UNIT ONE: Criminology Text Questions

Review Questions
1. What is crime?
It is an illegal act punishable by a state or other authority.

2. What are three different types of norms? Given an example of

each.
The three different types of norms are:
 Folkways: This norms are daily-life rules that nobody
usually written them down, for example: Having to wait in
line at any store checkout.
 Mores: The mores are norms that are socially acepted,
and the most part of the population of a specific culture
normally know. For example, not cheating on your
couple.
 Laws: The laws are norms that have legal consequences
if you breach them.

3. What are surveys used for in criminology? What type of

information do they collect?

 Interviews and Observation: Professionals that

monitorate a specific part of the population.

 Experiments: this experiments are base on looking at the

behavior changes that a concrete action has on the

subjects.
 Existing Data: For example, if you use the NCVS in a

study, you would only get the original information and

you wouldn’t be able to ask for more or choose different
questions to ask.
 4. What is actus reus?
An actus reus is an action or conduct which is a constituent
element of a crime.

5. How are crime and deviance related? Do they represent the

same actions?
Deviance is an action that violates the norms. When you break
the law, you are violating the society’s norms.
However, They are not the same, Because some crimes aren’t
percived as deviant and some deviance isn’t a crime.

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? Why?

I personally agree with Emile Durkheim's, because of the fact that

the deviance is a good practise to remind the population that
certains actions are not aceptable.

2. If you were going to study some aspect of crime, what research

method would you use? Why would you use this method? What
advantages would this method give you as you studied your
topic?
 I personally would use Uniform Crime Reports, owing to the fact
that using this method i will obtain certain statistics in order to
study de crime.

3. Why do you think that we should study crime and criminals?

What information might we gain by doing so?

If we study the criminals we will be able to predict and prevent

many of the future crimes that they will make because of teh
fact that we will know how average criminals think and act.

4. Why do you think defining crime is so difficult? Give an example

of a situation in which a “crime” might not be considered a
crime?
Crime is so difficult because of all the diferent interpretensions
that people has, for example, downloading music, movies or
video games from the internet without paying is legally a crime
but not every one concibe this as a crime.

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? What benefits or
disadvantages might it have for the field? What other discipline do
 you think has the most to offer for the understanding of crime and
criminals?

In my opinion interdisciplinary approach is very positive for

understanding crime, and a few benefits of the interdisciplinary
approach are:
1. it gives us the different studies which helps to understand
better the crime and teh criminals.
2. The knowledge of those crimes and criminals will prevent more
crimes from happening.
Another discipline that has more to offer than interdisciplinary
approach is law and psychology.