Criminology CM 1: Juvenile Justice

• Criminology CM 1

Juvenile Justice Philosophy

• The educational approach for minors prioritizes education over sanctions, focusing on prevention through corrective measures.
• Repression is reserved as a last resort when education fails.
• The management of minors involves three key areas: prevention, education, and, if necessary, repression.

Sentencing Minors (16+)

• A magistrate can impose an adult sentence on minors over 16, considering the offense's circumstances and the minor's personality.
• Strict conditions surround this decision, emphasizing its exceptional nature.

Perceptions of Punishment

• The idea minors "fear nothing" is incorrect.
• A three-year sentence for a minor may be halved, resulting in an 18-month sentence, considered a serious penalty.

Evolution of Juvenile Delinquency

• Offenses have shifted from material crimes linked to socio-economic factors to physical violence.
• There is growing concern about gangs, including all-female groups, in cities like Paris, Lyon, and Marseille.

Juvenile Justice Reforms

• Justice ministers regularly promote reforms to address juvenile delinquents.
• The 2019 reform, implemented in September 2021, aims to align juvenile justice with societal changes and concerns about juvenile delinquency.

Protecting Vulnerable Adults

• Vulnerable adults receive special consideration in criminal law, due to factors like age, physical or mental disabilities, or precarious social situations (especially for foreigners).
• Specific groups, such as the elderly, are prone to certain crimes like scams, while individuals with disabilities are vulnerable to exploitation.

Forensic Science Focus

• The primary goal of forensic science is to gather evidence that identifies offenders.
• This discipline uses a structured approach to reveal those responsible for criminal acts and study their treatment for trial.
• Forensic science is essential to the judicial process, as it ensures the collection and analysis of necessary evidence.

Criminology Defined

• Criminology is a discipline that uses various perspectives to study crime, criminals, and related phenomena.
• Due to the nature of criminology, it involves a multidisciplinary approach.
• Analyzing offenses like rape involves legal, procedural, psychological, sociological, and victimological perspectives.
• Each field enriches the analysis by providing added insights.

Challenges in Criminology

• A key difficulty lies in the multitude of viewpoints.
• Conflicting interpretations of concepts can emerge across disciplines.
• "Sexual assault" can include distinct legal classifications.
• Studying criminal events with various methods makes the work challenging.

Structuring Criminology

• Criminology is divided by the study of either the criminal act itself or the person who committed it, the criminal.
• There is no universally accepted definition of criminology, though definitions vary among researchers and schools of thought.

Focus on Victims

• Victimology focuses on crime victims.
• It helps to comprehend the suffering of victims and gain insight into criminals.
• Victimology is seen by some as a sub-discipline within criminology.
• Medicine helps both victims and criminals based on the study's goals.

Criminality Over Time

• Criminology emerged in the 19th century, unlike sub-disciplines such as victimology, which appeared in the 1950s, and progressed in the 1980s.

The Italian School

• Modern criminology started with the Italian School, especially Cesare Lombroso, Raffaele Garofalo, and Enrico Ferri.
• These pioneers, mainly doctors, based their criminological views on medicine.
• The medical influences impacted early legal ideas in criminology.
• Cesare Lombroso is well-known but controversial among criminologists.
• Some call his work "scientific deception".
• Although his "born criminal" thesis was interesting for its time because of the scientific approach, it is now disputed.

Lombroso's Theories

• Lombroso used a scientific method to build his theory.
• In his book "Criminal Man", he researched about 350 delinquent skulls and their physical traits.
• He looked for ties between a person's appearance and criminal tendencies, finding features like eye spacing or ear shapes.
• This search for a criminal "morphotype" fit into a biology of crime.

Questionable observations

• Many archaic and disputed observations can be explained by social contexts of the time.
• He linked tattoos and crime, since tattoos were tied to criminals, prostitutes, and sailors.
• Tattoos were a criminal ID, with meanings such as: spider web meant time in prison, a watch with no hands being time passing, empty tear dropping meaning attempted murder, and a filled tear drop meaning an act of murder.
• Today, tattoos do not have the same meaning.

The Evolution of Tattoos

• The meaning of tattoos has evolved through the years.
• What used to be seen as a criminal marker is now common among all social classes.
• Observations show attempts to explain crime with biology and society, although these theories no longer apply.

The Use of Tattoos in Identifying Criminals

• Tattoos used to help pinpoint criminals.
• As they realized marking themselves tattoos could make them easier to find, criminals avoided it.
• This steered criticism toward ideas that link tattoos and crime.
• Scientist Edmond Locard wrote tattoo and crime links were wrong, because a tattooed person was not an offender.

Biometric Data

• Tattoos remain an element of identification.
• During arrests or detentions, authorities gather biometrics like fingerprints, genetics, and body traits, including tattoos.
• The automatic reporting system Gaspard NG is used for this.
• The stored information can be used to match other reports.

Perceptions of criminals

• Thoughts about criminals are often wrong.
• We can be mistaken about who can be a criminal, based on media portrayals.
• On the other hand, we relate to victims easier, since we know we can be victims.
• Those who are women connect with victims of street stalking, because they have experienced or fear it.

Fascination with Criminals

• Criminals draw interest, even though they are condemned.
• The dual sentiment between moral rejection and curiosity explains why criminals stay an area of analysis and interest.