Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
Lecture Notes
Chapter 1: Introduction to Criminology
Learning Objectives
1.2 Summarize the general structure and organization of the criminal justice system.
1.4 Identify key concepts and issues associated with victimology.
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
i. When introducing students to criminology, it is essential to stress how
various concepts and principles of theoretical development are woven into
our understanding of crime as well as policy.
ii. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of such concepts as crime,
criminal, deviant, criminology, criminal justice, and consensus and conflict
perspectives of crime.
iii. Presents a general summary of the different stages of the adult criminal
justice system, as well as the juvenile justice system.
II. Key Concepts in Understanding Criminology
A. What Is a Crime?
i. There are various definitions of crime. From a legalistic approach, crime is
that which violates the law.
ii. Mala in se: Acts that are considered inherently evil and immoral in nature.
iii. Mala prohibita: Acts that are considered crimes primarily because they
have been declared bad by the legal codes in that jurisdiction.
iv. Deviance: Behaviors that are not normal; includes many illegal acts as well
as activities that are not necessarily criminal but are unusual and often
violate social norms.
B. What Are Criminology and Criminal Justice?
i. The term criminology was first coined by the Italian law professor Raffaele
Garofalo in 1885.
Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
ii. Edwin Sutherland defined criminology as 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.
iii. 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.
C. The Consensus and Conflict Perspectives of Crime
i. A consensus perspective of crime views the formal system of laws, as well
as the enforcement of those laws, as incorporating societal norms for which
there is a broad normative consensus.
ii. This perspective assumes that individuals, for the most part, agree on what
is right and wrong, as well as on how those norms have been implemented
into laws and how those laws are enforced.
iii. No major theorist has considered this to be the best perspective of law.
Further, “to the extent that assumptions or hypotheses about consensus
III. The Criminal Justice System
i. According to the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice, any criminal justice system is an apparatus
society uses to enforce the standards of conduct necessary to protect
individuals and the community.
ii. This general purpose of the criminal justice system can be further simplified
A. Law Enforcement
Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
i. Law enforcement includes various organizational levels (i.e., federal, state,
and local).
ii. One of the key features distinguishing federal law enforcement agencies
from others is that they were often established to enforce specific statutes.
iii. Federal law enforcement agencies include the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S.
Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
iv. Two models generally characterize the structure of these state police
departments: State police and Highway patrol.
a. State police: These agencies have general police powers and
v. Agencies on the local level are divided into counties and municipalities.
vi. Local police agencies are responsible for the “nuts and bolts” of law
enforcement responsibilities.
B. Courts
i. The United States does not have just one judicial system. Rather, the
judicial system is quite complex, and one can characterize the United
States as having a dual court system.
ii. Dual court system consists of separate yet interrelated systems: the federal
courts and the state courts.
a. State court system consists of different levels or tiers, such as
lower courts, trial courts, appellate courts, and the state’s highest
iii. Jurisdiction is the authority of a court to hear and decide cases within an
area of the law or a geographic territory.
iv. Jurisdiction is categorized as limited, general, or appellate.
v. Courts of limited jurisdiction: These are also designated as lower courts.
They do not have power that extends to the overall administration of
justice; thus, they do not try felony cases and do not have appellate
authority.
Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
vi. Courts of general jurisdiction: These are also designated as major trial
courts. They have the power and authority to try and decide any case,
C. Corrections
i. After an offender is convicted and sentenced, he or she is processed in the
corrections system.
ii. Probation is essentially an arrangement between the sentencing
authorities and the offender, requiring the offender to comply with certain
terms for a specified amount of time.
iii. Jail: Often designated for individuals convicted of minor crimes. Jails are
D. The Juvenile Justice System
i. Prior to the establishment of the juvenile justice system, children were
treated the same as adults in terms of criminal processing. Children were
considered as “imperfect” adults or “adults in miniature.”
ii. An essential component to understanding the juvenile justice system is
the concept of parens patriae.
iii. Parens patriae: A philosophical perspective recognizes that the state has
both the right and the obligation to intervene on behalf of its citizens in
the case of some impairment or impediment such as mental incompetence
or, in the case of juveniles, age and immaturity.
iv. Transfer provisions can be categorized into three types: judicial waiver,
concurrent jurisdiction, and statutory exclusion.
a. Judicial waiver: The authority to waive juvenile court
jurisdiction and transfer the case to criminal court.
IV. Criminological Theory
i. Respected scientific theories in all fields of study, whether chemistry,
physics, or criminology, tend to have the same characteristics.
Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
ii. This is further illustrated by the scientific review process (i.e., blind peer
review by experts) used in all fields to assess which studies and theoretical
frameworks are of high quality.
iii. These characteristics include parsimony, scope, logical consistency,
testability, empirical validity, and policy implications.
A. Characteristics of Good Theories
i. Parsimony: A characteristic of a good theory, meaning that it explains a
certain phenomenon, such as criminal behavior, with the fewest possible
propositions or concepts.
B. Three Requirements for Determining Causality
i. Various criteria are involved in determining whether a certain variable
causes another variable to change—in other words, causality.
ii. We will be referring to the commonly used scientific notation of a
predictor variable—called X—as causing an explanatory variable—called
Y. These variables are often referred to as an independent or predictor
variable (X) and a dependent or explanatory variable (Y).
iii. The three criteria required to determine causality are temporal ordering,
covariation or correlation, and accounting for spuriousness.
a. Temporal ordering: The criterion for determining causality;
requires that the predictor variable (X) precede the explanatory
variable (Y) in time.
C. Theory Informs Policies and Programs
i. An essential aspect of a good theory is that it can help inform and guide
policies that attempt to reduce crime.
Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
ii. The major implication of this theory is to replace negative, antisocial role
models with more positive, prosocial role models.
iii. Another theory perspective we will be presenting focuses on social
V. Victimology
i. Victimology can be defined as the scientific study of victims. Although this
definition is quite simple, the range of specific topics and the depth to which
they are examined can be complex.
ii. Specifically, the study of victims includes such widely varied topics as
A. Victim Precipitation
i. Victim Precipitation: The increased likelihood of an individual becoming
a victim due to something they did (or did not do) that put them more at
risk.
a. Passive victim precipitation, it was something they did not or forgot
to do.
b. Active victim precipitation involves an individual actually doing
something that increases their probability of being victimized.
B. Incidence/Prevalence of Victimization
i. One of the most common misperceptions about rates of victimization
involves the type of individual who is most likely to be victimized.
C. Child Abuse and Neglect
i. Attorney General’s Defending Childhood Initiative, which is administered
by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP), and its role, is primarily to increase awareness about the long-
Schram, Introduction to Criminology 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
term influence of children’s exposure to violence and to seek solutions to
address the problem.
ii. The OJJDP’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force
D. Compensation and Restitution
i. Compensation: Often paid to victims of violent acts; provided by crime
those are provided by local, state, or federal governmental funds.
ii. Restitution: Often ordered by the court to be paid to victims by the
offender(s) as part of their sentence.
E. Victim Impact Statements
i. Victim Impact Statements: Formal statements given by victims in court
about the incident in which they were offended, often in person but also in
other ways; these statements can be considered in determining the
F. Victim Rights Awareness
i. April has been designated by the U.S. Department of Justice as National
Crime Victims Awareness Month.
ii. Office of Victims of Crime (OVC), which was created by the U.S.
iii. Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) was passed in 1984, which established the