Criminal Wrong Doings Jennifer Hyler CRJ 201 Ginger Jarvis July 24, 2011 Criminal Wrong Doings The criminal laws control criminal acts and channel human behaviors. Criminal laws also orchestrate punishments and sentences to the ones who commit wrong doings crimes towards someone’s person or personal property. A criminal law assumes that wrong doings not only damage the surrounding people, but society as well. All violators that commit a crime such as murder or rape must be punished. Criminal laws also have two written laws that are split up into two different categories.
Describing crime and deviance is varied across different cultures; history; social situations and place. It will look at the bodies that measure crime and look at the reasons why they are not accurate. There are several differences between crime and deviance, deviance is a violation of the social norms whereas crime is a violation of the laws of the land. Society has no power for deviance but the government can punish with crime. Much behaviour that was seen as deviant in the past has today become a criminal offence, as with crime behaviour seen as criminal is now seen as deviant.
Statistics are usually collected on based on three categories: Offenses, the breach of law; Offenders, those who commit the offenses; and the victims, the ones who are offended against. The United States has programs in which they collect this data; the first is the Uniform Crime Reports, which is compiled by the FBI and the Crime Victimization Survey, handled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Crime statistics for the same crime can vary based on not just between countries and jurisdictions, but also between individual law enforcement officers that have come across the same exact case. There are some crimes that are reported to law enforcement but are not reported because the law enforcement officer that takes the report has the power of discretion. They have the ability to affect how much crime is recorded, based on how they record their activities.
It does however explain why some people or actions are described as deviant, and can help in understanding crime and deviance. According to item A labelling has changed the theoretical base for the study of criminals. Becker emphasises the significance of crime being a social construct; an action only becomes criminal or deviant once society has labelled it so, and that crime can be argued to be a social construction. He introduced the concept of a master label, referring to the label which a person is given which overrides all other labels. When a person is labelled as negatively, society tends to tend them as such, and this master label often becomes internalised, and then a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs.
Police have two types of perceptions of the police mission, either a crime fighter or public servant. Police perception of themselves as crime fighters leads to certain decisions in their use of force, definition of duty, and their use of deception. If one views police as crime fighters these assumptions may include; criminals are the enemy and are different from good people, the police are the arm that fights the enemy using any means to get the job done, good people accept and understand that police are in a war and must be allowed deference in their decision making because they are the experts and only they know the enemy. The book states the definition of public servants as “professionals who are paid by the public and whose jobs entail pursuing the public good. If one views police as public servants, other assumptions include; criminals are people too just like the rest of us they shop, pay taxes, and have a family, police have limited ability to affect crime rates because the history of law enforcement originates in order maintenance, not crime control, and lastly they assume that police as public servants serve all people, including criminals meaning to not judge on decisions about an individual not being able to receive services.
According to Tappan’s (1947 p.100, quoted in Muncie et al 2010 p.4) “crime is an intentional act in violation of criminal law (statutory or case law), committed without defence or excuse and penalised by the state as a felony or misdemeanour”. In other words crime may be known as an act deliberately committed which breaches legal conduct punishable by state. This is a common understanding of crime today but unfortunately crime is not as simple as being a breach of law. The study of crime is vast and under constant debate. Crime is ever changing varying culturally, globally and historically.
An accomplice should be given a sentence but the mastermind who lead the crime should be punished more and should in turn suffer more for the crime they committed. It is important that the guilty person is aware of them being worse off that before in order for the punishment to be effective. This is called experimental harm. Everybody has different triggers and how they do things. And thus the crime due to provocation is not always justified.
Yet it brings about so many different meanings. .The system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties. What is criminality? Criminality is basically said to be the state as that of a criminal, there are many curiosities of a criminal which is why there are many studies of a criminals behaviour, and what drives an individual to make choices that lead up to the meaningless evidential life of a criminal. Law and criminality is the study of ones behaviour and justifying that by the certain laws of the specific countries
There are many theories relating to deviance and crime with each theory illustrating a different aspect of the procedure by which people break rules and are classed as deviants or criminals. (New texts pg 138) which highlights the problems in defining crime or deviance. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRIME AND DEVIANCE Many believe crime and deviance has developed on separate tracks over the years as criminologist serve only for legality, crime and crime-related phenomena. The study of deviance however serves for a wider range of behaviours that are not necessarily illegal for example suicide, alcoholism, homosexuality, mentally disordered behaviours. (Bader et al) The main difference between crime and deviance is deviant behaviour is when a social norm has been broken whereas a crime is where a formal and social norm is broken.
When someone is labelled an offender they are forced by society to live according to this label which could minimise their chances of being law abiding citizens and limit their chances of finding decent jobs. When deviants realise that society is defining them as thieves or offenders, they feel the need to act out on these labels. Deviants then try to adapt to their new profile by participating in various deviant (criminal)