Criminology

At its core, biosocial criminology is a field that attempts to provide answers and justifications for why crimes take place. Not comfortable with the traditional methods used to explain crime, biosocial criminology seeks to explain crime by evaluating both biological factors and environmental factors. It might ask not only who...

The explanation of causes of criminal behavior has always worried the minds of criminologists. There is a need to differentiate between proximate and distal causes of crime (Weatherburn, 2001). While proximate causes precede a crime, distal causes are more chronologically remote, but not less influential. Distal causes of crime are...

The purpose of this project is an analysis of the pros and cons of polygraph use in verification of the accuracy of a subject’s testimony or other statement. Polygraph testing does not have the ability to verify whether an individual is lying with 100 percent accuracy. Thus, it is questionable...

The rights of the victims of sexual assaults, abuse, or rape have evolved dramatically in since the days of the hush-hush nature of sex crimes. In the past, female victims of sex abuse were blamed. Male victims of sex abuse rarely reported the crime. Victims of sex crimes haven’t always...

Registration of all convicted sexual offenders on the national registry is necessary to provide the community with awareness and increased safeguards against sexual violence. What is this list? Per the United States Department of Justice website, in 2006 the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act created the national sex...

According to criminal law a strict liability offense is a crime whereby the guilty mind (mens rea) does not have to be proven when a guilty act (actus Reus) is committed. Offenses of strict liability are also referred to as offenses of absolute prohibition (Ormerod & Laird, 2015). An offense...

Theodicy refers to the problem of reconciling the character and powers of God with the existence of suffering in the world. On the one hand, theologians consider God, absolutely or relatively, good, knowing, and powerful. On the other hand, we see suffering in the world and throughout history, especially undeserved...

Drug related crime is one of the most endemic set of crimes that is present in the USA. These crimes encompass everything from possession through to manufacturing and distributing. The hierarchy in drug-related crimes points to two key groups of criminals, which are: 1) those that are linked to large-scale...

Prison sentences are often utilized for two reasons. One is to punish the individual who broke the law. The other is to act as a deterrent to prevent others from breaking the law. Driving while under the influence (DWI) or drunk driving is an unfortunately common crime in today’s society....

Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, worked to identify “the standard path of the mythological adventure,” dividing the stages of the hero’s journey into up to eleven different stages (Campbell, n.d.). These stages consist of: “birth, (the) call to adventure, helpers/amulet, crossing the threshold, tests, helpers, climax/the...

Social support systems have often been a significant model of intervention when addressing behavioural deviance. In most cases, recidivism often results from the absence of effective social support structures to allow for reintegration of the released convicts back into the society (Bohmert, Duwe, & Hipple, 2018). As such, the family...

In discussing the death penalty in this country perhaps the most important issue to discuss is not whether it is fair but rather if it is effective and constitutional. Obviously, different people and organizations have very strong feelings about this issue, but not all of these feelings or arguments can...

Detective fiction is a part of mystery fiction or crime fiction which focuses on a detective or inspector who investigates a crime which is often murder. The detective can be a police officer but is often a private investigator or P.I. In stories where the protagonist is a private detective,...

Measuring the prevalence of crime is a critical element in determining the effectiveness of policies and interventions implemented throughout society. However, many people believe that crime is increasing. Despite this perception, statistical data does not support this prospect (Bureau of Justice, 2014; Bureau of Justice, 2013). A review of recent...

The proliferation of technology and associated tools especially computers has caused society to heavily rely on technology in different areas and aspects of people’s everyday lives, ranging from business management to domestic applications; mostly with positive benefits. However, this has also led to new forms of crimes that are technologically...

If one thing emerges immediately from reading “The Variety of Critical Theory,” it is that postmodernism, in its application to criminological theory, certainly may have attempted to clarify criminological ideas but it did so in a dense and sometimes seemingly (unnecessarily?) complicated fashion. Trying to navigate the definitions of postmodernism,...

Abstract This paper analyzes the reading “Social Power and the Construction of Crime.” It examines several different theorists, beginning with the economic influences as studied by Marx and Engels up through the turbulent 1960s and how the events of that decade influenced criminal theory. This paper shows how Bonger built...

In the study of the world leading newspaper ‘The Guarding,’ the reflection on the modern-day slavery raises the vulnerability of the specific groups of workers and the exploitation of human labor. The paper asserts that ‘slavery, forced labor, and trafficking are serious crimes under international and most national laws.’ (Plant,...

The positivist school of the criminology asserts that scientific objectivity should play a measuring role in the assessment of the criminal behavior. In other words, the scientific knowledge is the critical area for shaping the criminal assessments. In criminology, the positivist approach demonstrated a scientifically proven link between the lower...

The development of latent fingerprints has been a tremendous technique of solving criminal cases in the recent years. However, some of the laboratory reagents and chemical treatments that are used to develop the prints can interfere with the collection of DNA. Some of the reagents and chemical treatments that can...