CJ300

CJ300 Theory

Spring 2001

Instructor: Bob Sigler 348-7781 553-3897

rsigler@cj.as.ua.edu Home page: bama.ua.edu/~rsigler/home

Office hours 12-1 MWF

Text: Criminology, 4^th edition, Adler, Mueller, & Laufer

January

10-12 Ch. 1 Course introduction and overview

15-19 Ch. 2 the numbers and theories of human behavior

22-26 Ch. 3 Schools of though

29-Feb. 2 Ch. 4 Psychology and Biology

February Ch. 5 Strain and Deviance

5-9 Ch. 6 Subcultures

12-16 Ch. 7 Social Control

19-23 Ch. 8 Conflict and radical theories

26-March 2 review 26 Midterm 28 review exam 30

March

5-9 Ch. 9 victimization and labeling

12-16 Ch. 10 Crime and social contract

19-23 Ch. 11 social contract

term paper due March 19

26-30 Spring Break

April

2-6 ACJS

9-13 Ch. 12 Violent and property crimes

16-20 Ch. 13 Radical theory applied

23-27 Ch. 14 Devianc applied

30-May 4 Ch. 15 comparative Criminology

Final Saturday May 12 2pm

Course Requirements

First exam 30%

Second exam 30%

Paper 40%

Class Format

This course is a discussion and lecture course. While discussion is difficult with 50 students, class input is desirable. Lectures will focus on enrichment material after students' questions have been answered. Please read the text material assigned on time. If you have questions bring them to class and we will discuss them before moving on to the lectures.

Exams

The Exams will be composed of twenty fill in the blank questions which will be drawn from both the lecture and the text.

Paper

The paper will be at least 5,000 words in length (about 20 pages of text with 12 point type size and 1.25 inch margins) plus a title page and reference list. An abstract is optional. In the paper, you will discuss one type of offender, a theory, or a family of theories. Paper's which focus on offender types will have the following sections: overview, typology, probable cause(s) of criminal behavior, treatment potential, preferred forms of treatment including level of restriction of freedom, and summary. Papers that focus on theories will have the following sections: overview, description of the theory, strengths, weaknesses, practical application, and summary. These sections will be identified by appropriate headings in your paper.

First Exam form 1

CJ300 Fall 2000

1. The ____________________________________________________, as the labeling perspective of Howard Becker, Edwin Shur, and Erving Goffman was called, showed how criminal and deviant careers were shaped progressively over time through interactions with significant others in meaningful social contexts.

2. ________________________________________________________ is the systematic study of the nature, extent, cause and control of law breaking behavior.

3. ____________________________________________________________ refers to definitions that reflect the ideas of the society as a whole. Such definitions constitute a set of universal values.

4. ____________________________________________________________ conflict occurs between groups of people who live in specific geographic areas who begin to create their own distinct value systems.

5. List three of the five measures or approaches to the measurement of crime discussed by the authors in chapter 3.

__________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

6. ____________________________________________________________ is the unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony or theft. Attempted forcible entry is included.

7. A _________________________________________________________ crime means that that a person is arrested and charged with the crime or a suspect is identified but physical arrest is impossible.

8. ___________________________________________________________ means that an individual's rights have priority over society's or the state' interests.

9. ___________________________________________________________ means to discourage offenders from committing crime by causing them to calculate the costs of committing the crime.

10. There is no question that rational choice decision making affects the decisions in cases of ________________________________________________________ crime but rational choice theory is rarely focused on this issue.

11. According to Lombroso's classification, ___________________ commit crime to correct an emotional pain of injustice.

12. An assumption from the list at the end of chapter 5, born to be bad. Criminals: break laws ________________________________ and will break law and norms in any society.

13. In ________________________________________________________ the desires and drives of the id are diverted to actions that meet the approval of the superego. (ego defense mechanism--guilt)

14. _________________________________________________________ psychology is the study of how environmental factors, such as unemployment and social settings, prevail on a person's mind to affect behavior.

15. According to the instructor, all criminology theories might be inappropriate because criminal behavior is usually relatively

________________________________________________________ behavior.

16. According to the instructor, chemicals such as refined sugar explain criminal behavior of __________________________________.

17. ________________________________________ is an attempt to explain why a particular social activity or event occurs.

18. According to the instructor, theory is something that you ________________ not something that you memorize from the text book.

19. Most criminals believe that there is _______________________ with committing the criminal acts that they commit.

20. The instructor stated that he was not surprised that about 5% of those who are poor are criminal, he is surprised that most poor people are

_________________________________________________________________.

First Exam form 2

CJ300 Fall 2000

1. This _________________________________________________ (Chambliss, Quinney, and Taylor, Walton and Young) argued that powerful social classes, and even the capitalist state, were committing more and worse crimes through corporate pollution, fault product manufacture, bribery, fraud and corruption.

2. There is sufficient independence of the subject from its constituent disciplines and an acceptance of their diversity to prevent criminology from being subsumed under any one of them. For this reason,criminology is best defined as __________________.

3. ________________________________________________________ refers to definitions of crime based on the belief that society is composed of different interest groups and that divisions may be especially prominent between the powerful and powerless.

4. __________________________________________________________ (Becker, 1963,1973) is the ability to whip up moral consensus around an issue that affects some individuals or a minority and to recruit support from the majority by convincing them it is in their interest to do so.

5. List three of the dimensions used to create the crime prism.

__________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

6. A ______________________________________________ is the standardized measure of the crime rate plotted on a graph over a period of years.

7. ____________________________________________________________ is the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or thereat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear.

8. _________________________________________________________ means using the punishment of one individual to discourage others from committing crime.

9. In ________________________________________________________ each punishment has a fixed sentence with only a narrow rage of adjustments.

10. Both rational or situational choice theory and routine activities theory emphasize the limits of ______________________________________________________in the decision to commit crime.

11. According to Lombroso's classification, ____________________ was atavistic, responsible for the most serious offenses, and a recidivist.

12. List three of the five specific biological causes of the crime listed in the chart in Chapter five.

_________________________________________________________________

13. An assumption from the list at the end of chapter 5 Born to be Bad. Society and the social order: Law is a reflection of the

_________________________________________________________________ of society.

14. ____________________________________________________________ occurs when the drives of the id are denied. (an ego defense mechanism--guilt)

15. Bandura's _________________________________________________ is based not on reward and punishment but on the idea that individuals are complete beings who do not simply respond mechanically but observe and analyze situations before they decide to act.

16. According to the instructor, people are born with genetic

________________________________________ _________ which can be controlled or moderated by training or discipline.

17. _______________________________________________________ is the study of acts that depart from social norms.

18. According to the instructor, theory is a useful ____________

for the good practitioner.

19. According to the instructor, criminal behavior is _______________________ behavior for most criminals.

20. According to the instructor _______________________________ poor people are honest.

Final Exam form 1

CJ300 Fall 2000

1. ____________________________________________ argues that human actions are not deprived of freedom because they are casually determined; that is, the amount of free will each person has varies.

2. There are five types of "Techniques of Neutralization", name two:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. _________________________________________________________ theorists argues that people learn to commit crime as a result of exposure to others' criminal behavior, ideas, and rationalizations that are favorable to violating the law.

4. Learning _____________________________________________________ is a crucial element in the process of resisting the impulse to violate the law.

5. Toby's (used by Hirschi) _________________________________________ concept states that once invested, the cost of losing you position in society serves as a barrier to law violation.

6. ___________________________________________________________ such as police, courts, social workers, psychiatrists, and teachers enforce the laws passed by significant others in powerful groups who ban certain behavior through passing laws.

7. ______________________________________________________ are criminologists who examine the connection between crime and geographical space.

8. Shaw and McKay demonstrated that over a period of 60 years official rates of delinquency ______________________________________________ with movement away from the inner city.

9. In __________________________________________________________ ecology an attempt is made to combine ecological, biological, social learning, routine activities, rational choice, and cultural theories.

10. ______________________________________________________ theorists argued that the disjunction between aspirations and expectations is not a major source of anger or frustration for youths since the goals to which they aspire are ideals, not realities.

11. The theories of the sociological ___________________________________, principally Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton, suggest that the organization of industrialized societies produces divisions between people and between groups based on social position and occupational role with the system.

12. ___________________________________________________________ form where stable organized criminal activity fails to develop.

13. List two of Weber's three important dimensions of inequality. __________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

14. __________________________________________________________ define crime much more broadly than violation of the law to include all acts that create harm, including those that violate human rights.

15. Dahrendorf's concept of _________________________________________ relationships, is partly based on Hegel's notion that a society produces contradictions (seen here as conflicts between opposing forces) whose resolution results in a new organization different from its original (seen here as consensus).

16. In an _______________________________________________________ family, both parents work and share domestic chores and produces daughters and sons equally prepared to work.

17. The _______________________________________________________ suggests that in the past women have been less likely to be featured in the official crime statistics not because they are less criminal but because of "knightly virtue" and kindly treatment of women by police, district attorneys, and judges, most of whom have been male.

18. The core of the ____________________________________________ criminology position is that crime and its control cannot be separated from the totality of the structural and cultural contexts in which it is produced.

19. ________________________________________________________ theory states that we agree to give up some of our freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want in order to be protected from those who would harm us if they did whatever they wanted.

20. Most deviancy is controlled though _________________________________ .

CJ300

Theory

Fall 2000

Instructor: Bob Sigler 348-7781 553-3897 rsigler@cj.as.ua.edu

Julie Dedovich

Office hours 11-2 MWF

Text: Essential Criminology, Lanier and Henry

Aug. 23-25 Course introduction

21 - Sept. 1 The nature of Theory

Sept. 4-8 Chapter 1 Criminology

Sept. 11-15 Chapter 2 Defining crime

Sept. 18-22 Chapter 3 Measuring crimes

Sept. 25-29 Chapter 4 Classical theories

Oct. 2-6 Chapter 5 Bio-social theories

Oct. 9-13 Chapter 6 Psychological theories

Oct. 16-20 Exam

Oct. 23-27 Chapter 7 Learning theories

Oct. 30-Nov. 3 Chapter 8 Socialization theories

Nov. 6-10 Chapter 9 Ecology and culture

Nov. 13-17 Chapter 10 Strain and subcultures

Paper due November 22

Nov. 20-22 Chapter 11 Conflict theory

Nov. 27-Dec. 1 Chapter 12 Critical Criminology

Dec. 4-8 Making theory work

Dec. 11 Final Exam 2 pm

Course Requirements

First exam 30%

Second exam 30%

Paper 40%

Class Format

Exams

The Exams will be composed of twenty fill in the blank questions which will be drawn from both the lecture and the text.

Paper

The paper will be at least 5,000 words in length (about 20 pages of text with normal type size and margins) plus a title page and reference list. An abstract is optional. In the paper, you will discuss one type of offender, a theory, or a family of theories. Papers that focus on offender types will have the following sections: overview, typology, probable cause(s) of criminal behavior, treatment potential, preferred forms of treatment including level of restriction of freedom, and summary. Papers that focus on theories will have the following sections: overview, description of the theory, strengths, weaknesses, practical application, and summary. These sections will be identified by appropriate headings in your paper.

First Exam form 1

CJ300

Fall 2000

2. ________________________________________________________ is the systematic study of the nature, extent, cause and control of law breaking behavior.

3. ____________________________________________________________ refers to definitions that reflect the ideas of the society as a whole. Such definitions constitute a set of universal values.

4. ____________________________________________________________ conflict occurs between groups of people who live in specific geographic areas who begin to create their own distinct value systems.

5. List three of the five measures or approaches to the measurement of crime discussed by the authors in chapter 3.

__________________________________________________________________

6. ____________________________________________________________ is the unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony or theft. Attempted forcible entry is included.

7. A __________________________________________________________ crime means that that a person is arrested and charged with the crime or a suspect is identified but physical arrest is impossible.

8. __________________________________________________________ means that an individual's rights have priority over society's or the state' interests.

9. __________________________________________________________ means to discourage offenders from committing crime by causing them to calculate the costs of committing the crime.

10. There is no question that rational choice decision making affects the decisions in cases of ________________________________ crime but rational choice theory is rarely focused on this issue.

11. According to Lombroso's classification, ____________________ commit crime to correct an emotional pain of injustice.

12. An assumption from the list at the end of chapter 5, born to be bad. Criminals: break laws _________________________________ and will break law and norms in any society.

13. In _________________________________________________________ the desires and drives of the id are diverted to actions that meet the approval of the superego. (ego defense mechanism--guilt)

15. According to the instructor, all criminology theories might be inappropriate because criminal behavior is usually relatively ______________________________________________________ behavior.

16. According to the instructor, chemicals such as refined sugar explain criminal behavior of ___________________________________.

17. ________________________________________ is an attempt to explain why a particular social activity or event occurs.

18. According to the instructor, theory is something that you ________________ not something that you memorize from the text book.

19. Most criminals believe that there is _______________________ with committing the criminal acts that they commit.

20. The instructor stated that he was not surprised that about 5% of those who are poor are criminal, he is surprised that most poor people are ________________________________________________.

Final Exam

CJ300

Fall 1998

1. List two of the principles of differential Association

__________________________________________________________________

2. In Techniques of Neutralization, _____________________________ is claiming that the prohibited behavior is absent the element of harm.

3. ____________________________________________________________ deviation is rarely initiated by a single act. Rather it is the result of a dynamic interaction between the individual's deviation and the societal response to the deviation.

4. _______________________________________________________________ identifies a patriarchal social order in which men dominate women as the fundamental issue.

5. The ___________________________________________________________ approach to theory construction combines existing theories in order to better explain the causes of crime.

6. According to Blumstein and his colleagues, "the concept of ____________________________________________________ refers to the longitudinal sequence of offenses committed by an offender who has a detectable rate of offending during some period."

7. _______________________________________________________________ murder includes the dual attributes of premeditation and malice aforethought.

8. Among the structural explanations of homicide are those that focus on economic inequality. One approach is to argue that inequality leads to violence through a process of _________________________________.

9. The extent of shoplifting in the United States cannot be established accurately because most stores blend shoplifting loses into their ________________________________________________ a figure that includes things such as bookkeeping errors.

10. According to Reiss and Biderman, _____________________________ is those violations of law in which penalties are attached that involve the use of a violator's position of economic power, influence, or trust in the legitimate economic or political institutional order for the purpose of illegal gain, or to commit an illegal act for personal or organizational gain.

11. The author asks: is female _________________________________ an ugly and intolerable consequence of the power of men over women and the sexual exploitation of female integrity or a sensible commercial enterprise engaged in by a seller who possesses a commodity that has a market value?

12. Much of the debate regarding criminalization and decriminalization involves activities that, when criminalized, are frequently called _____________________________________________.

13. ____________________________________________________________ refers to matters such as treason, assassinations, riots, and insurrections, as well as violations by governments that secretly spy on their own people and seek to undermine the leaders of other nations.

14. The behavior of ___________________________________________, young men who, when subjected to the draft during the Vietnam way, refused to be inducted into the armed forces because they objected on moral grounds to the conflict provides an intriguing case study in political crime.

15. People who work in Criminal Justice must have ______________

__________________________ values

16. but must be _______________________________ of other peoples' values.

17. Deviance is really variation from the _______________________.

18. In our discussion of deviance we suggested that there are two very important values. The first is that we want rules so that we will know how to behave properly but we deviate from these rules with in acceptable limits to express our personal ______________.

19. According to the instructor, It would be _____________________ to convict Clinton of perjury in the Jones deposition or in his grand jury testimony.

20. The recent cases of teen murder in which the murders are committed by teens from good families in suburbs are particularly disturbing to the pubic because they can not be _________________.