1.

Basic criminological concepts in English

Offender = Criminal

Prevention and intervention is the main work of criminologists. Desist from crime.
Reintegration and rehabilitation.

Property crimes are related to consuming drugs (drug dealing crimes in prison).

Understanding crime and criminology

Punishment = Castigo/pena

What kind of crimes do we commit? What happens with crimes in covid-19? What kind of
crimes decrease in covid-19?

“Street crimes” That

need physical
contact (Property,
robbery..)

Violence at home does not

reduce. Abuse. Online fraude.
Cybercrimes.

Crime and the media: The media creates the idea of crimes. It is focused on the most
serious crimes like homicide. It has a big influence on us about crime and criminals, also
about our vision of criminal life.

1.1 Defining crime and criminology

We can define criminology as an interdisciplinary subject: sociology, psychology, law (gives
us laws that say what is a crime and what isn't, and also explain us the consequences),
pedagogy (helps us to know how to learn rehabilitation…), statistics…
Criminology origine
Has been dominated by different disciplines: medico-legal science (if someone commits a
crime by a mental illness the punishment reduces).

Two criminal explanations:

The lombrosian project
The governmental project

What is criminology?
Criminology is difficult to define because it has different historical roots (raíces) and different
contemporary approaches (enfoques).

Developed in the modern period.

Empirically-based (we improve and develop the discipline by doing research).

Focus upon crime (legal definition).

Life, family, area, criminal creer, child life…

Crime is more than just a crime.

Criminology focuses on 3 main areas:

1. Study crime

2. Study who commit crime

3. Study the criminal justice and penal systems

What is crime?
It is complex to understand a crime. We can argue some questions like who decides what is
a crime and what not? There may be actions not considered a crime that should be.
Crime and law, crime as a social construct, crime and politics.

In Spain, between 1995 and 2015 (last actualizacion of the criminal code) the criminal code
had been changed about twenty times.

Defining crime
Crime is a violation of the criminal law, and is a “social construct”. There’s a historical and
geographical variation.

1.2 Crime and Punishment in history

The establishment of the formal criminal justice system happened between the period of the
mid-eighteen and the mid-twentieth centuries.

Beccaria: He questioned the way that we were leading with the behaviours of criminals and
the way that we were using punishment (not fair).

Police forces have become modern and formal (vertical), now police are less violent. Stop
and search (project), black and latin people are often more stopped than others.

There has been a growing role of imprisonment as a key to response to crime. Research has
said that we use prison more often to respond to criminal behaviour. About 80% of crimes
are responded to by prison. Private prisons aren’t allowed in Spain.

The role of the victim has changed → from passive role to a more victim-centred system.

Attitudes and perceptions towards crime have changed in recent centuries.

Criminology it’s very young. The first lectures on criminology were in 1921-1922 and the first
professional association was in 1931. Criminology comes from the USA and Great Britain.
1.3 Crime data and crime trends
Crime data
Crime data has an interest in measuring crimes using techniques and sources. For example,
police crime statistics, sentencing statistics, prison and probation statistics. The dark figure
of crime (crimes that aren't reported to the police, there is about 50%).
We can talk about the victimization surveys too and it is about experiences of crime data on
victims. It succeeded a lot since we've got part of the dark figure crimes discovered.
Prevalence (it happens once) and incidens (it happens everyday).

Crime trends
It helps us to know whether crime levels are rising or falling and about the level of crime in a
period of time.