Unit One: Text Questions Dropbox

1. A crime is defined as any action that violates the formal laws of a country, state, or local area. There are three main types of norms: folkways which are everyday customs, mores which have an underlying approval or disapproval, and laws which are formal written norms with consequences for breaking them. 2. Surveys in criminology are used to gather people's opinions about issues related to crime and collect information about victims such as their sex, race, and age. Actus reus refers to the actual act that a person is accused of committing. 3. While crime and deviance are related through social control and restraints on behaviors, crime represents more serious actions that violate formal laws

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Unit One: Text Questions Dropbox

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Review Questions:

1. What is crime? A crime is any human action that violate the formalized laws
of a country, state, or local area like a city or township.

2. What are three different types of norms?

Folkways, for example, are everyday customs or ways of doing things.
Waiting in line at the grocery store checkout (as opposed to pushing your way
to the front) is an example of a folkway. Mores are norms that have an
underlying shared assumption of approval or disapproval. For example, not
stealing from a friend would be a more. Laws are formal norms. In other
words, they have been written down and there are formal consequences for
breaking the norm.

3. What are surveys used for in criminology? Surveys are often used to
gather people’s opinion about some issue on crime. What type of information
do they collect? Information about the victim such as their sex, race, and age.

4. What is actus reus? Is the actual act that the person is accused of.

5. How are crime and deviance related? For both informal and formal norms,
we use social control or restraints on people to keep them from breaking
norms. Do they represent the same actions? They don’t represent it because
one is more serious that the other one.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Emile Durkheim argues that deviance is beneficial to society in a number of

ways, such as showing us where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are
and that it can bring a group together. Do you agree or disagree with his
argument that deviance can be beneficial? I think that they are beneficial.
Why? Because the deviance teach the children which limits cannot pass and
to understand how our society valorates the deviances we do, so we could
learn about our mistakes.

2. If you were going to study some aspect of crime, what research method
would you use? I think I would choose the NCVS Why would you use this
method? I would choose this method because I think that is more effective to
measure the crime that the other one. What advantages would this method
give you as you studied your topic? I think this method gives advantages as
knowing the intention of the criminal so you can understand how the other
criminals could work and you could make a list and stadistic about the crimes
that are made with some specific characteristics

3. Why do you think that we should study crime and criminals? I think we
should study criminals and crime to know how they think to evit more crimes.
What information might we gain by doing so? We can gain information like the
crimes that people usually do and with this we could understand the reasons
why people do some actions and start to help to avoid the behaviour that
makes a person to make a crime.

4. Why do you think defining crime is so difficult? I think is very difficult

because not all people have the same ethical level so a crime is more
subjective than objective. Give an example of a situation in which a “crime”
might not be considered a crime? If a person who haves family steal some
bread to feed them some people understand it like a crime and other people
not.

5. Criminology combines the theories and insights of a number of different

disciplines as well as adding its own insight about crime and criminals. Do you
think this interdisciplinary approach is positive or negative for understanding
crime? I think its negative because in a crime you have to be objective
because the subjective sight can hinder the investigation. What benefits or
disadvantages might it have for the field? I think that could be useful for some
crimes because some crimes includes personal revenges and you need other
point of view but in general I think is a bad option. What other discipline do
you think has the most to offer for the understanding of crime and criminals? I
think that other discipline could be one that evaluates objectivity the crimes
that a criminal does it and with this to understand how the criminal minds
work.