What Is Criminology? Understanding Crime and Criminals
What Is Criminology? Understanding Crime and Criminals “Society secretly wants crime, needs crime, and gains defi nite satisfactions from the present mishandling of it! We condemn crime; we punish offenders for it; but we need it. The crime and punishment ritual is part of our lives!” —Karl Menninger 1 Differentiate between crime, deviance, and 1 delinquency. Explain how the consensus perspective differs from 2 the pluralist perspective. Describe criminology and the role of criminologists. 3 Summarize the theoretical perspectives of 4 criminology. Summarize the various ways crime is reported 5 and measured. Summarize statistics and trends in U.S. crime rates. 6 Explain how criminology works with other disciplines and how it impacts the making of laws 7 and social policy. © Mikael Karlsson/Alamy 1 666751_01_ch1_p001-020.indd6751_01_ch1_p001-020.indd 1 111/20/121/20/12 11:50:50 PPMM INTRO A FASCINATION WITH CRIME AND CRIMINALS According to social commentators, people are simulta- neously attracted to and repulsed by crime—especially gruesome crimes involving extreme personal violence. The popularity of today’s TV crime shows, Hollywood- produced crime movies, true-crime books and maga- zines, and websites devoted exclusively to the coverage of crime supports that observation. The CBS TV megahit CSI: Miami , for example, which ran for ten season until going off the air in 2012, garnered 50 million regular viewers in more than 55 countries. By its eighth season, it had become the most popular television show in the world. 2 But CSI programming extends well beyond the Miami-based series, and the CSI franchise, which now includes shows featuring New York City, Las Vegas, and other locales, is available in both real time and on demand to a global audience of nearly 2 billion viewers in © AF archive/Alamy 200 countries around the globe.
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