to the crime, have children and grow the confidence to finally go to the officials.

What is crime?

  • Our understanding of what is 'really' a crime, typically goes beyond the letter of the law
  • Whether we see something as 'criminal' ir not tends to depend upon;
  • the law (legislation and case law)
  • moral views about what should be punished
  • whether the behaviour is socially/culturally stigmatised or not 
  • the offences and offenders that are seen to go through the criminal justice system 
  • mass media and public policy representations of crime - crime rates in country since the 90's, fallen by about a third. However, media portrays crime as it being everywhere, out of control, invasions, hysterical reporting. Can also be seen as crime being more published due to social media. The media report everything more so, as it is more profitable and not to show the crime has decreased. 
  • Social control mechanism - the powerful understand they have to control the population, don't want them thinking about certain thing and things that are really happening is to make them scared and if the population are fearful, they don't ask questions. Misrepresent crime, sociological and psychological control of population. Agenda setting theory and the framing theory underpin this mechanism. 
  • Post conventional morality (Kohlberg) - also a social construct. One man's morality is another man's immorality. Morality is such a pliable notion, Kohlberg, how we see morality and how it shapes and defines behaviour. 
  • Conventional morality - moral code defined for you by other people. The people who resisted  these types of behaviours, post conventional moralists, defined their own moralities, didn't trust the culture to do it, so they

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