PART I

Understanding
Criminology

riminology is the scientific study of the making of laws, the breaking

of laws, and societys reaction to the breaking of laws. Sometimes
these laws are arrived at by the consensus of most members of a community; sometimes they are imposed by those in power. Communities
have grown in size, from village to world, and the threats to communities
have grown accordingly. World-level threats necessitated that criminological research and crime prevention strategies become globalized. Nationally and internationally, criminological research has become influential in
policy making (Chapter 1).
Criminologists have adopted methods of study from all the social and
behavioral sciences. Like all other scientists, criminologists measure.
They assess crime over time and place, and they measure the characteristics of criminals and crimes (Chapter 2).
Throughout history, thinkers and rulers have written about crime and
criminals and the control of crime. Yet the term criminology is little more
than a century old, and the subject has been of scientific interest for only
two centuries. Two schools of thought contributed to modern criminology:
the classical school, associated predominantly with Cesare Beccaria (eighteenth century), which focused on crime, and the positivist school, associated with Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, and Raffaele Garofalo (nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries), which focused on criminals (Chapter 3). Contemporary American criminology owes much to these European roots.

CHAPTER

The Reach of Criminology

The Reach of Criminology
Terrorism
Illicit Drug Trafficking
Money Laundering
Infiltration of Legal Business
Computer Crime
Illicit Arms Trafficking
Traffic in Persons
Destruction of Cultural Property
What Is Criminology?
The Making of Laws
Deviance
The Concept of Crime
The Consensus and Conflict
Views of Law and Crime

REVIEW
CRIMINOLOGY & PUBLIC POLICY
YOU BE THE CRIMINOLOGIST
KEY TERMS
Boxes
From the Pages of The New
York Times: Financing
Terrorism through Legitimate
Fronts
Window to the World: Russians
and Americans Share a Crime
Problem
Of Immediate Concern: Vipers
in the Desert

The Breaking of Laws

Societys Reaction to the Breaking
of Laws
Criminology and the Criminal
Justice System
The Global Approach to the
Breaking of Laws
Research Informs Policy

Special Features
Crime Surfing
Did You Know?

KEY TERMS
conflict model
consensus model
crime
criminal justice system
criminologist
criminology
deviance
social norms

Our world post9/11:

Members of the
National Guard and
other military personnel
join federal, state, and
local law enforcement in
patroling bus stations,
railway stations, and
airports.

riminologists study
crime from a broad
scientific perspective in an
effort to understand its
causes and, ultimately, its
prevention. They are not, as
some TV programs suggest,
the scientists who engage in
crime scene investigations.
(The people who do that are
called criminalists or
forensic scientists.)
Largely as a result of
media portrayal, a second
popular misunderstanding is
that criminologists are only, or
at least primarily, interested in
street crime as it affects our
lives and our fears. It is true
that criminologists are very
much concerned with
murders, robberies,
burglaries, and thefts. But

consider for a moment that

while all of Americas thieves
(excluding automobile thieves)
cause us a loss of $4 billion
annually, a single rogue Wall
Street trader may cause that
much of a loss all by himself.
So criminologists must extend
their focus beyond street
crime and include other
criminal activities that may be
less visible but cause far
greater harm to human beings
all over the globe.
A third popular
misconception is that crime is
a local matter, to be handled
by the local police force or
the sheriffs department. That
is far from correct. The most
dangerous types of crime
reach beyond local

boundaries and may even be

global, threatening all humans
on earth (e.g., terrorism).
A fourth misconception is
that criminologists examine
only crimes, as defined in
penal codes, and only
criminals convicted of such
crimes. This notion, held half
a century ago by some
notable criminologists, has
given way to an expansionist
view which includes in the
criminologists domain not
only crime as defined in penal
codes, but all other forms of
deviance which once have
been, or easily could become,
or currently incorporate, parts
of existing criminal definitions.
Once again, terrorism is an
example.1

THE REACH OF
CRIMINOLOGY
911 is the number Americans call when they
need police protection from a criminal attack or
similar emergency. In a very real sense, then,
911 starts the process of criminal justice and its
inquiry about perpetrators and victims, causes
and motivations, offenses and defenses. 911,
therefore, is a good symbol with which to start
a courseor a bookdedicated to criminology.
In 2001, 911 took on yet another meaning, not
only to the worldwide public, in general, but to
criminologists, in particular.
It was in the morning hours of September 11,
2001, that four airliners were diverted in flight,
by perpetrators who had subdued or killed the
crews. Two of the jumbo jets crashed into the
New York World Trade Center. The third plane
smashed into the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.
The fourth plane, apparently headed toward
Washington, D.C., crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, as a result of passengers trying to overpower the hijackers.
The World Trade Center collapsed within
the hour; the Pentagon was in flames; all passengers and crews of the airplanes died in fiery
crashes. The death toll was nearly three thousand. It was the worst criminally caused catastrophe in American history. To this day neither
the American economy nor the American psyche has recovered from this act of terrorism. Terrorism! Is it a crime?

Terrorism
In the federal and state penal codes there are a
number of crimes referring to terrorism. The
federal penal code has listed several new crimes
regarding terrorism, including acts of terrorism
transcending national boundaries, use of certain weapons of mass destruction, and financial transactions to finance terrorism. Several
states have adopted similar legislation, many of
which are based on global United Nations conventions.2 Few of these laws define terrorism as
such. Most incorporate crimes which terrorists
are likely to commit in furtherance of their objective, such as murder, arson, kidnapping, and
so on. The U.S. Department of State has defined
terrorism as the premeditated, politically

CHAPTER 1

The Reach of Criminology

motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or

clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.3 Most definitions imply the
use of violence or other significant forms of
criminality to achieve the perpetrators purpose.
We are proposing our own definition: The use
or threat of violence directed at people or governments to punish them for past action and/or
to bring about a change of policy which is to the
terrorists liking. This concept incorporates
many forms of criminal conduct and is therefore
of prime significance to criminologists.
There is a second and equally important
reason for criminologists to study terrorism: It
is at the hub of many forms of criminality which
feed or are fed by terrorism. This can best be
demonstrated by a wheel, the hub of which is
terrorism. The seven spokes of the wheel are the
seven forms of transnational criminality (see
Chapter 14) that are directly relevant to terrorism, either because they support it or because
they are a consequence or by-product of it. Let
us continue our search for the reach of criminology by examining these seven categories.
(See Figure 1.1.)

Illicit Drug Trafficking

Terrorists need money for their operations. The
drug trade provides easy access to large funds.
The Taliban have financed their terrorist activities from the vast opium production of
Afghanistan. Terrorists in Colombia derive
their funds from the coca trade of Latin America. And that holds true for just about every
other terrorist group around the world. Globally, there is about $500 billion in dirty drug
money available for financing illegal activities,
including terrorism. United Kingdom Prime
Minister Tony Blair, in a speech at a party conference on February 10, 2001, bluntly declared:
the arms the Taliban are buying today are paid
for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets. That is another
part of their regime we should seek to destroy.4
While the war on drugs had received widespread attention in the media and on the part of
government officials and criminologists, the
war against terrorism has virtually replaced
the prior emphasis. This is particularly disturb-

PART I

Understanding Criminology

FIGURE 1.1 Wheel of terrorism.

Illi
c it

kin

on
ey
l

au

dru g t r a ffic

c
ru
est
T h eft ( d

tio

n ):

c u lt

ng
eri
d
n

trationing le
Infil
ga
l
ess
sin
bu

ural

Terrorism

om
p

s tr
a ffic king

rs

ar

pe

me
cri
er
ut

in
Tr a f
fic k i n g

on

Illi

cit

ing when it is becoming ever more clear that the

drug trade nurtures terrorism and fosters the
growth of international criminal organizations.5

Money Laundering
Dirty (illegally obtained) money cannot be
spent freely. While there is evidence that terrorist
weapons have been obtained by direct exchange
for drugs, or for dirty money, most expenditures by terrorists are for goods or services obtained on the free market, which demands clean
cash. Hence, much of the dirty money must be
laundered in a vast criminal enterprise called
money laundering. Of course, it is not just
drug money that requires laundering. All illegally obtained funds, for example, bribery, black
market activities, corruption, extortion, and
embezzlement, require laundering. Thus, money
laundering is an activity aimed at making illegally obtained and, therefore, untaxed funds ap-

pear legitimate. Usually this is done by depositing such funds in numbered but unnamed (secret) accounts in banks of a number of countries
where that is still possible. From there the funds
are rapidly transferred elsewhere, and yet again,
until it becomes impossible to trace them to the
criminal activity which created them.6 Despite
increased international cooperation to curb
money laundering, it appears that terrorism has
benefited greatly from this criminal activity.

Infiltration of Legal Business

Dirty money, once laundered, can be used freely,
for example, to buy or establish a legitimate business. By way of example, police in Hamburg, Germany, discovered that the innocent-looking import-export firms Tatari Design and Tatex Trading
G.m.b.H. were not so innocent at all. They had
been established as fronts for Al Qaeda operatives
to smuggle money, agents, and supplies.7 Of

CHAPTER 1

Money laundering allows crime to pay by permitting criminals

to hide and legitimize proceeds derived from illegal activities.
According to one recent estimate, worldwide money
laundering activity amounts to roughly $1 trillion a year.

The Reach of Criminology

course, it is just as likely that laundered funds,

rather than directly financing terrorist enterprises,
will be invested in businesses controlled by organized crime, like trash hauling, construction,
seafood, or investment banking.8

Computer Crime
Cyberspace is there for everyone to useor to
abuse, and these abuses are increasingly being
discovered and, indeed, legislated as crime.
Above all there is the abuse of cyberspace for
money laundering, ultimately to support terrorist groups.9 Beyond that, there is the potential of
cyberattacks on the national security of the
Source: U.S. State Department, The Fight against Money Laundering,
Economic Perspectives 6(2), May 2001, http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/
0501/ijee/ijee0501.htm.

HE
O
PAGES

H
FROM T OF

Financing
Terrorism through
Legitimate Fronts
Since the attacks on September 11, the
United States has been busy imposing
new regulations to thwart moneylaundering opportunities. But a report
by the United Nations issued in
September 2002 indicates that Al Qaeda
and other terrorist groups still have
access to between $30 million and
$300 millioncontrolled by ostensibly
legitimate businesses.
One of the primary goals of the
United States and its allies is to disrupt
the flow of money to Al Qaeda and its
operatives around the world, but its no
easy task. Many suspected front companies are in countries with few regulations
and can pack up and vanish overnight.
Take Maram, for examplea company set up in Istanbul as a travel
agency and import-export business.
One of its principal owners, Mamdouh
Mahmud Salim, had a history of mov-

ing money and shopping for weapons

for Al Qaeda. A few months after Salim
created Maram, he transferred shares in
the company to two men American authorities have identified as members of
Al Qaeda. When Salim was arrested in
connection with the 1998 bombings of
the American Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, the company cleaned out its
offices overnight and disappeared.
Although the United Nations report
said the terror network was alive and
well and still had access to huge sums
of money, many American officials disagreed, stating that arrests made worldwideand the freezing of $112 million
in suspected terrorist fundshad
weakened the organization.
Some European banking officials,
however, believe that Al Qaeda had
prepared for the possibility of limited
access to cash by shifting its assets
into diamonds and gold before September 11. The real problem for the
Americans is not freezing bank accounts, a Swiss banking regulator

stated. The biggest challenge is

stopping the unknown number of apparently legitimate businesses set up
to move money around the globe to
terrorists.
Source
Douglas Frantz, Qaedas Bankrolls;
Front Companies Said to Keep
Financing Terrorists, The New York
Times, Sept. 19, 2002.
Questions for Discussion
1. What steps, if any, might be taken
to stop the flow of money from legitimate businesses to terrorist or
criminal organizations? And how
can this be accomplished in our increasingly global economy?
2. At the time Mamdouh Mahmud
Salim opened his Maram company,
he was already suspected of having
ties with Al Qaeda. Should he have
been prevented from opening another business?

PART I

Understanding Criminology

Internet cafes, like this one in Istanbul, Turkey, can be found in most cities of the
world. Without them, transnational crime would be difficult to conduct.

United States. The security community generally expects terrorists to launch major strikes
through computer networks in the immediate
future.10 Al Qaeda is deemed to possess the capacity for these major cyberattacks.11

Illicit Arms Trafficking

The wars of the past have provided terrorists
of the pastand the presentwith surplus
and remnant arms and munitions to fight for
their causes. The market in small arms is vast
and mostly clandestine. The novelty, however, is the market for weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, bacteriological, and chemical. There is considerable evidence that
nuclear materials have been diverted from
now-defunct former Soviet installations. It is
feared that rogue states which have traditionally supported terrorism are seeking these
materials for the creation of weapons of mass
destruction. In March 2003, the United States
found itself at war with one of these states,
Iraq, over the issue of United Nations inspections of suspected Iraqi nuclear arms facilities. Criminologists may now have to consult
with weapons specialists in their efforts to
help find solutions.

Traffic in Persons
Smuggling would-be illegal migrants from lessdesirable homelands to more promising lands of
opportunity has become a huge criminal enterprise, involving millions of human beings, billions in funds paid to smugglers, and the loss of
a great number of innocent lives. Many of the
countries of destination fear the growth of immigrant communities that might be a terrorist
haven, like the refugee camps of Palestine. Even
greater is the fear that terrorist organizations deliberately infiltrate their members into immigrant populations. To their dismay, for example,
Italian law enforcement authorities have learned
that among the waves of illegal immigrants
washing ashore in Sicily, there are increasing
numbers of persons linked to terrorist organizations.12 There are also masses of illegal aliens
who have moved from Iran, Iraq, and Turkey
across the Aegean Seainto Northern Africa
where they become vulnerable recruits for terrorist activities.

Destruction of Cultural Property

Lenins terrorists became infamous for their effort
to destroy the evidence of a culture past: Christian churches were destroyed. Hitlers terrorists

CHAPTER 1

THE REACH OF CRIMINOLOGY

Sailors of a Spanish naval vesselpart of an international armadaboarding an

unflagged ship, the Sosan, 600 miles off the coast of East Africa, after the captain
refused to identify the vessel. Initially, the North Korean master of the vessel claimed
she was carrying cement. The Spanish search revealed 15 missiles and other
sophisticated weaponry.

burned down the synagogues of Germany and

every other cultural symbol, especially literature, art, and music deemed inconsistent with
the new culture they wanted to impose. The
Taliban took delight in firing artillery shells into
two ancient statues of Buddha, the largest in the
worldreducing them to rubble. And when the
911 terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center,
they not only eradicated a symbol of American
trade leadership, but also a beautiful, unique
structure of American architecture. Terrorists,
especially those with millennial goals, or of religious or political extremism, seek to destroy
past cultures and to impose their own vision of
culture.
We have completed our examination of the
hub and the seven spokes of our criminological
wheel. These represent terrorism and 7 other
forms of criminality which support or are the
product of terrorism. These 8 forms of criminality are part of a group of 18 which the United Nations has defined as transnational criminality.
Not crimes by themselves, but rather a mixture
of other crimes, they all have in common that

they transcend national boundaries, affecting

several nations, and therefore are hard to deal
with by just one nation. (We shall return to
transnational criminality in Chapter 14 where we
will discuss the remaining 10 forms.)
Our effort to demonstrate the reach of
criminology has not yet been completed. As
any exposure to todays media will tell you,
there is a competition for attention among
those who deem terrorism to be the principal
national problem and those pointing to our
lagging economy. And why? Democrats and
Republicans might give you differing answers,
but all agree that the collapse of a whole series
of world-leading financial institutions lies at
the root of investors lack of confidence in the
market, thus accounting for the markets decline. And what explains this sudden, staggering series of collapses among enterprises? Corporate giants, like Enron, World Com,
Adelphi, Chevron Texaco, Tyco, and many others, have become bankrupt or are in serious financial straits because management has criminally deceived their shareholders, business

PART I

UNDERSTANDING CRIMINOLOGY

partners, the government, and the public. Billions of dollars have been embezzled, stolen,
illegally transferred, and withheld from tax
authorities.13 You will find more on this topic
in Chapter 12.
By this time, you may be asking: Is there no
limit to the reach of criminological inquiry?
There is not, since every human activity is capable of abusive action, thus requiring criminological scrutiny. Not even the ocean is the limit.
It is the oceans, covering nearly three quarters
of the worlds surface, which make life on earth
possible. Yet the oceans are being threatened by
many types of criminality, of which the most
deadly is pollution. In earlier editions of this
book we had discussed the case of the supertanker Exxon Valdez, which negligently had ruptured her hull in Alaska waters, spilling eleven
million gallons of crude oil. This caused the
greatest environmental disaster North America
had known. At the time we had expressed our
hope that this criminally caused disaster would
lead to greater efforts to prevent recurrences.
But no. Oil spill disasters that should have been
prevented have occurred with heightening reg-

ularity, off the coasts of China, South Africa, the

Galapagos Islands, the United States, American
Samoa, Denmark, Thailand, Brazil, Finland,
Germany, the Netherlands, and Vietnam,
among others.14 This criminality, destroying the
environment, is called ecocide. There is yet
another task for criminologists.
As far as the reach of criminology is concerned, do not be deceived by the media and
their symbiotic relationship with legislatures.
Todays focus of the media on a given crime
problem is no indication of the extent of criminologys tasks. In the 1960s the emphasis was
on juvenile delinquency; in the 1970s attention
turned to street crime in general and drugs, in
particular, which led, in the 1980s, to a focus on
prison overcrowding, on the one hand, and target hardening, on the other. Then, in the 1990s,
more attention was being paid to foreign influences on our crime rates, in the wake of globalization. Domestic (school shootings) and foreign violence along with terrorism dictated the
market for ideas, along with the competing attention on computer, white collar, and corporate criminality. Today, well into the first decade

A gaping hole in the mountain is all that is left of Buddhisms most prized religious
symbols: the colossal Buddhas of Afghanistanpurposefully destroyed by Taliban
artillery.

W indow to theWorld

10
10

CHAPTER
CHAPTER
1 THE
1
REACH
The Reach
OF
CRIMINOLOGY
of Criminology
Russians and Americans
Share
a Crime
Problem

Despite many differences, Americans

and Russians had one thing in common:
freedom from terrorism at home. This
commonality was shattered for Americans on February 26, 1993, when a
bomb tore a huge hole in the World
Trade Center (WTC) in New York City,
killing 6 people. Russians were awakened to the reality of terrorism on August 31, 1999, when a bomb exploded at
Moscows upscale Manezh shopping
center near the Kremlin, killing 1 person
and injuring 40. So, once again, Americans and Russians have something in
common: domestic terrorism and the
fear that goes with it. In America, the
WTC terrorist attack was followed by the
Oklahoma City bombing, on April 19,
1995, which killed 168 people, and the
Olympic Park bomb explosion in Atlanta,
Georgia, on July 30, 1996, which killed
1 person and injured many. And then
came the shock of the 911 disaster that
took almost 3,000 lives. Of course,
Americans have been victimized by terrorist attacks outside the country, including, among many others:
The destruction of Pan Am flight 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988
(270 dead).
The destruction of a U.S. military
residence in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
in 1996 (19 dead, many injured).
The destruction of the U.S.
embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and

Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998

(224 dead, 4,300 injured).
Russians suffered five brutal terrorist
attacks within the span of 3 weeks:
1. August 31, 1999. Manezh Shopping
Center, near the Kremlin, Moscow
(1 killed, 40 injured).
2. September 4, 1999. Dagestan, Russia (64 killed).
3. September 9, 1999. Moscow apartment building (94 killed).
4. September 13, 1999. Moscow
apartment building (118 killed).
5. September 16, 1999. Volgodansk,
Russia, apartment building
(18 killed).
There was a time when terrorism
could be categorized in terms of
political versus profit motive, foreign
versus domestic, and so on. These lines
have become blurred, and the profit
motive seems to have disappeared.
While there may still be a domestic
form of terrorism, such as the terrorism
perpetrated by fanatics and cultlike
private militias who see the government
as an enemy, most terrorism appears to
have an international base and is
directed against people and their
governments. In particular, Islamic
fanatic fundamentalist terrorists are
increasingly identified with attacks
against U.S. and Russian targets.
There also was a time when
terrorists enjoyed the support, both

of the twenty-first century, it is clear that these

problems demand more of criminology than it
is capable of delivering as yet. The principal
crime problems are totally globalized. Criminology has to become equally globalized.
Seemingly we have neglected street crimes
and delinquency in this survey of the reach of
criminology. These topics are, and will remain, a
major focus of criminologistsin competition
with all the other forms of criminality to which we
have alluded. Now that you are acquainted with
the reach, or expanse, of criminology, we next introduce you to what this discipline is all about.

10

Rescue workers search for survivors at the

collapsed towers of the World Trade Center
after September 11, 2001.

WHAT IS CRIMINOLOGY?
In the Middle Ages human learning was commonly divided into four areas: law, medicine, theology, and philosophy. Universities typically had
four faculties, one for each of these fields. Imagine a young person in the year 1392100 years
before Columbus came ashore in America
knocking at the portal of a great university with
the request: I would like to study criminology.
Where do I sign up? A stare of disbelief would
have greeted the student, because the word had
not yet been coined. Cautiously the student

PART I

11

UNDERSTANDING CRIMINOLOGY

W indow to theWorld

financial and material, of some foreign

governments. That support no longer
exists. Very few countries can be
counted among the supporters of
current terrorist groups.
In 1993before most of the
terrorist events discussed here took
placea meeting of over 200
counterterrorism experts and Pentagon
officials concluded that the
proliferation of ethnic and regional
conflicts will spawn new radical
movements, leading inevitably to new
terrorism. Were going to see a global
increase in anarchy, said one Defense
Department analyst. Some at the
meeting worried about what they term
mass terrorism, like that spawned by
ethnic conflicts. Others were more
concerned about what they are calling
single-issue terrorism, attacks by
radicals who share no ideology, only
the hatred for a particular enemy.(1)
Americans have been very active in
bringing terrorists to justice. The WTC
and Oklahoma City terrorists have been
convicted. One Pan Am 103 terrorist
has been convicted in the Netherlands,
and air-strike retaliation has taken place
against the embassy terrorist groups in
Africa. Russian law enforcement
authorities have tentatively identified
some Chechen terrorists, although no
arrests have been made yet. But Russia

Terrorism against Russians at home. Explosion destroys buildings in Moscow,

September 9, 1999.

has conducted retaliatory air strikes

against Chechen targets.
Source
Douglas Waller, Counterterrorism:
Victim of Success? Newsweek, July 5,
1993, pp. 2223.
Questions for Discussion

itless number of specific crimes, individuals, and countries. How would

you devise a strategy to combat it at
the national and international levels?
2. How would you go about studying
trends in terrorism and the impact
of terrorist attacks on society and
the economy?

1. International terrorism is a criminal

activity that can involve an almost lim-

would explain: Well, Im interested in what

crime is, and how the law deals with criminals.
The university official might smile and say: The
right place for you to go is the law faculty. They
will teach you everything there is to know about
the law.
The student might feel discouraged.
Thats a lot more than I want to know about
the law. I really dont care about inheritance
laws and the law of contracts. I just want to
study all about crime and criminality. For example, why are certain actions considered
wrong or evil in the first place, and. . . . The

official would interrupt: Then you must go to

the faculty of theology. They know all there is
to know about good and evil, heaven and
hell. The student might persist. But could
they teach me what it is about the human body
and mind that could cause some people and
not others to commit crime? Oh, I see, the
official would say. You really should study
medicine. But, sir, medicine probably is
only part of what I need to know, and really
only part of medicine seems relevant. I want
to know all there is to know about. . . . And
then would come the officials last attempt to

11

12

CHAPTER 1

steer the student in the right direction: Go

and study philosophy. Theyll teach you all
there is to know!
For centuries, all the knowledge the universities recognized continued to be taught in these
four faculties. It was not until the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries that the natural and social
sciences became full-fledged disciplines. In fact,
the science of criminology has been known as
such for only a little more than a century.
In 1885 the Italian law professor Raffaele
Garofalo coined the term criminology (in Italian, criminologia).15 The French anthropologist
Paul Topinard used it for the first time in French
(criminologie) in 1887.16 Criminology aptly described and encompassed the scientific concern
with the phenomenon of crime. The term immediately gained acceptance all over the world, and
criminology became a subject taught at universities. Unlike their predecessors in 1392or even
in 1892todays entering students will find that
teaching and learning are distributed among
20 or 30 disciplines and departments. And criminology or criminal justice is likely to be one of
them.
Criminology is a science, an empirical science. More particularly, it is one of the social, or
behavioral, sciences. It has been defined in various ways by its scholars. The definition provided in 1934 by Edwin H. Sutherland, one of
the founding scholars of American criminology,
is widely accepted:
Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding
crime as a social phenomenon. It includes within its
scope the process of making laws, of breaking laws,
and of reacting toward the breaking of laws. . . . The
objective of criminology is the development of a
body of general and verified principles and of other
types of knowledge regarding this process of law,
crime, and treatment or prevention.17

This definition suggests that the field of criminology is narrowly focused on crime, yet broad
in scope. By stating as the objective of criminology the development of a body of general and
verified principles, Sutherland mandates that
criminologists, like all other scientists, collect information for study and analysis in accordance
with the research methods of modern science. As
we shall see in Chapter 3, it was in the eighteenth

The Reach of Criminology

century that seri:// Crime Surfing

ous investigations
into criminal behttp://www.ussc.gov/money
havior were first
law/monisum.htm
conducted. The inOne of the components of
vestigators, howSutherlands definition of
ever, were not encriminology focuses on the
gaged in empirical
making of laws. For
research, although
example, Congress created
they based their
the offense of money
conclusions on faclaundering in 1986. How
tual information. It
did Congress define this
was only in the
crime?
nineteenth century
that criminologists
began to systematically gather facts about crime
and criminals and evaluate their data in a scientific manner.
Among the first researchers to analyze empirical data (facts, statistics, and other observable
information) in a search for the causes of crime
was Cesare Lombroso (18351909) of Italy
(Chapter 3). His biologically oriented theories influenced American criminology at the turn of the
twentieth century. At that time the causes of
crime were thought to rest within the individual:
Criminal behavior was attributed to feeblemindedness and moral insanity. From then on, psychologists and psychiatrists played an important
role in the study of crime and criminals.
By the 1920s other scholars attributed the
cause of crime to the influx of immigrants and
their alien behaviors. The search then moved on
to cultural and social interpretations. Crime
was explained not only in terms of the offender
but also in terms of social, political, and economic problems.
In increasing numbers, sociologists, political scientists, legal scholars, and economists
have entered the arena of criminology. Architects too have joined the ranks of criminologists
in an effort to design housing units that will be
relatively free from crime. Engineers are working to design cars that are virtually theft-proof.
Pharmacologists play a role in alleviating the
problem of drug addiction. Satellites put into
space by astrophysicists can help control the
drug trade. Specialists in public administration
work to improve the functioning of the criminal
justice system. Educators have been enlisted to

PART I

13

Understanding Criminology

prepare children for a life as free from delinquency as possible. Economists and social workers are needed to help break the cycle of poverty
and crime. Biologists and endocrinologists have
expanded our understanding of the relationship
between biology and deviant behavior. Clearly,
criminology is a discipline composed of the accumulated knowledge of many other disciplines.
Criminologists acknowledge their indebtedness
to all contributing disciplines, but they consider
theirs a separate science.
In explaining what is meant by Sutherlands
definitionmaking laws, breaking laws,
and reacting toward the breaking of laws
we will use a contemporary as well as a historical perspective on these processes, and a global
as well as a local focus.

THE MAKING OF LAWS

Conjure up a picture of a crowded supermarket
just after working hours when most people are
eager to get home after a busy day. The checkout counters have long lines of carts overflowing with groceries. One counteran express
linetakes 10 items only. You have 15, but you
get in line anyway. People behind you in the
line stare. Your behavior is not acceptable. You
are a nonconformist, a deviant.

Deviance
Criminologists use the term deviance to describe behavior that violates social norms, including laws. The customary ways of doing
everyday things (like not exceeding the posted
limit of items at supermarket express lines) are
governed by norms other than laws. More serious deviant behavior, like taking someone elses
property, is governed by laws. Criminologists
are interested in all social norms and in how society reacts to success or failure of compliance.18
They are interested in what society does when
customary ways of doing things no longer prove
effective in controlling conduct perceived as undesirable. New Yorkers concerned over the
problem of dog droppings provide an example.
Disciplined city dwellers had always observed the custom of curbing their dogs. Street
signs warned them to do this. But as more and

more dog owners failed to comply, New Yorkers decided that the cleanliness of the sidewalks
was an important issue. Laws were enacted
making it an offense not to clean up after ones
dog. In Beijing, China, and Reykjavik, Iceland,
dogs have been severely restricted or banned
from the city altogether.
The difference between crime and other
forms of deviance is subject to constant change
and may vary from one state or country to another and from one time to another. What yesterday was only distasteful or morally repugnant may today be illegal. Criminologists are
therefore interested in all norms that regulate
conduct. Making something that is distasteful
into a crime may be counterproductive and
detrimental to the social order. If everything deviant (inconsistent with the majoritys norms)
were to be made criminal, society would become very rigid. The more rigid a society, the
more that behavior defined as violating social
norms is prohibited by law.
Jack D. Douglas and Frances C. Waksler
have presented the continuum of deviance as a
funnel (Figure 1.2). This funnel consists of definitions ranging from the broadest (a feeling
that something is vaguely wrong, strange, peculiar) to the narrowest (a judgment that
something is absolutely evil). Somewhere between these two extremes, deviant behavior becomes criminal behavior. The criminologists
interest in understanding the process begins at
the earliest pointwhen a behavior is first labeled deviant.19
Although criminologists are interested in
all deviant behavioreven that of no interest to
the lawtheir primary interest is in criminal
behavior, that which violates the law.

The Concept of Crime

A crime is any human conduct that violates a
criminal law and is subject to punishment.
What leads a society to designate some deviant
behavior as a crime and leave other wrongs to
be settled by private or civil remedies? For centuries, natural-law philosophers, believing in
the universal rightness and wrongness of certain human behavior, held the view that some
forms of behavior are innately criminal and that

14

CHAPTER 1

The Reach of Criminology

FIGURE 1.2 The funnel of deviance.

Most inclusive
I. Feeling that something is
vaguely wrong, strange, peculiar
II. Feelings of dislike, repugnance
III. Feeling that something violates values or rules
IV. Feeling that something violates moral values
or moral rules
V. Judgment that something violates values or rules
VI. Judgment that something violates moral
values or moral rules
VII. Judgment that something violates morally
legitimate misdemeanor laws
VIII. Judgment that something violates morally
legitimate felony laws
IX. Judgment that something violates moral human nature
X. Judgment that something is absolutely evil
Least inclusive
Source: Adapted from Jack D. Douglas and Francis C. Waksler, The Sociology of Deviance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 11.

all societies condemn them equally. Homicide

and theft were thought to be among these.
This notion is no longer supported. Raffaele
Garofalo, who gave our discipline its name, defended the concept of natural crime, by which
he meant behavior that offends basic moral sentiments, such as respect for the property of others and revulsion against infliction of suffering.
Nevertheless, he admitted that although we
might think such crimes as murder and robbery
would be recognized by all existing legal systems, a slight investigation seems to dispel this
idea.20
Garofalo was right. The earliest codes, including the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi
(about 1750 B.C.) and the Roman Law of the
Twelve Tables (451450 B.C.), do not list homicide
or ordinary theft as crimes.
Problems like these were
settled without resorting to
Did You Know?
punishment. But all early
. . . that in the early
societies imposed punishdays of the common
ment for acts detrimental to
law, judges made
their own existence: treathe laws?
Legislatures
son. Other crimes de(parliament) took
pended on socioeconomic
over lawmaking only
needs (destroying a bridge
about three
was a crime among the Incenturies ago.
cas; stealing a beehive was a

crime among the ancient Germanic tribes; stealing a horse or a blanket was a crime among
American Plains Indians).
The question arises: Who in a society decides
and when and under what circumstanceswhich
acts that are already considered deviant in that society should be elevated to the level of gross deviance or crime, subject to punishment?

The Consensus and Conflict Views of Law

and Crime
In the traditional interpretation of the historical
development of legal systems, and of criminal
justice in particular, lawmaking is an accommodation of interests in a society, whether that society is composed of equals (as in a democracy)
or of rulers and ruled (as in absolute monarchies), so as to produce a system of law and enforcement to which everybody basically subscribes. This is the consensus model. According
to this view, certain acts are deemed so threatening to the societys survival that they are designated crimes. If the vast majority of a group
shares this view, we can say the group has acted
by consensus.
The model assumes that members of a society by and large agree on what is right and
wrong, and that codification of social values be-

PART I

15

UNDERSTANDING CRIMINOLOGY

tice system is a means of controlling the classes

that have no power. Conflict theorists claim that a
struggle for power is a far more basic feature of
human existence than is consensus. It is through
power struggles that various interest groups
manage to control lawmaking and law enforcement. Accordingly, the appropriate object of
criminological investigation is not the violation of
laws but the conflicts within society.
Traditional historians of crime and criminal justice do not deny that throughout history
there have been conflicts that needed resolution. Traditionalists claim that differences have
been resolved by consensus, while conflict theorists claim that the dominant group has
ended the conflicts by imposing its will. This
difference in perspective marks one of the major criminological debates today, as we shall
see in Chapter 8. It also permeates criminological discussion of who breaks the criminal laws
and why.

THE BREAKING OF LAWS

The Code of Hammurabi, king of ancient Babylonia, is the
oldest complete legal code in existence (approximately 1750
B.C.). The 8.2-foot carving, found in Iraq in 1902, is now on
display in the Louvre in Paris. The only exact replica is at the
United Nations building in New York.

comes law, with a mechanism of control which

settles disputes that arise when some individuals
stray too far from what is considered acceptable
behavior. In the words of the famous French sociologist mile Durkheim, We can . . . say that
an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of the collective conscience.21 Consensus theorists view society as a stable entity in
which laws are created for the general good.
Laws function to reconcile and to harmonize
most of the interests that most of us accept, with
the least amount of sacrifice.
Some criminologists view the making of laws
in a society from a different theoretical perspective. In their interpretation, known as the conflict
model, the criminal law expresses the values of
the ruling class in a society, and the criminal jus-

Sutherlands definition of criminology includes

within its scope investigating and explaining
the process of breaking laws. This may seem
simple if viewed from a purely legal perspective. A prosecutor is not interested in the fact
that hundreds of people are walking on Main
Street. But if one of those hundreds grabs a
womans purse and runs away with it, the prosecutor is interested, provided the police have
brought the incident to the prosecutors attention. What alerts the prosecutor is the fact that a
law has been broken, that one of those hundreds of people on Main Street has turned from
a law-abiding citizen into a lawbreaker. This
event, if detected, sets in motion a legal process
that ultimately will determine whether someone is indeed a lawbreaker.
Sutherland, in saying that criminologists
have to study the process of law-breaking, had
much more in mind than determining whether
or not someone has violated the criminal law.
He was referring to the process of breaking
laws. That process encompasses a series of
events, perhaps starting at birth or even earlier,
which results in the commission of crime by
some individuals and not by others.

Of Immediate Concern

Vipers in the Desert

Strange things were happening in the
woods. Last November agent Jose Wall
of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms in Phoenix got disturbing information from people who had been
through nearby Tonto National Forest. A
deer hunter said he had been stopped by
a group of men dressed in camouflage
and armed with guns. They warned him
to turn back, saying they were security
and hinting they were with the government. The hunter didnt believe them.
But something about their eyes, not to
mention their weapons made him think
arguing would be imprudent. He ran into
other people forced to retreat by the
armed mena Boy Scout troop. After
the hunters call, agent Wall drove out to
Tonto. Near an abandoned mine, he
found a crater almost big enough to
swallow a car. It was recent. Someone
had been using powerful explosives (1)

In July 1996, Alcohol, Tobacco and

Firearms agents uncovered a plot by
members of Team Viper to blow up
seven buildings in Phoenix, Arizona,
using the same mixture of chemicals
used in the Oklahoma City bombing. (1)
The agents found an arsenal of two
machine guns, six rifles, two pistols,
grenades, fuses, blasting caps, and 56
boxes stuffed with 11,463 rounds of
ammunition, as well as hundreds of
pounds of the chemicals ammonium
nitrate and nitromethane, which can be

mixed to make a bomb. (1) Group

members were charged in federal court
for offenses including illegal possession
of a machine gun and conspiracy to
teach bombing techniques to provoke
civil disorder. (2) The Vipers are white,
largely blue collar, with no significant
criminal records, and stuck in dead-end
low-paying jobs. They include two
janitors, a used-furniture salesman, a
telephone company billing
representative, an air conditioner
repairman, a doughnut baker, an
engineer, and a bouncer at a local
topless bar. The Vipers reflect the
demographics of the antigovernment
paramilitary movement. (2) Indeed, in
some respects the Vipers are seemingly
like many other Americans; in other
respects, however, they are extremely
different. One member of the group,
Dean Pleasant, used to paint grenades
with camouflage designs and leave
them on the lawn to dry. His roommate,
Randy Nelson, slept each night below a
Browning machine gun he had mounted
over his bed, to which he had given the
name Shirley. (2)
FBI agent Bruce Gebhardt, agent in
charge of the Phoenix office, cautioned
about the potential danger of a group
such as the Vipers. A lot of these individuals are copycats and wannabes.

Let us analyze the following rather typical

scenario: In the maximum-security unit of a
Midwestern penitentiary is an inmate we will
call Jeff. He is one of three robbers who held up
a check-cashing establishment. During the robbery, another of the robbers killed the clerk. Jeff
has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Born in an inner-city ghetto, Jeff was the third
child of an unwed mother. He had a succession of
temporary fathers. By age 12 he had run away
from home for the first time, only to be brought
back to his mother, who really did not care much
whether he returned or not. He rarely went to
school because, he said, all the guys were bigger. At age 16, after failing two grades, Jeff
dropped out of school completely and hung
16

They hear the rhetoric of one and repeat

it to the other. Are they really expressing their First Amendment rights?
Theres a line here we have to watch
very closely. (1)
What may be most alarming about
the Vipers is their obsession with guns
that drew them together. This obsession is also driving some of them to devise schemes aimed at the disruption, if
not the destruction, of a government
based on the rule of law and the right to
bear arms.
Sources
1. Christopher John Farley, A Nest of
Vipers, Time, July 15, 1996,
pp. 2425.
2. James Brooke, Volatile Mix in
Viper Militia: Hatred plus a Love for
Guns, New York Times, July 5,
1996, p. 1.
Questions for Discussion
1. What is it that makes members of
groups like the Vipers feel they have
a legitimate organization and a legitimate cause?
2. Where should government draw the
limit on the legal possession of armament: Super rifles? Machine
guns? Mortars? Heavy artillery?
Tanks? Submarines?

around the streets of his deteriorated, crimeridden neighborhood. He had no job. He had no
reason to go home, since usually no one was there.
One night he was beaten up by members of
a local gang. He joined a rival gang for protection and soon began to feel proud of his membership in one of the toughest gangs in the
neighborhood. Caught on one occasion tampering with parking meters and on another trying
to steal a car CD player, he was sentenced to two
months in a county correctional institution for
boys. By the age of 18 he had moved from petty
theft to armed robbery.
Many people reading the story of Jeff would
conclude that he deserves what is coming to
him and that his fate should serve as a warning

PART I

17

Understanding Criminology

to others. Other people would say that with his

background, Jeff did not have a chance. Some
may even marvel at Jeffs ability to survive at all
in a very tough world.
To the criminologist, popular interpretations of Jeffs story do not explain the process of
breaking laws in Sutherlands terms. Nor do
these interpretations explain why people in
general break a certain law. Sutherland demanded scientific rigor in researching and explaining the process of breaking laws. As we
will see later in the book (Parts II and III), scientists have thoroughly explored Jeffs story and
the stories of other lawbreakers. They ask: Why
are some people prone to commit crime and
others are not? There is no agreement on the answer as yet. Researchers have approached the
question from different perspectives. Some
have examined delinquents (juvenile offenders)
and criminals from a biological perspective in
order to determine
whether some human beings are
:// Crime Surfing
constitutionally
http://www.crime.about.com/
more prone to
newsissues/crime/mpchat.htm
yield to opportunities to commit
Would you like to join a
chat room for ongoing
criminal acts. Are
discussions of current crime
genes to blame?
and justice issues?
Hormones? Diet?
Others have explored the role
played by moral development and personality.
Is there a criminal personality? (These questions
are discussed in Chapter 4.)
Most contemporary criminologists look to
such factors as economic and social conditions,
which can produce strain among social groups
and lead to law-breaking (Chapter 5). Others
point to subcultures committed to violent or illegal activities (Chapter 6). Yet another argument is
that the motivation to commit crime is simply
part of human nature. So some criminologists examine the ability of social groups and institutions to make their rules effective (Chapter 7).
The findings of other scholars tend to show
that law-breaking depends less on what the offender does than on what society, including the
criminal justice system, does to the offender
(Chapter 8). This is the perspective of the label-

ing, conflict, and radical theorists, who have

had great influence on criminological thinking
since the 1970s.
Scholars have also researched the question
of why people who are inclined to break laws
engage in particular acts at particular times.
They have demonstrated that opportunity
plays a great role in the decision to commit a
crime. Opportunities are suitable targets inadequately protected. In these circumstances, all
that is required for a crime to be committed is a
person motivated to offend. These claims are
made by criminologists who explain crime in
terms of two perspectives: routine activities and
rational choice (Chapter 9).

SOCIETYS REACTION TO
THE BREAKING OF LAWS
Criminologists interest in understanding the
process of breaking a law (or any other social
norm) is tied to understanding societys reaction to deviance. The study of reactions to lawbreaking demonstrates that society has always
tried to control or prevent norm breaking.
In the Middle Ages, the wayfarer entering a
city had to pass the gallows, on which the bodies of criminals swung in the wind. Wayfarers
had to enter through gates in thick walls, and the
drawbridges were lowered only during the daylight hours; at nightfall the gates were closed. In
front of the town hall, stocks and pillory warned
dishonest vendors and pickpockets. Times have
changed, but perhaps less than we think. Today
penitentiaries and jails dot the countryside.
Teams of work-release convicts work along highways under guard. Signs proclaim Drug-Free
School Zone, and decals on doors announce
Neighborhood Crime Watch. Police patrol cars
are as visible as they are audible.
These overt signs of concern about crime
provide us with only a surface view of the apparatus society has created to deal with lawbreaking; they tell us little of the research and
policy making that have gone into the creation
of the apparatus. Criminologists have done
much of the research on societys reaction to the
breaking of laws, and the results have influenced policy making and legislation aimed at

18

crime control. The research has also revealed

that societys reaction to law-breaking has often
been irrational, arbitrary, emotional, politically
motivated, and counterproductive.
Research on societys reaction to the breaking of laws is more recent than research on the
causes of crime. It is also more controversial.
For some criminologists, the function of their
research is to assist government in the prevention or repression of crime. Others insist that
such a use of science only supports existing
power structures that may be corrupt. The position of most criminologists is somewhere in between. Researchers often discover inhumane
and arbitrary practices and provide the database and the ideas for a humane, effective, and
efficient criminal justice system.

Criminology and
the Criminal
Justice System

:// Crime Surfing

The term criminal
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook
justice system is
relatively new. It
If you want to know more
became
popular
about the criminal justice
only in 1967, with
system, its characteristics,
its function, its cost, and its
the publication of
impact, go to the
the report of the
Sourcebook of Criminal
Presidents ComJustice Statistics.
mission on Law
Enforcement and
Administration of
Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. The
discovery that various ways of dealing with lawbreaking form a system was itself the result of
criminological research. Research into the functioning of the system and its component parts, as
well as into the work of functionaries within the
system, has provided many insights over the last
few decades.
Scientists who study the criminal justice
system are frequently referred to as criminal
justice specialists. This term suggests a separation between criminology and criminal justice.
In fact, the two fields are closely interwoven.
Scholars of both disciplines use the same scientific research methods. They have received the
same rigorous education, and they pursue the
same goals. Both fields rely on the cooperation

CHAPTER 1

The Reach of Criminology

of many other disciplines, including sociology,

psychology, political science, law, economics,
management, and education. Their origins,
however, do differ. Criminology has its roots in
European scholarship, though it has undergone
refinements, largely under the influence of
American sociology. Criminal justice is a recent
American innovation.
The two fields are also distinguished by a
difference in focus. Criminology generally focuses on scientific studies of crime and criminality, whereas criminal justice focuses on scientific studies of decision-making processes,
operations, and such justice-related concerns as
the efficiency of police, courts, and corrections
systems; the just treatment of offenders; the
needs of victims; and the effects of changes in
sentencing philosophy.
The United States has well over 50 criminal
justice systemsthose of the 50 states and of the
federal government, the District of Columbia,
Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands,
American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, and the military. They are very similar: All are based on constitutional principles and on the heritage of the
common law. All were designed to cope with
the problem of crime within their territories, on
the assumption that crime is basically a local
event calling for local response. Crimes that
have an interstate or international aspect are
under the jurisdiction of federal authorities, and
such offenses are prosecuted under the federal
criminal code.

The Global Approach to

the Breaking of Laws
Until fairly recently there was rarely any need
to cooperate with foreign governments, because
crime had few international connections. This
situation has changed drastically: Crime, like
life itself, has become globalized, and responses
to law-breaking have inevitably extended beyond local and national borders. In the first
three and a half decades after World War II,
from 1945 until the late 1970s, the countries of
the world gradually became more interdependent. Commercial relations among countries increased. The jet age brought a huge increase in

PART I

19

Understanding Criminology
In Placentia, California residents clamor for protection of children from convicted and
released child molesters. Public protests have led to a flood of local laws regarding
the identification of where these ex-offenders are residing.

international travel and transport. Satellite

communications facilitated intense and continuous public and private relationships. The Internet added the final touch to globalization.
Beginning in the 1980s, the internationalization of national economies accelerated sharply,
and with the collapse of Marxism in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, a global economy is being created. These developments, which turned the
world into what has been called a global village, have also had considerable negative consequences. As everything else in life became
globalized, so did crime. Transnational crimes,
with which we began this chapter, suddenly
boomed. Then there are the truly international
crimesthose that are proscribed by international lawsuch as crimes against the peace and
security of mankind, genocide, and war crimes.
But even many apparently purely local crimes,
whether local drug crime or handgun violence,
now have international dimensions. In view of
the rapid globalization of crime, we devote an
entire chapter (Chapter 15) to the international
dimensions of criminology. In addition, a Window to the World box in each chapter explores
the international implications of various topics.

RESEARCH INFORMS
POLICY
Skeptics often ask: With so many criminologists
at work in the United States, and so many studies conducted over the last half century, why do
we have so much crime, why is some of it increasing, and why do new forms of crime
emerge constantly? There are several answers.
Crime rates go up and down. Through the 1990s
and recently, crime has actually been decreasing. The popular perception that the crime
problem is increasing rests on a fear of crime
that is fueled by media portrayals. Obviously,
the various elements of the mass media are very
competitive, and such competitiveness determines the focus on crime. Sensational reports
often sell newspapers and TV programs. Politicians, in turn, seek security in office by catering
to public perceptions of crime, rather than to its
reality. They therefore propose and enact measures that respond to popular demands and
that often are more symbolic than result-oriented. At the moment, this means ever harsher
and more punitive measures for dealing with
the crime problem.

CHAPTER 1

20

CHAPTER 1

The Reach of Criminology

Few criminologists believe that at present

enough research exists to justify such an approach. In fact, some criminological research
demonstrates the futility of escalating punishments and often points to measures of quite a
different nature as more promising, more humane, and more cost-beneficial. So why do
criminologists not make themselves heard?
The answer is that criminologists are social scientists, not politicians. Criminologists are not
voted into Congress or to the presidency or a
governorship. Yet criminologists have served
on virtually every federal and state commission dealing with problems of crime or criminal

justice. But just as the Pentagon cannot declare

war, criminologists cannot dictate national or
state crime-control policies. They can, however,
provide pertinent research findings that inform
national policy making.22 Recently, for example, the attorney general of the United States
asked criminologists to formulate policy recommendations based on their research findings in areas such as delinquency prevention,
drug control, global crime, youth violence, and
violence against women.23 In subsequent chapters that deal with the causes of crime, we continue this discussion under the heading Theory Informs Policy.

REVIEW

Criminologists have discovered that the various

agencies society has created to deal with law-breaking
constitute a system that, like any other system, can be
made more efficient. Research on the system depends on the availability of a variety of data, especially statistics. The gathering and analysis of statistics on crime and criminal justice are among the
primary tasks of criminologists. The effectiveness of
their work depends on reliable data.
The province of criminology today is the entire
world: Every aspect of life, including crime, has become increasingly globalized in recent years as a result of both rapid advances in technology and economic integration.
Criminology is a politically sensitive discipline. Its
findings inform public policy. While criminologists
cannot dictate what the branches of government
the legislative, the judicial, and the executiveshould
do about crime, their research findings are being
used increasingly in making governmental decisions.

Very little happens on earth that does not concern

criminology. Yet criminology as a science is only a
century old. Edwin H. Sutherland provided the most
widely accepted definition: The body of knowledge
regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes
within its scope the process of making laws, of breaking laws, and of reacting toward the breaking of laws.
Criminologists study behavior that violates all social norms, including laws. They distinguish between
two conflicting views of the history of criminal law:
the consensus view, which regards lawmaking as the
result of communal agreement about what is to be
prohibited, and the conflict view, according to which
laws are imposed by those with power over those
without power.
The breaking of laws (the subject to which much
of this book is devoted) is not merely a formal act that
may lead to arrest and prosecution, but an intricate
process by which some people violate some laws under some circumstances. Many disciplines contribute
to understanding the process of breaking laws or
other norms, but as yet there is no consensus on why
people become criminals. Society has always reacted to law-breaking, although the scientific study of
law-breaking is of very recent origin. Today criminologists analyze the methods and procedures society
uses in reacting to crime; they evaluate the success
or failure of such methods; and on the basis of their
research, they propose more effective and humane
ways of controlling crime.

CRIMINOLOGY &
PUBLIC POLICY
Crime waves always carry with them calls
for more law enforcement authority. What
happened on September 11, 2001, was, among other
things, a crime wavethat one day caused the number of homicides in America in 2001 to be 20 percent

21

UNDERSTANDING
CRIMINOLOGY
Understanding Criminology

higher than the year before. It is no surprise, then, that

even before the fires in the rubble that was the World
Trade Center burned themselves out, some politicians
were calling for broader powers for law enforcement
and greater restrictions on citizens, all in the effort to
fight this particular crime wave.
That is not a bad thing. Law enforcement authority naturally varies with the nature and size of the crime
problems police must combat. A glance at the recent
history of criminal procedure shows as much. Most legal restrictions on policing date from the criminal procedure revolution of the 1960s, which itself can be
seen as a consequence of the low-crime 1950s.
Higher crime rates led to cutbacks in those legal protections in the 1970s and 1980s, just as lower crime
rates have led to some expansion in the past few
years. In short, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights
have varied with crime before, and they will probably
do so in the future, as they must if the law is to reflect
a sensible balance between the social need for order
and individuals desire for privacy and liberty. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington raised the
demands on law enforcement. Those increased demands have already led to some increases in law enforcers legal authority, and that trend willand probably shouldcontinue, at least for a while. (Source: William
J. Stuntz, Local Policing after Terror, Yale Law Journal, 111 (2002):
2137.)

Questions for Discussion Sutherlands broad

definition of criminology (see p. 3) includes a critical examination of the criminal justice response to crimes.
Following the spirit of his definition, how should we fashion and refashion our criminal justice system in re-

sponse to the threat of terrorism in the United States?

Should we increasingly delegate the responsibility for
investigating and combating terrorism to local law enforcement agencies? How then do we control the flow
of intelligence data?
One of the most significant questions concerns
the extent to which our response to 9/11 will jeopardize the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. How
much freedom are you willing to give up in the name
of law enforcement?

YOU BE THE
CRIMINOLOGIST
How would you teach the ideal course on
criminology? (Dont answer until you have
completed the course!)

KEY TERMS
The numbers next to the terms refer to the pages on
which the terms are defined.
conflict model (15)
consensus model (14)
crime (13)
criminal justice system (18)
criminologist (12)
criminology (12)
deviance (13)
social norms (13)

Review Criminology & Public Policy You Be the Criminologist Key Terms

PART I