CONCEPTS OF CRIME

AND CRIMINOLOGY
BY: DR. ZAITON AZMAN
DEPARTMENT OD SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION AND JUSTICE
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA
THE CONTENTS

1. Criminology?
2. Crime?
3. Deviance?
4. Criminal Justice?
5. Proscriptive norm?
6. Prescriptive norm?
7. Mens rea and actus reus?
WHAT IS CRIMINOLOGY?

Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey (pg. 4) state:

• Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It
includes within its scope the processes of making laws, of breaking laws, and of reacting
toward the breaking of law….The objective of criminology is the development of a body
of general and verified principles and of other types of knowledge regarding this process
of law, crime, and treatment.
CONT..

• Criminology is scientific approach to the study of criminal behavior. This includes the objective
social science inquiry into:

 The nature and extent of crime

 The process and making criminals law
 The causation of law violations
 Society’s reaction to law violations and violator
 Methods to control criminal behaviour
CONT..

• Criminology is an interdisciplinary academic science that uses the scientific method to

study of nature extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior (Siegel, 2011).
• Criminologists have been trained in diverse fields, most commonly sociology, but also
criminal justice, political science, psychology, economics, and the natural sciences.
SUB FIELD OF CRIMINOLOGY

• 1) Sociology of crime- The study of crime itself (e.g.: patterns, characteristics, population
distribution and geography of crime, concepts of crime, types or categories of crimes).
• 2) Sociology-psychology of criminal conduct- examines the pre-incidental factors of
crime and the atmosphere or characteristics (individual, community, environment) at risk
that can push individuals or members of the community towards committing a
crime/theory about the causes of crime explain:
a) why do certain people commit crimes? And
b) why doesn't everyone commit a crime?
CONT..

• 3) Community response to crime and criminal conduct- society's reaction to the

individual who committed the crime and the crime itself.  This reaction is divided into
2:
a.      Law enforcement's reaction to crime and criminal conduct. E.g. the police, courts
and prisons, and other law enforcement agencies in improving the court/crime
prevention system.
b.      Public reactions (individuals, neighborhood communities, schools, etc.) to crime
and criminal behavior as well as target group reactions to public reactions and
responses (child offenders, ex-convicts, children at risk, etc.)
CONT..

• 4. Study on victims of crime (victimology) - factors of being a victim of crime, the

effects of crime, court/welfare/intervention to the victim.
WHAT IS DEVIANT?

• Deviance refers to the study of behavior that departs from social norms.
• Deviant used to describe a person or behaviour that is not usual and is generally considered to
be unacceptable.
• Examples:…………………………….
• Not all crimes are deviant or unusual acts, and not all deviant acts are illegal.
WHAT IS CRIME?

Crime is in general:
• Offenses against the public/legal provisions of a country, and allows the individual who
commits it to be held liable to receive legal punishment.
• An act that violates any provision of the law or leaves an act required by law to do so.
• Acts that if committed would result in the perpetrator being prosecuted by the authorities
and punished by the authorities.
CONT..

• (e.g. Malaysia: drug trafficking of cannabis type 200 gm and above is punishable by
DEATH PENALTY  in accordance with Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952).
• (offenses e.g. no id card/passport, valid travel document, no driver's license, etc.).
• ………….“violation of societal rules of behavior as interpreted and expressed by a
criminal legal code created by people holding social and political power.  Individuals who
violate these rules are subject to sanctions by state authority, social stigma, and loss of
status.” (Siegel, 2010).
• MYS61339 2018.pdf (ilo.org) – LAWS OF MALAYSIA PENAL CODE (ACT 574)
CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION
Can you identify
behaviors that are
deviant but not
criminal? What about
crimes that are not
deviant?
CRIMINAL JUSTICE?

• Criminal justice refers to the study of agencies of social control that handle criminal
offenders.
• Criminal justice scholars engage in describing, analyzing, and explaining the operations
og the agencies of justice, specifically the police department, courts, and correctional
facilities.
• They seek more effective methods of crime control and offender rehabilitation.
ELEMENTS OF CRIME

• From the point of sociology of crime, the violation of the law is almost the same as
violating proscriptive norms (an action or attitude that is unacceptable and rejected by
society)- prohibition rules.
• A relic/ omission or not performing prescriptive norms (an action or attitude that is
acceptable and desirable to society) – guidance.
• What is clear, an unacceptable wrongdoing by all societies becomes a criminal offense.
MENS REA

• But before the violation/ omission/ wrong doing is said to be wrong there must be
certain conditions. The conditions that are often mentioned are MENS REA and
ACTUS REUS.
• The concept of mens rea, which is Latin for “guilty mind,” allows the criminal justice
system to distinguish someone who set out with the intention of committing a crime
from someone who did not mean to commit a crime. 

• Mens rea refers to what the accused individual was thinking, and what his intent was at
the time the crime was committed. Intent may be anything from a general intention to
do something illegal, to a premeditated objective to commit a particular crime.
ACTUS REUS

• The Latin term actus reus refers to the actual act of doing the illegal
thing, with no reference to the person’s mental state.
• In order for a person to be convicted of having committed a crime, it must
be proven that he engaged in some physical act, or took action, to do so.
TUTORIAL TASKS

• Define this concepts:

• Crime
• Criminal (adult offender, child offender, ex-convict, recidivist, drug addict, relapse).
• Deviance
• Proscriptive norms
• Prescriptive norms

Give the related examples.