Critical Criminology- Exam Review *Q&A* (100% Correct) 2025/2026 |VERIFIED|

Critical Criminology- Exam Review *Q&A* (100% Correct) 2025/2026 |VERIFIED| In critical criminology, what is the significance of the concept of “power”? Power is central to critical criminology, as it influences who is labeled as criminal, who gets to make laws, and who has access to justice. What does critical criminology say about the role of law enforcement in society? Critical criminology suggests that law enforcement is not just about preventing crime, but about maintaining social order in favor of the powerful, often through controlling marginalized groups. How does critical criminology view the war on drugs? Critical criminology views the war on drugs as a tool for social control, disproportionately affecting poor communities and racial minorities while reinforcing existing power structures. What is the role of social movements in shaping criminal justice policies? Social movements play a critical role in challenging criminal justice policies, advocating for reforms to address systemic inequalities, and reshaping public perceptions of crime and punishment. How does critical criminology address the issue of mass incarceration? Critical criminology critiques mass incarceration as a means of controlling marginalized populations, particularly racial minorities, while serving the economic interests of private prison systems. What is the significance of the concept of “resistance” in critical criminology? Resistance is seen as a necessary response to oppressive systems, with individuals and communities challenging dominant social structures that perpetuate inequality and criminalize dissent. What does critical criminology suggest about the relationship between poverty and crime? 1 Critical criminology suggests that poverty creates conditions of social and economic inequality, which increase the likelihood of criminal behavior, especially among marginalized groups. How does critical criminology address issues of juvenile delinquency? Critical criminology focuses on how juvenile delinquency is often a result of social inequality and how the criminal justice system disproportionately targets and criminalizes youth from marginalized communities. How is the concept of “social harm” viewed in critical criminology? Social harm refers to actions or behaviors that cause harm to individuals or society but are not necessarily labeled as criminal. Critical criminology expands the definition of harm beyond legal definitions to include systemic and structural harms. What role does the concept of “surveillance” play in critical criminology? Surveillance is viewed in critical criminology as a tool of social control, often disproportionately affecting marginalized groups and contributing to the criminalization of poverty and resistance. How does critical criminology critique restorative justice practices? Critical criminology critiques restorative justice practices for sometimes being co-opted by the state to maintain the status quo, while highlighting their potential for addressing harm outside of the punitive system. What does critical criminology say about the policing of public spaces? Policing of public spaces is seen as a means of maintaining control and suppressing dissent, with law enforcement often targeting specific communities, such as the homeless or racial minorities, to maintain order. How does critical criminology relate to the concept of “human rights”? Critical criminology is concerned with human rights, particularly how criminal justice policies violate the rights of marginalized populations through practices like racial profiling and mass incarceration. What is the role of education in critical criminology? 2 Education is seen as both a tool for social control and a potential vehicle for social change, with critical criminologists advocating for education systems that challenge dominant ideologies and address inequalities. How does critical criminology view the criminalization of mental illness? Critical criminology critiques the criminalization of mental illness, arguing that individuals with mental health issues are often treated as criminals instead of receiving appropriate care and support. What is the role of intersectionality in critical criminology? Intersectionality is crucial in critical criminology, as it examines how overlapping factors such as race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect to shape individuals' experiences with crime and the criminal justice system. How does critical criminology understand the role of punishment in society? Critical criminology views punishment as a mechanism of social control that reinforces inequality, often punishing individuals for societal conditions rather than addressing the root causes of crime. What is the relationship between criminal law and social inequality in critical criminology? Critical criminology emphasizes that criminal law is often shaped by social inequalities, with laws serving the interests of powerful groups while criminalizing the behavior of marginalized populations. How do critical criminologists interpret the concept of “white-collar crime”? White-collar crime is seen by critical criminologists as a product of capitalist systems, where the wealthy and powerful exploit their positions to commit crimes without facing the same legal consequences as lower-class offenders. What is the connection between critical criminology and environmental criminology? Both approaches share an interest in how social structures contribute to crime, but critical criminology emphasizes the broader socio-political context, while environmental criminology focuses on the role of physical spaces in crime. How does critical criminology approach the study of crime in a global context? 3 Critical criminology looks at how global capitalism, imperialism, and inequality contribute to crime across borders, often focusing on issues like human trafficking, migration, and corporate exploitation. What is the significance of class struggle in critical criminology? Class struggle is central to critical criminology, as crime is often seen as a byproduct of the power imbalances between different social classes, with those in power shaping laws to benefit themselves. How does critical criminology address issues of international crime? Critical criminology examines how international crime is often tied to global inequality, imperialism, and economic exploitation, focusing on how global actors shape criminal behaviors. What does critical criminology suggest about the privatization of prisons? Critical criminology critiques the privatization of prisons as a profit-driven industry that exacerbates inequality and exploits incarcerated individuals for economic gain. How does critical criminology view the role of criminal law in maintaining social order? Criminal law is seen as a tool used by the powerful to maintain social order, often enforcing the interests of elites while criminalizing behaviors of the disadvantaged. How does critical criminology challenge the concept of “moral panic”? Critical criminology challenges moral panic by showing how societal fears are often manipulated by elites to justify social control measures that benefit their own interests. What is the role of resistance in critical criminology? Resistance is seen as an essential response to injustice, with critical criminology advocating for challenging the systems that perpetuate inequality and the criminalization of marginalized groups. What is the primary focus of critical criminology? Critical criminology emphasizes understanding crime through social structures, power, inequality, and injustice, often challenging mainstream theories of crime. 4 5 How do critical criminologists view the relationship between crime and social power? Critical criminologists argue that crime is often a result of power dynamics and inequalities in society, where the powerful create laws that benefit them while marginalizing others. What is the key critique of traditional criminological theories from a critical criminology perspective? Critical criminology critiques traditional theories for overlooking structural inequalities and focusing too much on individualistic explanations of crime. How do critical criminologists interpret the concept of “deviance”? Critical criminologists see deviance as socially constructed, with behaviors labeled as deviant depending on the power structures that define what is considered acceptable or unacceptable. What role does ideology play in critical criminology? Ideology is seen as a tool used by dominant groups to justify inequality and maintain control, shaping how crime and deviance are defined and treated in society. In critical criminology, how is the criminal justice system viewed? The criminal justice system is viewed as an institution that maintains the status quo, protecting the interests of the powerful and often marginalizing disadvantaged groups. How does the concept of “social control” relate to critical criminology? Social control in critical criminology is viewed as a mechanism used by the state and powerful groups to maintain order and suppress resistance, often criminalizing marginalized populations. What is the relationship between capitalism and crime according to critical criminology? Critical criminology often links capitalism to crime, arguing that economic inequalities and the exploitation inherent in capitalist systems lead to crime, particularly among the working class. How does critical criminology challenge the notion of individual responsibility in crime? 6 Critical criminologists argue that crime cannot be solely attributed to individual choices, but must also be understood in terms of structural inequalities and societal pressures. What is the significance of race and ethnicity in critical criminology? Race and ethnicity are crucial in critical criminology, as they are seen as major factors in how people are criminalized, with racial minorities often being disproportionately represented in criminal justice systems. How does critical criminology approach the study of gender and crime? Critical criminology examines how gendered power structures influence the treatment of crime and deviance, highlighting how women and LGBTQ+ individuals are often marginalized or victimized within the system. What role do historical context and colonialism play in critical criminology? Historical context and colonialism are important in critical criminology, as it looks at how colonial histories and systemic oppression shape modern criminal justice practices and definitions of crime. Explain the concept of “criminogenic” in critical criminology. Criminogenic refers to the idea that certain social conditions, such as poverty, inequality, and lack of access to resources, create environments where crime is more likely to occur. What is the concept of “state crime” in critical criminology? State crime refers to illegal or harmful activities conducted by government agencies or officials, often in the name of political power, nationalism, or maintaining social order. How does critical criminology differ from positivist criminology? 7 Unlike positivist criminology, which focuses on identifying objective causes of crime, critical criminology emphasizes social context, power, and inequality in understanding criminal behavior. What is the relationship between the media and crime in critical criminology? The media is seen as playing a crucial role in shaping public perceptions of crime, often sensationalizing certain types of crime and reinforcing stereotypes, particularly against marginalized communities. How does critical criminology interpret the criminalization of protest movements? Critical criminology sees the criminalization of protest movements as an attempt by powerful elites to suppress dissent and maintain control, often labeling resistance as criminal behavior. What is the importance of Marxism in critical criminology? Marxism is integral to critical criminology, as it provides a framework for understanding crime as a product of class struggle, with crime often being a reaction to capitalist exploitation. How do critical criminologists view the concept of “victimless crimes”? Critical criminologists argue that “victimless crimes” are often defined by moralistic laws created by the state and do not reflect objective harm, but rather societal attempts to control behavior. What is the connection between critical criminology and social justice? Critical criminology is inherently linked to social justice, aiming to address and challenge the systemic inequalities that contribute to crime and the criminalization of marginalized groups. How does critical criminology critique the prison system? Critical criminology critiques the prison system for its role in perpetuating inequality, emphasizing its function in maintaining social order rather than rehabilitating offenders. How does postmodernism contribute to critical criminology? Postmodernism contributes by challenging grand narratives and focusing on how knowledge about crime is constructed, suggesting that our understanding of crime is influenced by cultural and historical factors. Critical Criminology Mostly concerned with social justice and inequality, promoting active opposition to the status quo, and favoring larger-scale societal transformation rather than minor policy changes Encompasses a broad range of criminologist theories and perspectives that share one key element: a desire to challenge inequality It is the assumption that power is unequally distributed throughout society and that this is also true when it comes to crime and criminal justice. Task: to find and call attention to oppression, but also actively oppose it Critical Criminology Critiques Rejected the idea of the so-called criminal mind, and instead turned their attention to how criminals are created, not by birth, but through social processes use their fundamental theoretical and empirical building blacks the concepts of class, race, and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and other social categories that have been employed to maintain oppressive relations between groups Marxism A school of thought developed by Karl Marx, arguing that society must be understood in terms of social conflict, class relations, and the inequalities caused by capitalism, Marxists promote revolution by the working class 8 CC are interested primarily in class relations and how the structure of capitalism produces inequalities linked to crime and criminal justice Neo-Marxists system Condemned the social, political, and material inequalities produced within capitalist Focus on how the state uses the criminal justice system to legitimize unequal social arrangements through laws that cater to elite groups while oppressing the working class, the poor, and other marginalized groups According to that perspective, crime is not neutral, value-free concept, but deeply political issue over which differently situated social groups struggle to maintain or overthrow oppression Differences between Marxist and Neo-Marxist Three key differences derived from Marxism: 1) In capitalist system, the economy dictates the structure and functioning of society - including crime 2) Capitalism is directly to blame for crime because it creates the conditions of inequality that lead to crime 3) The only way to eliminate crime is to eliminate the conditions that create it - that is, eliminate capitalism Conflict Theories Theories, originating primarily with Marx, that focus on the unequal distribution of power in society. Conflicts between classes or groups are driven to a large extent by this unequal power and unequal access to resources Rigakos Marxist's Political Economy of Policing Rise of the private security and the role that this commodity plays in facilitating social control of those seen as dangerous Argues that policing, both public and private, has historically served the interests of capital in a variety of ways including supporting the retention and accumulation of private property 9 Cutting worker costs by replacing paid police officers with private security staff, and assisting in monitoring and regulating potential threats to capital from dissatisfied workers or citizens The Creation of a Criminalized Class Argues that the goal of the US criminal justice system is not to f ight crime, but to maintain existing class relations through the creation of a criminalized class among the poor Those who might represent a potential challenge to the political, social and economic elites are neutralized behind bars The state does this by creating and policing crimes that are most typically associated with poverty and harshly sentencing offenders If the goal of the criminal justice system is actually to fight crime, then the state would attempt to address the root causes of street crime by eliminating the conditions that give rise to them and focus instead on the predatory crimes of the wealthy and powerful that affect everyone - white collar and environmental Feminist Criminology criminology Emerged as a reaction to the biases that dominated the field of mainstream Feminists have been concerned with gender inequality, particularly within social institutions that create and sustain male privilege and female oppression Noted that much of this work was patriarchal in nature and resulted in two significant problems: Significant Problems for criminal research 1) androcentrism: with males routinely referenced as the de facto standard 2) disregard for women's issues altogether, particularly where they might represent a challenge to male dominance 10 It is replete with instances of extreme sexism in Challenging Sexism within Criminological Theory relation to women as both victims and offenders One on hand they are seen as weak, submissive, and dependent and therefore, in need of protection On the other hand, their offending is associated with uncontrollable sexuality, with the rejection of prescribed feminine roles and therefore, she is an object of condemnation and contempt. Further, females are perceived as a creature of impulse, emotional, and in extreme cases incapable of fully intending her own actions - leads to interpretation of her behavior as mentally abnormal or unstable The Feminist Approach Challenge the notion that women who crime are mentally unstable - feminists focus their analysis on the ways in which structural inequality and oppression compel women to commit economic and other crimes Women in conflict with the law have a tendency to appeal to psychological mitigation frameworks to explain their offending behavior because the law indicts individual rather than social forces Doubly Deviant seen to have simultaneously transgressed both the criminal law AND social norms for appropriate feminine behavior Contrarily to male offenders, whose criminal actions are seen as violations of criminal law but as more or less consistent with the willful, assertive, self-please ways of which boys and men are expected and encouraged to behave. Medicalization of Women's Deviance Women who break the law or act in ways otherwise defined as deviant tend to be viewed as suffering from some kind of physical or psychological pathology as if "normal" "healthy" women could never act so badly Women offenders are understood through a subjective manner based on persistent sexist ideas and feelings rather than the scientific approach of sound, appropriate reasoning 11 Otto Pollak: Women's Deceitfulness and the Chivalry Hypothesis Advances common sense ideas about women's inherently flawed character, intelligence, and capacity for engaging in deceitful and criminal activities such as prostitution Links women's reproductive biology albeit through the mediation of cultural factors Women criminals were much worse than male offender, because their law violations were much more difficult to detect it is well hidden because of their position in the private sphere of the family - attempted to account for differences between men's and women's recorded involvement in criminal behavior by arguing that female crime is "masked" crime Argued that women do not commit less crime, but get more lenient sentences than men - which can be attributed to patriarchal attitudes towards women Women who commit serious crime as taken into account for their circumstances and environment - infanticide Battered Women Syndrome partners Self-defense for women accused of murdering their abuse intimate Has been used to diminish abused women's responsibility for crime - courts have also accepted testimony of PMS to excuse violent conduct Feminists are critical of these defense: they appear to reproduce the early sexism of diseases such as nymphomania and kleptomania by linking criminal behavior in women with irrationally caused by the reproductive system - CONTEMPORARY MEDICALIZATION OF DEVIANCE The Case of Angelique Lyn Lavalle Was charged with second-degree murder after she shot her common-law husband in the back of the head Shot him as she was leaving her bedroom to return to a group of partiers in another room of the house 12 Evidence at the trial revealed that she has been the victim of abuse by her husband and had been threatened to kill her when he got back from the party if she didn't kill him first Didn't fit the traditional doctrine of self-defense, because it was not in immediate harm Advantages of BWS The court's decision corrected the law's prior gender bias in self-defense, because her defense was not immediate defense, the court expanded its understanding of imminent harm in the context of gendered violence They tested reasonableness has been based on male to male violence, but the introduction of BWS helped the courts to understand gendered violence They perceived her threat differently than they would normally for a woman who had not been abused Disadvantages of BWS Could have negative consequences for women if it led to the view that women who live in domestic relationships marked by violence suffered from a syndrome and were in turn pathological BWS was supposed to explain why women in abusive relationships might fear for their life when not in an immediate danger but because BWS provides a medicalized framework, many feminist crims do not believe it could correct the male-cenderedness of the law Feminists prefer that women's social conduct, including offender behaviour to be explained in terms of social inewuality or structural power imbalance between men and women BWS failed to incorporate gendered power relations into its defense framework, it does not correct gender bias law - it syndromization of women's experiences of violence and in turn, does not recognize women's needs Medicalization and syndromization Refers to a process in which women's social conduct is explained or excused in medical or psychological terms 13 Green Criminology Used to refer not to climate change, species extinction and habitat destruction, but to local urban crime problems 1. Traditional Criminology Perspectives of Green Criminology and property defined like crimes against persons challenge like devise control systems to enforce laws and punish offenders post facto sanctions, fines, and the rationale of the deterrent effect 2. Social Process Approach Green crimes constructions, like other crimes Challenge to understand why some behaviours are criminalized and other are not - certain pesticides and animal feed additives 3. Critical/Skeptical Criminology ill equipped to address environmental crimes Many environmentally damaging behaviors both legal and culturally valued State Crime Refers to those offences and violations committed by the state and its agent official not only criminal acts committed by state agents acting on the orders of or on behalf of the state, but also those criminal acts committed by officials over which the state fails to exercise appropriate control or diligence Neglect of such crimes can be viewed as a result of criminology's close relationship with the state and its agenda Thus the state is seen as the primary actor in the fight against crime, rather than a potential perpetrator of crime - therefore, criminology takes for granted that crime is that which is criminalized by the state, the state itself disappears from criminological view, since it is an unique position to exclude its own harmful behaviour from the array of legally prohibited actions 14 State Crimes: Forms 1) those crimes committed by state officials in the course of securing or maintaining political control of the state and its apparatus - fixing of elections 2) Those crimes committed on behalf of the state by the military and police forces and by paramilitary organizations that are supported by the state - US-led invasion of Iraq 3) Economic crimes committed by the state, either acting alone or in partnership with business corporations - state-corporate crimes - the illegal expropriation of land or other material resources from their rightful owners White Collar Crime SUTHERLAND: WCC A crime committed by a person of respectability and high wished to challenge the overwhelming criminological and law enforcement focus upon street crimes and other offences committed by those from lower socio-economic groups Claimed that dominant understanding of crime problem significantly misrepresented the reality of offending, and that in fact, criminal activity was widespread amongst the more privileged and supposedly respectable members of society Sutherland Continued white collar crime offenses not only those activities that are prohibited by criminal law, but also those that fall afoul of civil and administrative law WWC activities are not subject to any legal regulation, but are still seen as social harm Felt that laws and influences of the more powerful members of society - this reason that many harmful behavior by businesses and corporations are allowed to go unchecked - the ways in which the privileged were able evade condemnation and punishment for their crimes Suggested that not only the position of high trust that offer opportunities for crime, and that almost all people are potentially able to exploit their occupational position in this way 15 Penal Abolitionism A movement oriented towards radical change in the spheres of criminal justice and penal policy - it is the critique of the criminal justice and penal systems with particular attention being given to the use of imprisonment deconstructionist impulse: a desire to expose to challenge official, conventional thinking on matters of crime and justice and ultimately to see the abolition of extant state mechanism of control and domination Abolitionist Argument Imprisonment is a punitive response that deflects attention away from the social circumstances and experiences that lead to offending in the first place Is the culmination of social control and judicial processes that discriminate on the bases of class and race - the criminal justice system concentrates on the crimes of the powerless rather than the crimes of the powerful Does not provide an appropriate setting for rehabilitation, or abolitionists put it, dispute settlement and the integration of the offender into society - contrarily, imprisonment exacerbates social exclusion and reduces the likelihood of successful reintegration into society - reflected in high rares of recidivism May remove an individual from society and thus the opportunity to offending, for example, violence and illicit drug use occurs in prisons Places the offender into a brutal and brutalizing enclosed society, one where are countless opportunities to learn new criminal skills and join new criminal networks Increases rather than reduces feelings of anger, resentment, humiliation, frustration and alienation 16