Criminology and Penology
Schools
Chicago school
Classical school  · Conflict criminology
Environmental criminology
Feminist school  · Frankfurt School
Italian School
Left realism  · Marxist criminology
Positivist school  · Postmodernist school
Right Realism
Statistical school
Theories
Anomie  · Differential association
Deviance
Symbolic interactionism  · Victimology
Types of crimes
Blue-collar crime
Corporate crime  · Organised crime
Political crime  · Public order crime
State crime  · State-corporate crime
Teenage crime
White-collar crime
Criminologists
James Fyfe  · Cesare Lombroso
Michael Maltz  · Robert King Merton
Edwin Sutherland
Penology
Deterrence  · Prison
Prison reform  · Prisoner abuse
Prisoners' rights  · Rehabilitation
Recidivism  · Retribution
Utilitarianism
See also Sociology

In criminology public order crime is defined by Siegel (2004) as "...crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to function efficiently", i.e. it is behaviour that has been labelled criminal because it is contrary to shared norms, social values, and customs. Robertson (1989:123) maintains that a crime is nothing more than "...an act that contravenes a law." Generally speaking, deviancy is criminalised when it is too disruptive and uncontrollable through informal sanctions. Thus, "public order crime" includes consensual crime, victimless vice, crimes without victims, and victimless crime, and asserts the need to use the law to maintain order both in the legal and moral sense. It is now the preferred term as against the use of the word "victimless" because the identification of secondary victims (family, friends, acquaintances, and society at large) has led to a recognition that victimlessness is a myth. For example, in cases where a criminal act subverts or undermines the commercial effectiveness of normative business practices, the negative consequences extend beyond those at whom the specific immediate harm was intended, e.g. computer hacking and insider trading in stock market transactions. Similarly, in environmental law, there are offences that do not have a direct, immediate and tangible victim, so crimes go largely unreported and unprosecuted because of the problem of lack of victim awareness. In short, there are no clear, unequivocal definitions of ‘consensus’, ‘harm’, 'injury', ‘offender’, and ‘victim’. Such judgments are always informed by contestable, epistemological, moral, and political assumptions (de Haan, 1990: 154). Image File history File links SmallLadyJustice. ... Criminology is the study of crime as a social phenomenon, including the causes and consequences of crime, criminal behavior, as well as the development of, and impact of laws. ... Penology (from the Latin poena, punishment) comprises penitentiary science: that concerned with the processes devised and adopted for the punishment, repression, and prevention of crime, and the treatment of prisoners. ... In sociology, the Chicago School refers to the first major attempt to study the urban environment by combined efforts of theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago. ... Conflict criminology Largely based on the writings of Karl Marx, conflict criminology claims that crime is inevitable in capitalist societies, as invariably certain groups will become marganalised and unequal. ... Environmental criminology focuses on criminal patterns within particular built environments and analyzes the impacts of these external variables on people’s cognitive behaviour. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory (which is more akin to anarchism than communism), social research, and philosophy. ... Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) and two of his Italian disciples, Enrico Ferri (1856–1929) and Raffaele Garofalo (1851–1934), founded what became known as the Italian school of criminology. ... Anomie, in contemporary English, means the absence of any kind of rule, law, principle or order. ... Differental association - A theory developed by Edwin Sutherland that holds that through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior. ... Deviant behavior is behavior that is a recognized violation of social norms. ... Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective which examines how individuals and groups interact, focusing on the creation of personal identity through interaction with others. ... Victimology is the study of why certain people are victims of crime and how lifestyles affect the chances that a certain person will fall victim to a crime. ... Blue-collar crime is regarded as consisting of violent crimes such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and vandalism, as well as things like shoplifting and burglary -- as opposed to white-collar crime. ... Corporate crime refers to criminal practices by individuals that have the legal authority to speak for a corporation or company. ... Organized crime is crime carried out systematically by formal criminal organizations. ... In the standard sense of the phrase, a political crime is an action deemed illegal by a government in order to control real or imagined threats to its survival, at the expense of a range of human rights and freedoms. ... White-collar crimes (a term coined by Edwin Sutherland in 1939) or business crimes are those crimes specifically performed by white collar employees. ... James J. Fyfe (February 16, 1942 - November 12, 2005) was a well-known criminologist and Police Training Director. ... Cesare Lombroso Cesare Lombroso (Verona, November 6, 1835 - Turin, October 19, 1909) was a historical figure in modern criminology, and the founder of the Italian Positivist School of criminology. ... Michael D. Maltz (born in Brooklyn, New York on December 18, 1938) is an emeritus professor at University of Illinois at Chicago in criminal justice, and adjunct professor and researcher at Ohio State University. ... This article is about the sociologist. ... From The American System of Criminal Justice by George F. Cole and Christopher E. Smith, Tenth Edition, Page 14: Crimes cimitted in the course of business were first described by crimonologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939, when he developed the concept of white-collar crime. ... Deterrence ALOHA!! is a means of controlling a persons behavior through negative motivational influences, namely fear of punishment. ... Life in prison Prison reform is the steady improvement of conditions inside prisons, aiming at a more effective penal system. ... Prisoner abuse is the mistreatment of persons while they are under arrest or incarcerated. ... The movement for Prisoners rights is based on the principle that prisoners, even though they are deprived of liberty, are still entitled to basic human rights. ... This theory of punishment is based on the notion that punishment is to be inflicted on a offender so as to reform him, or rehabilitate him so as to make his re-integration into society easier. ... Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior. ... The neutrality of this article is disputed. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Criminology is the study of crime as a social phenomenon, including the causes and consequences of crime, criminal behavior, as well as the development of, and impact of laws. ... Deviant behavior is behavior that is a recognized violation of social norms. ... Criminalization or criminalisation is the process by which an act which was previously legal becomes a criminal offense by the passing of legislation or by increased enforcement of legislation when the act was previously condoned. ... It has been suggested that Victimless crime be merged into this article or section. ... ... Hacker describes a class of people who create and modify computer software and computer hardware, including people skilled in computer programming, administration and security. ... There are two kinds of trading that are referred to as insider trading or inside dealing: Usually illegal: Trading of a security of a company (, stocks, bonds or stock options) based on material non-public information. ... The New York Stock Exchange The stock market is the market for the trading of company stock, and derivatives of same; both those securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately. ... Environmental law is a body of law, which is a system of complex and interlocking rules, regulations and policies which seeks to protect the natural environment which may be affected, impacted or even endangered by human activities. ... Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ... Politics is the process by which decisions are made within groups. ...

Crimes without apparent victims

Following the work of Schur (1965), the types of crime usually referred to include the sexually based offences of prostitution, paraphilia (i.e. sexual practices considered deviant), underage sex, and pornography; and the offences involving substance abuse which may or may not involve some element of public disorder or danger to the public as in driving while intoxicated. The significance of these two areas is that all societies moralise over sex, and most prohibited substances act as disinhibitors and either encourage antisocial behaviour or reduce the sense of guilt. Thus, there is continuing political debate on criminalisation versus decriminalisation, focusing on whether it is appropriate to use punishment to enforce the various public policies that regulate the nominated behaviours. After all, society could deal with unpopular behaviour without invoking criminal or other legal processes. As it is, the moral and political beliefs held by those in power about when harm to innocent individuals should be prohibited, interact to inform societal decisions whether to create crimes without apparent victims. Within the context of a discussion on whether governments should regulate public morals in the interest of the public good (see Feinberg: 1984), Meier & Geis (1997) identify which problems might be deemed appropriate for legal intervention and the extent to which the criminal law should enforce moral positions which may lack societal consensus. Respect for the law can only be maintained if the law is worthy of respect. For example, Ericsson (1980:338-9) argues: A woman who exercises prostitution in Germany Prostitution is the sale of sexual services, such as oral sex or sexual intercourse. ... In psychology and sexology, paraphilia (in Greek para παρά = besides and -philia φιλία = love) is a term that describes sexual arousal in response to sexual objects or situations which may interfere with the capacity for reciprocal affectionate sexual activity. ... Pavonazzeto marble sculpture, see Erotic art in Pompeii Pornography (from Greek πορνογραφία pornographia — literally writing about or drawings of prostitutes) (also informally referred to as porn or porno) is the representation of the human body or human sexual behaviour with the goal of sexual arousal, similar to, but distinct from, erotica. ... Criminalization or criminalisation is the process by which an act which was previously legal becomes a criminal offense by the passing of legislation or by increased enforcement of legislation when the act was previously condoned. ... Decriminalization is the process of making an action no longer a criminal act in the relevant jurisdiction. ... sexual abuse is the practice of imposing something unpleasant on a wrongdoer as a response to something unwanted that the wrongdoer has done. ...

If two adults voluntarily consent to an economic arrangement concerning sexual activity and this activity takes place in private, it seems plainly absurd to maintain that there is something intrinsically wrong with it.

A side effect of turning too many people into criminals is that the concept of crime becomes blurred and genuine criminality becomes less unacceptable. If the key distinction between real crime and moral regulation is not made clearly, as more consensual activities become crimes, citizens are criminalised for tax-evasion, illegal downloading, and other voluntary rule-breaking.

Political parties find it easier to talk dismissively about crimes if they are classified as victimless because their abolition or amendment looks to have fewer economic and political costs, i.e. the use of the word "victimless" implies that there are no injuries caused by these crimes (Robertson 1989:125) and, if that is true, then there is no need to create or retain the criminal offences. This may reflect a limited form of reality that, in the so-called "victimless crimes", there are no immediate victims to make police reports and those who engage in the given behaviour regard the law as inappropriate, not themselves. This has two consequences:     Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], house, and νομος [nomos], rule, hence household management) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. ...

because these crimes often take place in private, comprehensive law enforcement (often including entrapment and the use of agent provocateurs) would consume an enormous amount of resources. It is therefore convenient for the law enforcement agencies to classify a crime as victimless because that is used as a justification for devoting fewer resources as against crimes where there are "real" victims to protect; and

these crimes usually involve something desirable where large profits can be made, e.g. drugs or sex.

In jurisprudence, entrapment is a procedural defense by which a defendant may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for actions which broke the law, because they were induced (or entrapped) by the police to commit said acts. ... An agent provocateur (plural: agents provocateurs) is a person assigned to provoke unrest, violence, debate, or argument by or within a group while acting as a member of the group but covertly representing the interests of another. ...

Why criminalise?

Criminalisation is intended as a pre-emptive, harm-reduction device, using the threat of punishment as a deterrent to those proposing to engage in the behaviour causing harm. The state becomes involved because the costs of not criminalising (i.e. allowing the harms to continue unabated) outweigh the costs of criminalising it (i.e. restricting individual liberty and so minimising harm to others). The process of criminalisation should be controlled by the state because: Deterrence is the method manipulating a persons action by negative motivational influences. ...

1. Victims or witnesses of crimes might be deterred from taking any action if they fear retaliation. Even in policed societies, fear may inhibit reporting or co-operation in a trial.
2. The victims may only want compensation for the injuries suffered, while being indifferent to the more general need for deterrence: see Polinsky & Shavell (1997) on the fundamental divergence between the private and the social motivation for using the legal system.
3. Even if the victims recognise that they are victims, they may not have the resources to investigate and seek legal redress for the injuries suffered: the enforcers formally appointed by the state have the expertise and the resources.
4. Victims do not have economies of scale to administer a penal system, let alone collect any fines levied by a court (see Polinsky (1980) on the enforcement of fines). But Garoupa & Klerman (2002) warn that a rent-seeking government's primary motivation is to maximise revenue and so, if offenders have sufficient wealth, a rent-seeking government is more aggressive than a social-welfare-maximising government in enforcing laws against minor crimes (usually with a fixed penalty such as parking and routine traffic violations), but more lax in enforcing laws against major crimes.

Specific examples

Meier and Geis (1997) contrast the view that prostitution, drugs, and homosexuality are crimes without victims, with the view that the participants involved are victims without crimes. So-called victimless crimes or crimes without victims are tested to determine whether the behaviour produces harmful consequences for innocent people (p19) recognising that there is substantial disagreement both about the degree of culpability inherent in the behaviour and the proper role for the law. Consequently, the effectiveness and scope of the law is limited, both creating and solving problems. Culpability (Blameworthiness) is the state of deserving to be blamed for a crime or offence. ...

Prostitution

Sullivan (1995) argues that universal and essentialist claims about prostitution are unhelpful, i.e. no simple statement on prostitution can say whether it harms or benefits women, nor cover the complexity of what sex work means to either the women who engage in such work, or others who do not. In the academic literature on prostitution there are very few authors who argue that valid consent to prostitution is possible. Most suggest that consent to prostitution is impossible or at least unlikely. For radical feminists, this is because prostitution is always a coercive activity. They claim that under worldwide conditions of male domination and endemic male violence, women are forced into prostitution sex and no real consent is possible. However, even those who do not adopt the radical feminist perspective - and who admit the likelihood of valid consent in non-commercial sexual relations - suggest that there is a particular problem with consent to prostitution as a result of economic and other coercions. Thus, there would appear to be a general consensus in the literature that consent to prostitution is impossible or unlikely. (Sullivan: 2000) Carrabine et al (2004: Chapter 9) report that some women and children are coerced or sold into prostitution. Others may choose to engage in prostitution and regard it as work, but prostitution is nonetheless a form of restricted and ultimately destructive choice, especially in countries that offer very limited options for women outside the commercial sex industry. Women run the risk of physical and sexual violence at the hands of clients or being harassed by the police on the streets. Society is also affected by the crime because prostitution objectifies women and reinforces stereotypical notions of women. From a law and order perspective, politicians and local residents who are in favour of clampdowns have also argued that street prostitution is not victimless as it may damage the reputation and quality of life in the neighbourhood. In this context, decriminalisation probably means institutional controls over the lives of those who engage in this work rather than granting the women control over the work they choose. Finally, because the activity is considered criminal, its substantial revenues are not contributing to the tax revenues of the state, and its workers are not routinely screened for sexually transmitted diseases which is dangerous in cultures favouring unprotected sex and leads to significant expenditure in the health services. Sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), also known as sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), are diseases that are commonly transmitted between partners through some form of sexual activity, most commonly vaginal intercourse, oral sex, or anal sex. ...

Drugs

Drug dealing is frequently cited as an area where victims might be third parties who experience harm only indirectly through, say, the costs of treating addiction, and the public health costs for treating illness and disease consequent on the addition, e.g. HIV infection through using the same needles. Making drugs illegal results in an exponential increase in their price so that addicts often indulge in theft, robbery and burglary to support their habits, and yet those citizens are denied tax revenue from the substantial profits made by the dealers. As with prostitution, drug dealing affects the amenity of a neighbourhood, destroying property values and causing the flight of the middle class to the "safer" suburbs. If the police do intervene, they may alienate law-abiding community members who are stopped and questioned, and only displace the drug dealing indoors, thus making it more resistant to police interventions. Further, Sampson (2002) comments that because intensive police enforcement is by its very nature temporary, the impact is often only short-term and dependent on the resiliency of the market and the buyers which has been shown to be strong. Some officers have argued that intensive enforcement shows the community that the police care about the problem; however, some of the unintended effects may, in fact, have the opposite result. Human immunodeficiency virus, commonly known by the initialism HIV, is a retrovirus that primarily infects vital components of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. ...

Conflict with civil liberties

The claim of "protecting public order" or the accusation that a given person or entitiy is threatening public order has also been one of the main tools of control used by governments attempting to suppress dissent or personal freedoms that cannot be legislated against. As Amnesty International points out, "Zheng Yunsu, the leader of the Jesus Family, a Protestant community in Shandong province, is one of many people who are behind bars simply for practising their religion. He was arrested during a police raid on the community in 1992 and later sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for "disrupting public order" and "swindling". His four sons and other members of the group were also imprisoned. Amnesty International believes they are prisoners of conscience." [1]. Likewise, this device was used by the Soviet Union and other communist countries, [2] as well as by other totalitarian governments. [3] Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is an international, non-governmental organization with the stated purpose of promoting all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards. ...

External links

Patterns and Trends in Public Order Crime [4]

References

• Carrabine, Eamonn; Iganski, Paul; Lee, Maggy; Plummer, Ken & South, Nigel. (2004). Criminology - A Sociological Introduction. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415281679
• de Haan, Willem. (1990). The Politics of Redress: Crime, Punishment and Penal Abolition. Boston: Unwin Hyman. ISBN 0044454422
• Ericsson, Lars O. (1980). "Charges Against Prostitution; An Attempt at a Philosophical Assessment". Ethics 90:335-66.
• Feinberg, Joel (1984). Harm to Self: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195059239
• Garoupa, Nuno & Klerman, Daniel. (2002). "Optimal Law Enforcement with a Rent-Seeking Government". American Law and Economics Review Vol. 4, No. 1. pp116-140.
• Meier, Robert F. & Geis, Gilbert. (1997). Victimless Crime? Prostitution, Drugs, Homosexuality, Abortion. Los Angeles: Roxbury. ISBN 0935732462
• Polinsky, A. Mitchell. (1980). "Private versus Public Enforcement of Fines." The Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. IX, No. 1, (January), pp105-127.
• Polinsky, A. Mitchell & Shavell, Steven. (1997). "On the Disutility and Discounting of Imprisonment and the Theory of Deterrence," NBER Working Papers 6259, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [5]
• Robertson, Ian. (1989) Society: A Brief Introduction. New York: Worth Publishing. ISBN 0879015489
• Sampson, Rana. (2002). Drug Dealing in Privately Owned Apartment Complexes Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Series No. 4 [6]
• Schur, Edwin M. (1965) Crimes Without Victims: Deviant Behavior and Public Policy: Abortion, Homosexuality, Drug Addiction. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131929305
• Siegel, Larry J. (2006). Criminology: Theories, Patterns, & Typologies, 9th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. ISBN: 049500572X
• Sullivan, Barbara. (1995) "Rethinking Prostitution" in Transitions: New Australian Feminisms Caine, Barbara. & Pringle, Rosemary (eds.). Sydney: Allen & Unwin. pp.184-197. ISBN 0312125488 [7]
• Sullivan, Barbara. (2000). Rethinking Prostitution and 'Consent' [8]