Criminology Unit 1

Unit 1.1

White-collared crime is a crime committed by a higher/social class individuals that contribute to

society. These individuals most of the time, are in a position of power so if they are caught, they will
get a less harsh punishment/sentence than a working person. White-collared crimes are complicated
and includes crimes such as; different types of frauds, e-crimes, identity theft and many others.
Corporate crime is where a corporation or a single person acting behalf of the company, such as a
higher up in a company, commits a crime. An example of corporate crime is when the RBS (Royal
bank of Scotland) was accused of money laundering and financing to terrorist activities that resulted
in the bank to be fined £5.6 million. The victims of these crimes are the individuals that have been
targeted by the white collared person and possibly friends and family as well. The public is quite
unaware of these crimes as there is a lack of attention to white collared crime, especially as it is not
presented through the media, such as newspapers and the news. An example of a white collared
criminal is Bernie Madoff. He swindled thousands of investors over the course of 17 years and
claimed billions of dollars. He was only pleaded guilty when he confessed his crim to his sons and
was sentenced to jail at age 71. It also does not help that certain white collared crimes are hard to
detect and easy to commit, victims of these crimes are especially high for the elderly.

Organized crime is where organisations such as the mafia and the yakuza commit crimes in an
international scale. Gangs have a tier system where the leader is the boss and the bottom underlings
are called ‘soldiers’. The mafia takes part in huge crimes such as human trafficking; smuggling drugs,
murder and even contract killing. An example of a notorious gang can be the Latin Kings, which are
one of the largest gangs having thousands of members all around the world. The gang takes part in
mass murder and smuggling drugs into a country, which gives the hang huge amounts of money to
spend on more drugs etc. the public are slightly aware of the gang’s illegal activities; however, they
may not know the size of the gang and the power they hold not just in illegal activities, but also
within the government.

Professional crime is when a person makes committing a crime the norm, does it daily and is
integrated with their life most of the time the professional criminal being a white collared individual
that has a prestigious job that is often trusted in society, examples being a doctor or a dentist. These
criminals are proficient in their crimes and use complex ways to subdue their victims to make it
seem as if it fits in with their line of work, so the police will not question them. An example of a
professional criminal is Chee Wong who was a local doctor, used his profession to sexual assault
women. He injected them with high doses of sedatives, which causes the overall reflexes and
movement to be slowed down immensely. The pubic is not aware of the professional crime as there
is no or very little media attention to these types of crimes. The victims are all the nearby community
that has trusted the professional criminal and possibly family and friends as well.

E-crime is a crime that is a crime that occurs or takes places on the internet or network. E-crime is a
serious crime because of how easy it is to break the law, such as creating an account with a fake
identity etc. However, there are serious crimes that rob thousands of people around the world via
the internet such as many types of fraud; fake bank identities and many others. An example of e-
crime is cyberbullying, which around half of all teens have been victims of some type of
cyberbullying. This can go as far as being verbally abused online to sexually suggestive pictures of
themselves being posted online without their permission.
A state crime is an illegal activity that is carries out by the agents of the country, such as the army
and the secret service, on behalf of the ‘better’ good of the country. An example of this can be
ethnic ceasing, which is effectively tries to remove an unwanted race out the country. Western
Sudan and Eastern Chad military or the Janjaweed were ordered to attack or abduct non-Arabians in
the countries.

Individual crime is committed towards an individual that is often different from most people in that
community. They can be differentiated by their: religion, race, sexuality, age, disability, gender, and
many more. The crimes are differ from physical assault to possibly even rape. An extreme example is
a 9-year old boy committed suicide due to being bullied by an Asian gang for being white. This case
also ties into hate crime, which is bias crimes committed towards a certain group due to being
different from other people. A famous gate organization is the KKK who have an unrivalled gate
towards the people of coloured skin.

Honour crime is a crime that is predominated in the Indian/Asian community that revolves around
killing a certain person to attain or defend honour to the family/community. The person that is killed
is the person that is usually or connected for bringing shame into the family. An example of so-called
dishonour is usually the act of disobedience from the wife; refusing certain tasks from the husband
to running away from home due to domestic violence; as well as most of the victim’s families turn a
blind eye towards it to preserve the honour within the family.

Unit 1.2

Certain crimes are not being reported as much as it should be due to certain circumstances that
discourage them to attempt to do it, such as shame. For example, they may not report a case of
sexual assault due to the incident being too personal and fears that the police are not trustworthy
enough to report to. The offender may also have a personal connection towards the victim, such as
being family or friend, making the victim quite reluctant to speak out. Another reason the victims do
not report sexual assault, especially concerning friends, is the fear that they will not believe if they
do say it to the police. Sarah Hyland has recently admitted in high school, she has been sexually
assaulted by her friend and did not speak out about it due to her thinking that no one will believe
her.

Some people may not report certain crimes due to lack of interest that is occurring near them
(disinterest). An example can be the recent outbreak of e-crimes that is happening to nearby
neighbours and thinking that the crime will not affect them in any sort of way. The lack of interest
can also be directed towards the media, as they usually do not broadcast certain crimes, such as
male sexual assault. The media usually focus on the majority of the crime or crimes that are more
public than the crime that the minority suffers from. The disinterest can also be because is it in a
certain community that the person is not part of, meaning that the person will be disinterested with
the activities within the community.

The fear of not being believed if the crime is reported is a benefactor on certain crimes that are
being reported (fear). The victims that are not being believed is usually because of the public
stereotypes, certain crimes to specific people or genders and renders the victim unreliable or
untrustworthy. Crimes that are often not reported due to not being believed is male domestic
violence; as society views makes as the main perpetrator for domestic violence and they are usually
thought to have more control over the relationship than the female partner and the thought of the
opposite gender tipping that balance of power to be unlikely. This reason also makes the victims
ashamed that this has happened to them and it prevents them from speaking out to the public, as it
will save them from embarrassment from the opinions from the public.

A couple of crimes that are not being reported to the police due to the lack of knowledge concerning
the law (lack of knowledge & culture bound crime). These victims are usually in communities that
are unfamiliar towards the police force due to them not being used to it back in their native
countries, such as Bangladesh. The lack of knowledge towards the law makes the victim believe that
the police will not deal with their problem or refuse to help them. This prevents the police not being
able to solve cases as quickly as they would like, causing other crimes to be pushed back to further
date or the case remains unsolved. One of the causes of the police not being able to figure out the
context of the crime could be the complexity of it. An example of complex crime can be strictly
cultural related such as witchcraft or Kindoki. Kindoki is the belief where a person can be taken over
by evil spirits, which is predominated in Africa; a famous case concerning this belief is the Kirsty
Bamu incident. He had been abused physically such as cuts all over his body and being mutilated due
to his uncle and sister believing that his spirit had been possessed.

Some crimes are not reported due to it being embraced as being the norm in society, as the crime is
frequently seen (lack of current public/media concern). The crime may be considered ‘victimless’,
resulting in a sense of not having to report the crime. An example this is taking drugs, as it is very
unlikely that the police will take any action towards the crime as it will not help them find the drug
trafficker that brought the drugs into the country in the first place. The most frequent crime in the
UK is anything that is connected to fraud, such as cyber swindles. This is the most frequent crime in
the UK due to the simplicity of the crime and the results of the crime is extremely beneficial to the
scammer, furthermore, it is quite hard to identify who did the fraud and who got affected by it.

Crimes such as online fraud are unreported because certain individuals feel embarrassed to report
to it to the police and Barclays have stated that victims only report frauds if they lose over £112 and
75% of frauds do not get reported to the police. The numbers more than double if a person has been
scammed before, jumping to £235. An example of this is David Hunt, who was scammed for £10,000
and was only able to recover a fraction of his money. He announced that get was embarrassed and
angry at the system, as the scammers have not been caught, which shows the increasingly rising
distrust to the police.

Unit 1.3

The consequences of unreported crime may have a positive or negative impact on the particular
crime or even society as a whole. Unreported crimes in certain area such as property crime may
encourage other people to take part in the crime which is the ripple effect. This theory also ties in
with the broken Windows theory where it explores the psychological side of an individual that is
interested in committing crime such as graffiti but is reluctant to do so. However, on seeing damaged
property that is untreated, the person may assume that no one will care for it as it is already broken
so he or she proceeds to continue to damage the property. This creates some areas to look more
rundown than others and will have higher crime rate than the other places due to people getting
motivated to committing crime via Broken Windows theory. This theory can also be applied not only
on property damage, but also in crimes in general, for example, seeing a homeless man being
neglected can be seen as society not caring for that person so people may harm them. This can also
be linked towards the ripple effect, which is when a crime is committed, there is a possibility that it
may spread outwards towards the crime, which causes a ‘ripple’ effect that surrounds the crime that
was committed, either in a positive way or negative. For example, if a certain area is getting higher
knife crimes than other nearby places, the police will know this by the ripple of the difference
between that areas than the other and will patrol that area frequently. In other words, the ripple
effect can cause the Broken Window theory, or it may trigger changes within the police forces that
with go deal with the problem, such as a change of procedural call.

The lack of reports in a specific crime may inform the police that something is wrong, so they may
put a special procedural call that would have not happened if that crime were often reported
(procedural call & cultural change). The effect of the police procedural calls mostly has a positive
impact on the community and culture that concerns the particular crime that is being unreported.
Project Violet is one of many special procedural changes that is created to try to tackle crime; in this
case, it is on child abuse that is linked to faith and belief. Project Violet aims to prevent child abuse
related to this and does this by working with other communities that are more knowledgeable, such
as professionals. One famous example of a child abuse that is related to religion is Kristy Bamu who
was abused due to his family believing that he was possessed by an evil spirit.

Unreported crime may also trigger a law or legal change to how a specific crime is tackled and to
make it easier for the offender to be punished for the crime (legal change). The law changes are also
put into place to avoid any loopholes in the law that could possibly be used when the offender is put
into court. A use of the law change is the Modern Slave Act, which was put into place in 2015 to
combat the increasing rate of modern slavery in the UK. However, the new law that has been put
into place has hardly been used, as the first time it had been used against a drug dealer, which was
designed to combat these types of crimes, was in 2018. This is a negative effect because if the new
law is not being used, that means that the traffickers are not being as often as they should; but most
new laws that are put into place have a positive consequence the court.

Another consequence of unreported crime may be to decriminalize the crime because it caused too
many problems with the law and may v=create fewer problems to just decriminalize the crime. An
example of a country that decriminalized all illegal drugs in small quantities is Portugal. Before they
decriminalization of the drugs, of anybody was caught with an illegal drug, they were arrested for
drug trafficking. After the law change, the holder of drugs was treated as a public health issue, not a
criminal one. The holder of the drugs would get help from the government to tackle safe drug use,
such as safe needles for heroin users. This made the budget for addiction support towards drug
users from 20% to 80%. This is a positive effect because Portugal has focused on not punishing the
drug users but to treat them, which lowers the risk of drug users from being harmed by drugs. This
also makes the police focus on the drug traffickers instead of the users, which makes the budget to
tackle drugs effective. Finally, by crime not being to the police, the crime becomes unrecorded
meaning that the police’s statistics will be incorrect to a certain degree and this may make the
[police overlook the crime. 20% of all crime that have occurred in the UK have been investigated to
not to be recorded. Examples of these crimes may include serious crimes such as, sexual offenses
and violent crime; which may lead us back to why the police is considered ‘ untrustworthy’ to the
public. This gives victims less courage to speak out to the police, as they will think that the police will
not help them, making the unrecorded crime become a larger issue, which in turn creates an endless
cycle of increasingly larger unreported and unrecorded crime to occur without any changes.

Unit 1.4

Different newspapers hold different opinions and perspectives on their topics to attract certain
audiences and particularly political parties that the newspaper agrees with. However, most
newspapers do not spread the ever-rising cases of e-crime such as email fraud, viruses and many
more. The newspapers only talk about violent crimes such as murder and sexual assault, because
they treat crime as great entertainment source and only juicy crime (violent crime) will attract
customers on getting their newspaper rather than the other rival companies. The results of this are
that the people that use the newspapers often, will be influenced by them; giving them no
awareness of important crimes and news that has to be addressed towards them.

Music is something that can be accessed easily due to it being present on the Internet, such as
Spotify and YouTube, and particular genres of music show crime in a negative way or a positive way.
Drill music is a genre of music that is popular in the UK that is accompanied with a trap-style beat
and lyrics that often depict subjects such as gangs, killing and drugs. This type of music has been
blamed for encouraging/fuelling and is even being taken down from social media sites to prevent
the music to be heard by other people to prevent them from being ‘influences’ by their ‘lyrics’. This
type of music glorifies crime and always makes the enemy look like the bad guys whether they are
gangs or the police. There are rarely any ‘crime prevention’ songs but only a handful have been
recognized such as This Is America by Childish Gambino. The lyrics and the music video addresses
the problems of America, such as gun violence and the recent school shootings that is happening
there, which is shown by the imagery of the video. This song has been broadcasted in social media
numerous amounts of times giving it attention that many songs, that addresses crime, did not get.

This goes into my next topic, which concerns social media, and the presence of it, which affects what
type of crime, is being shared or known between social media users. Social media is extremely
popular with younger people, so the apps will target news and crimes that will appear to be
interesting within the majority of the age group, which will probably be crimes such as drugs and
violence, as younger audiences will most likely will not be interested in crimes that touch subjects
such as bank fraud. Social media sets ‘trends’, which is essentially is something that everyone is
particular aware of a certain subject.

The news is quite similar to the newspapers, but the main difference is that they are typically fewer
news channels than newspapers. It also is set towards a broader audience because of it being much
more accessible than the papers. The news channels talk about crimes such as gang violence and
other violent crime because it is interesting to watch; however, they also like to blame a specific
community for that crime. For example, if the crime concerns knife crime, the minority, which are
young black people will be held accountable for the crime. White collar crime is never seen in the
news, due to people committing these crimes are high classing individuals which means that they
can afford to get good quality lawyers to avoid harsh punishments.

The representation of crime in video games can be quite broad due to so many games existing to this
point, however, most games follow the same code on how they show the criminal. All crime is
shown to be flashy and quite action packed, for the players to be entertained and transfixed onto
the gameplay or possibly the story of the game. Some games tend to show the ‘good guy’ as
majestic and always right, but most good guys are independent and do not revolve around the police
force. A popular game called Grand Theft Auto is one the more popular games, which makes you
play the game in the criminal’s perspective, which make you want to root for the bad guys rather
than the police. The games target audience was originally for 18 and over, however, mostly young
kids have dominated these types of games, which influences them significantly due to the game
encouraging you to commit murder.

Television has always been a factor on influencing its audiences depending on what type pf
show/channel it was. Crime fiction which is a popular amongst older audiences, is designated to
entertain readers by its mystery and suspense within the story. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most
well-known series that is related to crime fiction; because the crime that is mostly covered in the
series covers highly-complicated murders that will probably never occur in real life. In these types of
crime fiction, sexual attacks, for example, are seen to be committed by psychopaths, not by the
victim’s acquaintances, which frequently happens in real life. Film has Benn a vital part to define
specific cultures, depending on what film is based towards; however, movies that are popular
towards all ages, young and old, are action movies. Action movies is likely to portray a ‘good’
protagonist trying to stop the ‘law defying’ antagonist that wants to do evil intentions. Due to it
being an action movie, the movie will be action-packed, meaning it will tie in loosely with reality.
Younger audiences may be unaware of this and will have unreal perspective on justice and crime,
which can cause negative effects on them.

Unit 1.5

The impact that the media holds against its users is that can widespread information that may be
true or false to million=s of people (moral panic). Information that can be described as violent crime
can lead to people having moral panic. An example of a crime that is increasingly morally panicking
the public is knife crime; it is said to have increased throughout the years and is mainly occurred in
London, which is one of the busiest places in the world. Moral panic may cause individuals to act
irrationally towards particular communities that are said to be the centre of crime that people are
being warned to be cautioned about.

The media quite often stereotype certain rimes to particular individuals or communities based on
their appearance or the majority who commits the crime. The news attempts to stereotype certain
criminals by forcing their ideas towards the viewers; which is the hypodermic needle theory. This
theory explores the idea where the media uses its power to inject their opinions and beliefs into our
brains by out daily activities. These things could include things such as TV adverts, news articles and
through social media etc. An example of where of where the media extracts its stereotypes towards
the audience can be used towards the famous riot that occurred in London in 2011. The riot was
blamed solely towards the coloured community, and they indirectly stated this by using their front
pages of the newspaper to focus on showing a young black man wearing a tracksuit. This is a
stereotypical image of violent youth that is related to violent crimes such as knife crime.

Due to moral panic, this can alter the public’s concerns towards specific objects, even people. An
example of the public being weary towards particular things are miscellaneous bags left in crowded
places such as the airport and train stations. This is because of the recent bomb attacks that have
been occurring around the world, including London, so o tackle this some places made campaigns to
battle the public’s concerns, such as See It, Say It, Sorted, which was created by the railways. The
public also has different towards different people such as the youths. Youths are seen to be
troublesome members in society, due to being seen loitering around places such as the local shops,
park and possibly fast food restaurants. This in turn of hanging around with a large group of people
will make the public aware of these people and the moment the media talks about crime which can
be biased, the public will be most likely to believe them.

The media can inform/help the police tackle operations by supplying them with information that
may benefit them for the better (changing priorties and emphasis). The newspaper has information
that tha=e==

The media has the power to set trends of particular crime by mentioning that crime numerous
amounts of time in a repetition, and trends are set when the public is panicking or aware of that
crime (perceptions of crime). These trends that said to be ‘rising’ and ‘dangerous’ are seen to be
quite contrary; for example, the news ,mentioned the topic of murder and knife crime very
frequently recently, however, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, claims they
are’100 fewer murders annually in London than over a decade ago’. This shows that the media likes
to exaggerate on their topics and is somewhat unreliable.

Unit 1.6

Statistics is very important to the police as it marks if their services are having an impact towards the
entirety of the UK, such as lessening the amount of a particular crime X%. The police has numerous
amounts of ways to collect statistics, and one way they collect it is by using Home Office statistics.
Home Office statistics are statistics that have been collected by the police annually to mark their
processes. This figure only includes quantitative data, which means it will only include numbers such
as percentages, for example, knife crime has risen by 15% since 2014. This way of collecting data is
unreliable, as more than 20% of all crime are not being collected by the police. This exposes the
‘dark figure of crime’, which is the hidden figure on how much crime is actually happening in the UK.
This figure is also said to be messed around with the higher-ups of the police to get themselves are
higher salary.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales is the other way the police collects their data, which
interviews victims where they talk about their experience with crime. The police use CSEW because
it gives them the nature of the crime, location, timing and the relationship between the offender and
the victim. They also use it to compare it to the Home Office Statistics to find any correlation and fill
gaps in it. CSEW is quantitative data, which is a more detailed analysis of the crime. This may include
topics such as giving the victim’s opinions nad statements on the crime that they have faced. The
CSEW may be slightly inaccurate due to the victim’s having different perceptions than the others as
well as the police having to choose what crime they will record from the victim’s session by the
validity and accuracy of the description.

Accuracy is quite important towards statistics and research as it allows the results to be as close as
the ‘true result’, which is the actual result. In the CSEW, the data that the victim is sharing may not
be as close as the ‘true result’, which is the actual result. In the CSEW, the data that the victim is
sharing may not be accurate due to them not being aware of the situation that they were in or that
the victim having different perceptions on what actually happened, under the influences of drugs
may alter their reality a little bit for example. Accuracy makes the police be on the same road as the
victim as the data they collect is valid.

Validity is also important towards crime statistics and may show that the victim surveys may not be
valid, due to having inconsistences within the victim’s story. Inconsistences within the data makes it
untrustworthy; possibly due to the victim’s biased towards the offender which alters what the
offender actually did to the victim.