Crime

"If it were possible to produce a complete catalog of human criminal behavior over time and around the world, such a document would likely be one of the most fascinating reads of all time. <br. The popularity of TV crime shows like Law and Order, CSI, and the long-running NYPD Blue; films such as Taxi Driver, Silence of the Lambs, Natural Born Killers, and Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen; and classic literature such as In Cold Blood and Crime and Punishment suggests that most people are fascinated with the deviant and criminal side of human behavior. However, fictional accounts of crime (many of which are loosely or not-so-loosely based on real events) rarely compare to the reality of crime. Any law enforcement officer, medical examiner/death investigator, crime scene technician, criminal attorney, judge, juror, criminologist/researcher, or citizen who has been exposed to some or all aspects of real-life criminal events knows that real-life crime is just as fascinating as if not more so (and in some cases much more horrific) than what our imaginations can come up with."

"The term “social and behavioral sciences” is often used to encompass the many disciplines and subdisciplines involved in the study of criminal behavior, with scholars from a wide range of fields in sociology, psychology, criminology, and criminal justice engaged in the study of crime. The scientific study of crime evolved from the classical and positivist schools of thought and the disciplines of sociology and psychology. Eighteenth-century discourse on criminal behavior came from the work of classical theorists Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, who saw crime as a product of free will, committed by people who made cost-benefit analyses regarding the pleasure crime would bring. The positivist school of thought emerged in the early 1800s with the writings of Cesare Lombroso (The Criminal Man) and with French mathematician-astronomer Adolphe-Jacques Quetelet’s “social physics” and French lawyer Andre-Michel Guerry’s “moral statistical analysis”, supporting the notion that crime could be measured and predicted. Criminology emerged as a subfield of sociology in the 1930s, and Criminology and Criminal Justice as a distinct academic discipline originated in the 1960s and 1970s. Psychologists have been interested in criminal behavior since the advent of psychology as a discipline (Blackburn, 1993)."

"The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom."

"[C]rime is a social, interpersonal, and personal harm that, more often than not, has tragic and enduring consequences."

"In some ways, crimes that fall on the more “normal” side of the continuum of criminal behavior are even more interesting because they involve regular people in usual settings making decisions (some spontaneous, some not) about violating the law. The nature and dynamics of these sorts of everyday crimes provide a great deal of information about the root of criminal behavior-in fact, probably more than the extreme forms of criminal behavior, which can often be explained in terms of severe psychopathology or social or political conflict."

"Crime exists only to the extent to which behavior is legally defined as criminal by the larger society and culture. In some contexts (e.g., war, executions in correctional contexts) it is not a crime to kill another human being. In some states (e.g., Nevada) it is not a crime to engage is prostitution. Until 2003 engaging in a homosexual act was a crime in many states in the United States, and it is currently illegal in some places around the world. (1) “Crime is not an entity in fact but an entity in law” (Radzinowicz, 1966, p. 22) and “technically speaking, there is no ‘crime’ without ‘criminal law’” (Shelden, 2002, p.23). “Criminal behavior is a special category of behavior that has been defined through socio-cultural-legal-political-economic processes as outside of the bounds of the law.” This is important in reviewing criminal behavior research because theoretical concepts central to understanding the mechanisms of criminal behavior such as “antisocial behavior”, “aggression”, “psychopathy”, or “deviance” are sometimes confounded with criminality in the research literature and popular discourse. For example studies on aggression are often conducted in laboratory settings with animals or humans who are engaged in some laboratory task. “Can research on aggression in rats be applied to human crime and violence? Are the processes that produce antisocial behavior, such as lying or cheating on a spouse, the same processes as are involved in violating the law? Can theories explaining how people develop deviant identities also explain how people develop criminal identities? Much of the current knowledge base on crime and criminal behavior draws from research focusing on these other concepts."

"From a single crime know the nation."

"Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."

"My hope is that students, scholars, mental health and criminal justice practitioners, and others who read this book will come away reminded of several important things that can take us further toward preventing, controlling, and responding to crime. First, crime is a common everyday occurrence with very real and often tragic consequences we are all forced to deal with at some level in our everyday lives, whether we are offenders, victims, witnesses, citizens, jurors, or professionals in criminal justice, mental health, or social service. Second, feasible and effective solutions to the prevention and control of crime can come only from the conjoining of scientific and practical perspectives of different disciplines, keeping in mind that nothing about real crime will ever fall as neatly into place as the theories suggest and no empirical study can be so perfectly designed as to provide definitive answers. Third, crime types included in this text that are rarely covered in traditional criminology texts, such as political and copycat crimes, will hopefully inspire researchers to pursue otherwise untouched avenues of research."

"[C]riminal behavior is not a static phenomenon. Crime is a subcultural and cultural product-a human behavior that changes in form and meaning across time, place, culture, subculture, gender, and so on. The hope is that this book will inspire students, researchers, criminal justice professionals, and citizens to think creatively about crime, to work together across disciplines and arenas to make use of the best theories and practices, and to never forget that for every crime that is prevented, every offender who is (even slightly) reformed, every victim who is better supported, every citizen who is less afraid of crime, and every criminal justice professional who is given better tools with which to do his or her job, many lives and communities will be affected and improved."

"On the other hand, media focus on the most extreme variants of criminal behavior often makes people forget that most crime does not involve stranger abductions, sadistic torture, chopping off body parts, elaborate Internet schemes, or using commercial airliners as bombs. Although the real-life catalog of bizarre and extreme crimes is filled with horror, tragedy, and untold human harm and loss, it includes an even larger list of more benign offenses that most TV producers would have no interest in devoting a 1-hour prime time show to; and even if they did, most of us would probably rather do our laundry than watch."

"(3) Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority."

"(5) Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation."

"(6) In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds."

"(7) Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, the gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated."

"If the church ... does not make God's liberation of the oppressed central in its mission and proclamation, how can it rest easy with a condemned criminal as the dominant symbol of its message?"

"Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good."

"The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind."

"But many a crime deemed innocent on earth Is registered in Heaven; and these no doubt Have each their record, with a curse annex'd."

"The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless."

"It is written ' Thou shalt not kill,' so because he has killed, are we to kill him? No, that's impossible."

"Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass."

"Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot."

"Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime."

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, no matter how justified, is not a crime."

"Plan harm for another and harm yourself most, the evil we hatch always comes home to roost."

"Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back."

"Nine-tenths of our crimes an' calamities are made possible by th' automobile. It has unleashed all th' pent-up criminal tendencies o' th' ages. It's th' central figure in murders, hold-ups, burglaries, accidents, elopements, failures an' abscondments. It has well nigh jimmed th' American home.... No girl is missin' that wuzn' last seen steppin' in a strange automobile.... An' ther hain't a day rolls by that somebuddy hain't sellin' ther sewin' machine, or ther home, or somethin' t' pay on an automobile.... Maybe th' jails an' workhouses are empty, but that's not because th' world is gittin' better. It's because all th' criminals escape in automobiles."

"My servant ... was numbered with the transgressors."

"When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people's hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong."

"People try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all... The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport"."

"The unpunished crime is never regretted. We weep over the consequence, not over the fault."

"Any time you think of a decent crime, there are fifty ways to fuck it up. If you can think of twenty-five, you're a genius."

"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

"The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you."

"The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over."

"“Sympathy with a person who sins”, is not the same as sympathy with the sin or crime of which he is guilty. We may feel sorry for the plight of the murderer or even understand the circumstances which led him to his crime; we may not feel sympathy with the wrong which he has done."

"(A) The presentation of crimes against the law, human or divine, is often necessary for the carrying out of the plot. But the presentation must not throw sympathy with the criminal as against the law, nor with the crime as against those who must punish it."

"The stinking puddle from which usury, thievery and robbery arises is our lords and princes. They make all creatures their property&mdash;the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plant in the earth must all be theirs. Then they proclaim God's commandments among the poor and say, "You shall not steal.""

"People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim."

"Rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor."

"Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."

"If little faults, proceeding on distemper, Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye When capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd, and digested, Appear before us?"

"Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream."

"Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, Art thou damn'd, Hubert."

"Tremble, thou wretch, That has within thee undivulged crimes, Unwhipp'd of justice."

"There shall be done A deed of dreadful note."

"Theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft."

"We may isolate two ways in which these "sub-political" traditions affect the early working-class movement: the phenomena of riot and of the mob, and the popular notions of an Englishman's "birthright". For the first, we must realise that there have always persisted popular attitudes towards crime, amounting at times to an unwritten code, quite distinct from the laws of the land. Certain crimes were outlawed by both codes: a wife or child murderer would be pelted and execrated on the way to Tyburn. Highwaymen and pirates belonged to popular ballads, part heroic myth, part admonition to the young. But other crimes were actively condoned by whole communities—coining, poaching, the evasion of taxes (the window tax and tithes) or excise or the press-gang. Smuggling communities lived in a state of constant war with authority, whose unwritten rules were understood by both sides; the authorities might seize a ship or raid the village, and the smugglers might resist arrest—"but it was no part of the smuggling tactics to carry war farther than defence, or at times a rescue, because of the retaliatory measures that were sure to come... On the other hand, other crimes, which were easily committed and yet which struck at the livelihood of particular communities—sheep-stealing or stealing cloth off the tenters in the open field—excited popular condemnation"

"The study of criminal behavior is much more interdisciplinary today than in the past. However, scholars continue to be divided into the same two camps that have historically defined the study of crim. More than 40 years ago, criminologist Sir Leon Radzinowicz wrote: We are here at the sources of the two fundamental approaches to the study of crime; crime as a product or expression of society and crime as a product or expression of individual constitution. From them developed two schools of thought. To one the central task of criminology was to explain the existence and distribution of crime in society; its natural tendency was to see the social factors as of overwhelming importance. To the other, the purpose of criminology was to discover why certain individuals became criminal. The tendency here was to stress the significance of constitutional factors. (Radzinowicz, 1966, pp. 29-30)"