Demonic Perspective (Middle Ages, 1200-1600)

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Brief History of Criminology

• Demonic Perspective (Middle Ages, 1200-1600)
• Classical School (the late 1700s and the early
  1800s )
• Neo-classical school (emerged between 1880 and
  1920 and is still with us today)
• Positivism (the mid 1800s and early 1900s)
• Sociological Criminology (mid 1800s till now)

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The Underlying Logic
Atavism
Inability to Learn and Follow legal rules
Mental and Physical Inferiority
Criminal Behavior
Defective genes
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Sociological Theories of Crime

• Search for factors outside the individual
• Explains crime by reference to the institutional
  structure of society

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Research Methods in Criminology
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Research Methods in Criminology

• Experiments
• Field research
• Survey research
• Existing data research

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Classic Experiment
Study Population
Treatment
Experimental group
Control group
Outcome
Outcome
Compare Outcomes
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The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment
(1983)

• Police officers volunteering to take whatever
  action was dictated by a random system
  instruction in an envelope
• Three different instructions (1) arrest the
  suspect (2) separate or remove the suspect from
  the scene for 8 hours (3) advise and mediate

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Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment
Experimental group I Arrest O1 X1 O2 19
Experimental group II Separate O1 X2 O2 33
Control group Mediate O1 O2 37

• Victims have been interviewed every two weeks for
  the next 6 months, police records have been
  monitored as well
• Most influential policy experiment
• Arrest works more effectively in deterring
  domestic violence

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Field Study

•  A piece of research undertaken outside the
  laboratory or place of learning, usually in a
  natural environment or among the general public
• METHODS Observations and interviews

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Field studies

1. How to locate offenders? (e.g., drug dealers,
   rapists, burglars)
2. How to recruit offenders?

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Offenders behind bars
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Criminals behind bars

• Unsuccessful criminals
• Unskilled criminals
• Lacking access to nice criminal network
• Might not be honest

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How to locate active and not apprehended
criminals?

• Snowball sampling (chain of referrals)
• Researcher collects data on members of the target
  population she can locate, then asks them to help
  locate other members of that population.
• New cases are sampled until there is no
  additional information from new cases.

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Snowball Sampling
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How to locate active criminals?

• 1. Contact someone who is closest in the social
  structure to the offender (police officer,
  probation officer, judge, crime reporter, etc.)
  and ask to be introduced to the subject
• This option can be effective, but it also might
  arouse suspicion of offenders
• Research as a sting operation

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How to locate active criminals?

• Find an area where criminals might hang out
• Visit the area and made yourself familiar to the
  regular crowd of hangers-out
• Learn from them who the dealers are and where
  they work
• Construct friendships with offenders, if possible

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How to study rapists?

• How to locate rapists?
• How to recruit rapists for the study?

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Why do incarcerated offenders talk?

• Financial incentives
• Conversations with outsiders
• Change in setting/Pass time
• Curiosity
• Catharsis (let it all out without being judged)
• Helping the researcher
• Favor for trusted others
• Misunderstanding

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Example

• Extensive interviews with 114 male convicted
  rapists incarcerated in seven maximum- or
  medium-security prisons in Virginia
• For the purpose of determining the validity of
  the information obtained, the offenders accounts
  were cross-checked with police and victims
  version of the crime

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Two types of rapists

• Admitters - told essentially the same account of
  their crimes as police and victims did.
• Deniers their version of the crime differed
  significantly from police and victims' versions.

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Justifications of Deniers

1. Women as seductresses
2. Women mean yes when they say "no"
3. Most women eventually relax and enjoy it
4. Nice girls don't get raped
5. Guilty of a minor wrongdoing.

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Typical denier

• .When you take a woman out, woo her, then she
  says "no, I'm a nice girl," you have to use
  force. All men do this. She said "no" but it was
  a societal no, she wanted to be coaxed. All women
  say "no" when they mean "yes" but it's a societal
  no, so they won't have to feel responsible later.

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Typical Denier Women as seductresses

• This denier had broken into the victim's house
  and raped her at knifepoint.
• While he admitted to the breaking and entry, he
  claimed that the victim voluntarily removed her
  clothes and seduced him.

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Deniers Most Women Eventually Relax and Enjoy It

• Many of the rapists claimed that once the rape
  began, the victim relaxed and enjoyed it.
• Several men suggested that they had fulfilled
  their victims' dreams.

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Admitters Justifications

1. The use of Alcohol and Drugs
2. Emotional problems
3. Nice Guy Image

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Nice Guy Image

• It's different from anything else I've ever
  done. I feel more guilt about this. It's not
  consistent with me. When I talk about it, it's
  like being assaulted myself. 1 don't know why I
  did it, but once started, I got into it. Armed
  robbery was a way of life for me, but not rape. I
  feel like I wasn't being myself.

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Extreme example

• Even a young man, who raped his five victims at
  gun point and then stabbed them to death,
  attempted to improve his image by stating
• I was always gentle and kind until I started to
  kill them. And the killing was always sudden, so
  they wouldn't know it was coming.

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Conclusion

• This research shows that many men justify rape by
  promulgating the myth that women both enjoy and
  are responsible for their own rape.

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USC Fratboy Email Calls Women Targets

• Note I will refer to females as targets. They
  arent actual people like us men. Consequently,
  giving them a certain name or distinction is
  pointless.
• http//jezebel.com/5779905/usc-frat-guys-email-exp
  lains-women-are-targets-not-actual-people-like-us-
  men

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Survey Research

• Survey is a series of questions asked of a number
  of people and designed to measure the behavior,
  attitudes, beliefs, values, and personality
  traits
• Based on sampling

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Statistics

• Source The National Crime Victimization Survey
  (NCVS)
• Ongoing since 1972, this survey of households
  interviews about 134,000 persons age 12 and older
  in 77,200 households each year about their
  victimizations from crime.