Criminal Justice & Criminology Quiz

• First Midterm for Springs 2025

Sample Questions

• Essential elements of a crime include Actus Reus(the guilty act), Mens Rea(the guilty mind), Harm, and Concurrence(the coexistence of act and intent).
• Victim is not one of the essential elements of a crime.
• The main components of the Criminal Justice System include Law Enforcement, Corrections, and the Judiciary(Courts).
• Legislature (Law-making body) is not a main component of the Criminal Justice System.
• The Wedding Cake Model explains how media does not reflect justice system cases adequately.

Criminal Justice vs Criminology

• Criminology focuses on criminal behavior.
• Criminal Justice examines practical and policy responses to crime.

Explaining Juvenile Delinquency

• Many original criminological studies used to test theories were juvenile delinquency studies.
• Labeling behaviors as criminal/delinquent is socially constructed.
• The application of criminological theories can vary between adult and juvenile cases.

Criminal Justice System Components

• Three main components are Law enforcement (Police), Courts, and Corrections.

Police

• Enforce laws, maintain order, provide protection services, and have a monopoly over legitimate violence.

Courts

• Courts are responsible for determining guilt and punishment through sentencing, judges, prosecutors, and lawyers.

Corrections

• Corrections supervises and counsels convicted offenders, prevents future crime, and protects the public.

The Juvenile Justice System

• The Juvenile Justice System is similar to the adult system in that Discretion applies for both.
• Involves cases involving juvenile offenders.
• Juvenile courts, detention, and correction agencies all exist for juveniles and are adjoined to adult corrections agencies.

The Justice Process

• The process is composed of investigation, arrest, and booking.
• The initial appearance involves a magistrate who notifies charges, rights, and bail decisions.
• Preliminary hearing may occur.
• Probable cause occurs when a crime is committed by the suspect.
• Charges may be dismissed or a trial scheduled.
• A grand jury or information is presented where a prosecutor seeks indictment.
• Arraignment occurs after the indictment, where defendant is notified of charges and pleads guilty/not guilty.
• Trial: 10% of the time, requires proof beyond reasonable doubt.
• Judge sentences through incarceration, probation, fines, restitution, or death penalty.
• Appeals go to an appellate court, which can accept or reject.
• Sanction: the delivery of a sentence, such as prison vs jail (one year minimum).
• Release occurs after complete sanction/pardoning/parole/appealing conviction/acquittal
• Cases may not always flow from stage to stage and may drop at any point.
• Specific jurisdictions determine guidelines for the justice process.
• Juvenile justice differs from adult justice depending on case nature.
• Case types influence how they are processed.

Crime Control and Due Process Models

• Herbert Packer (1968) theorized justice occurs through one of two models, described in The Limits of the Criminal Sanction.
• Model 1: Crime control aims for efficiency, success, and cost benefit; processes cases on an assembly line.
• Model 2: Due process protects human rights and avoids mistakes through an obstacle course.

Why CJ is Political:

• Politics seeks a share of power and influence in its distribution.
• Power achieves goals regardless of resistance, through resources and social means
• Laws are political and depend on government officials.
• It is affected by politics of budgeting, appointed politicians, levels of government, and the politicization of crimes.
• Rights and crime obsession are also political.

Criminal Justice vs Criminology

• Criminal Justice focuses on efficiency.
• Criminology focuses on understanding.

Legal Elements of Criminality

• Scholars identify five: commission of an act, criminal intent, concurrence, causation, and harm.
• A defense is a legal strategy to avoid a guilty verdict, ex: alibi.
• Intent is a complicated legal concept that requires the offender to have intended to commit a criminal act to be considered a crime.
• Four types of intent: general, specific, transferred, and criminal negligence.

Example Scenario

• Judy, 34 speeds and kills another.
• As a result of driving fast and running the light

Crime as Juvenile Delinquency

• Laws differ for juveniles and adults.
• Most states define juveniles as anyone under 18.
• Status offenses are illegal for juveniles, but not adults, and can include: running away, drinking, smoking, and skipping school.

Social Perspectives of Crime

• Some focus on how society creates definitions of appropriate and inappropriate behavior
• Crime can be the violation of norms, an ethical violation, a social construction, or a social justice issue.

Crime as a Violation of Norms

• Norms determine accepted standards of behavior; deviance refers to norms violations and deviants break norms.
• Mores are norms based on moral beliefs.
• Folkways are norms based on rituals/customs.

Crime as an Ethical Violation

• Ethics are moral principles determining right from wrong.
• Ethical code violations can also be crimes.
• Natural law, a moral law, defines natural crimes as unethical- evil crimes such as murder, rape, and incest known as mala in se.

Crime as a Social Construction

• Society decides which behaviors constitute crime.
• Social constructionists believe political and social factors influence decisions to label acts as criminal.
• Social constructionists define some acts as deviant or illegal.

Crime as a Social Justice Issue

• Social justice is the belief in fairness and equality among all human beings.
• Social problems include homelessness, poverty, and mental health issues.
• Social justice advocates crime must be addressed by addressing social issues first.

Behavioral Perspectives of Crime

• The focus is on specific individual actions, harm of actions, and whether they can be considered crimes.
• Crime can be classified as harmful conduct.

Criminal Justice and Survey Research

• Researchers ask a series of questions to draw conclusions from the responses.
• Surveys can occur face-to-face, by telephone, via mail, electronically, or on-site.
• Surveyed persons can be active offenders, incarcerated offenders, victims, criminal justice practitioners, members of the public, or criminal justice officials.

Measuring the Extent of Crime

• Explains crime/demographic trends, understands cultures/subcultures, measures quality of life, promotes prevention strategies, and develops evidence-based policies.

Strategies Used to Measure Amount of Crime

• Data assists in specific crime prevention and intervention strategy development.
• Three main strategies include UCR, NCVS, and NIBRS.

Uniform Crime Report (UCR)

• The UCR was created in 1930 and is administered by the FBI.
• It collects data about crimes reported to police from over 18,000 US police departments.
• Findings are published annually in "Crime in the United States."

UCR cont.

• UCR categorizes Part I (serious) and Part II (not serious) offenses.
• Part I includes criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft, motor vehicle threat, and arson (added in 1979).
• The UCR collects data on crime rates, rates of cleared crimes, suspect demographics, and crime trends for Part I offenses.
• Critics say crimes go unreported, mischaracterizing the overall crime problem.
• Critics say law enforcement misreports data.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

• The NCVS collects information directly from U.S. residents to assess their victimization experiences.
• Created in 1972 after the Johnson Commission called for this data collection to understand the "dark figure of crime."
• Funded by Bureau of Justice Statistics, data collected by US Census Bureau.

The National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

• The NIBRS is administered by the FBI.
• Created late 1980s
• The NIBRS lacks extensive agency participation.
• Captures information on broader range of offenses.

Crime Patterns

• Crime varies across age, region, race, gender, community, social class, and time.

Age/Crime

• Crime is a "young person's game."
• Crimes concentrated between ages 15-24, known as the age-crime curve.
• "Aging out" and “maturation hypothesis” are common phrases.
• Criminal career is a also tracked.

Age and Crime (cont.)

• Adolescent-limited offenders outgrow crime.
• Life-course persistent offenders continue crimes throughout life.

Region and Crime

• The South has the highest rates of violent crime, and is characterized by a "southern subculture of violence”.

Ethnicity/Race/Crime

• UCR data shows Blacks/African Americans are overrepresented in each offense type
• Systemic inequality may explain differences between Whites and minorities.
• Driving while black has been noted.

Gender/Crime

• Majority committed by males.
• Differences in offenses potentially result from chivalry, parenting, biological, and socialization hypotheses - accomplice and methodological explanations.

Communities/Crime

• Certain crimes more likely in certain communities.
• Drunk driving more common in rural areas.

Crime and Time

• Crime varies by time of day, day of week, year, and month.

Social Class and Crime

• Six reasons ties between class and can occur with stress from poverty, lower class values, violence, inequality leading to crime, inequality breeding treatment injustices, and poor research methodology.

Serious vs Not-so-Serious Felony vs Misdemeanor

• Felony crimes include murder, manslaughter, rape, kidnapping, grand theft, robbery, burglary, arson, conspiracy, and fraud.
• Misdemeanors include shoplifting, simple assault, harassment, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Violent Crime

• Violent crimes cause direct physical harm or threat of harm.
• Types include homicide, assault, violent sex crimes, and robbery.

Violent Crime: Homicide

• Homicide refers to the killing of one human being by another.
• Divided into degrees: first degree is premeditated/deliberate, and second degree is not planned but is intentional with felony homicides.
• Manslaughter classified as, voluntary and involuntary.
• Negligent homicide accidental killings offenders should know could cause death.

Violent Crime: Assault

• Common law previously differentiated assault and battery.
• Legal definitions don't distinguish the two; they are merged into one assault offense, separated by degrees, such as simple vs. aggravated assault.
• Guns routinely cause violence in various property crimes and violent ones.
• Family violence also happens, Data shows individuals get harmed from people they know more than strangers.
• Family violence examples are child abuse, child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, abusive behavior between partners, domestic and spousal abuse, partner and couple violence and violence as a Johnson theory, patriarchal terrorism, common couple violence, and stalking.
• Elder abuse is family violence via financial or physical exploitation.
• School violence -violence in a school setting
• Hate crime one gets targeted due to demographic or identity.
• Gang Violence also exists.

Violent Sex Crimes

• Refer to types of rape.
• Rape constitutes carnal knowledge forced against someone's will and without consent.
• Since 2012, it has been determined any bodily penetration without consent, child sexual abuse ,date or marital rape,
• Date rape involves drug or alcohol abuse .

Violent Crime: Robbery

• This is defined as property taken by force.
• Perpetrated by younger offenders.
• This has two classes of persons, the perpetrators and the victim.
• Examples, Market Dispute and urban settings.

Property Crimes

• Occur more often than violent crimes.
• They target physical property rather than a person.
• They include larceny-theft, shoplifting, identity theft, and plagiarism.
• Larceny-theft elements include taking someone else's property with intent to keep.
• States have different degrees.
• Shoplifting is larceny theft from a store.
• Identity theft involves stealing backgrounds.
• Plagiarism is theft of intellectual property.

More Property Crimes:

• Burglary is unlawful entry to commit a felony.
• Motor vehicle theft involves both.
• Arson is the intentional setting of a structure on fire.

Public Order Crimes

• Are victimless but classified as such due to harm to public order.
• Include alcohol-related crimes and public intoxication/underage drinking/drunk driving also.
• Includes also, decriminalization debates of narcotics and drug abuse.
• Summary offences exist also.

Crime within Complex Organizations

• The physical/nonphysical illegal act committed within an organizational context furthering individual/organizational goals, independent of social status.
• They comprise white-collar crime, occupational corporate, state and organized crime.

Test your knowledge of criminal justice, criminology, and the legal elements of criminality. The quiz reviews legal strategies used by defendants and the relationship between juvenile and criminal justice systems. It also covers the role of magistrates and the arraignment process.