Assignment: Social Construct

Assignment: Social Construct

Assignment: Social Construct

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Learning Objectives

• Understand the difference between the key concepts “crime,” “criminology,” and “law.”

• Recognize crime as a social construct.

• Understand the complex relationship between crime and society.

• Discuss the main criminology schools and perspectives.

• Examine the strengths and weaknesses of different methods to measure and research crime.

Criminology, Crime, and the Law

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Section 1.1 Overview of Criminology CHAPTER 1

In a small, upstate New York Suburb, 50-year-old Samuel Friedlander lived in a beau-tiful three-story colonial home with his wife and his two children, ages 8 and 10. He was a successful attorney with his own private practice, and it seemed that he had achieved what many might consider the perfect life—except that Friedlander and his wife were in the midst of a divorce. Without warning, in the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 18, 2011, Friedlander removed one of the legs from a piece of furniture and used it to beat his wife to death. Then he shot his two children and covered each with a blanket (Schweber, 2011). He then shot and killed himself. Friedlander had never been in trouble with the law, and his friends, neighbors, and family generally considered him to be a nice person. People in the community were shocked when they learned that he was the perpe- trator of such a gruesome murder and struggled to make sense of such a senseless crime.

1.1 Overview of Criminology

When a violent crime is committed, experts often look to culture, biology, and environment, as well as the stress level of the perpetrator, to try to explain the criminal behavior. They also employ criminology, or the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, consequences, social reaction, and control of criminal behavior. The field of criminology focuses primarily on the origins of criminal behavior. However, criminologists also investigate the law-making process, how crime impacts society as a whole, as well as specific social groups. From this perspective, crime is a social construct, meaning its definition may change over time and is largely determined by the norms and values of a given society. Powerful individuals and groups also tend to dispropor- tionately influence the definition of crime. Recognizing crime as a social construct makes defining crime challenging since it is embedded with a series of moral, philosophical, and legal issues.

Many criminologists, therefore, rely on the legalistic approach (Tappan, 1947), which defines crime as any action that intentionally violates the law. As an interdisciplinary science, criminology is shaped by a number of disciplines including anthropology, biol- ogy, economics, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, and most predominantly sociology. Modern criminology benefits from this rich tradition, as those who work in the criminal justice profession can draw from a legacy of theory, research methods, and evi- dence to better understand the relationship between crime and society.

Origins of Modern American Law

The first sets of written rules were established by the Babylonian King Hammurabi (1792– 1750 BCE), in the Mesopotamia area (i.e., southern Iraq). The Code of Hammurabi con- tained 282 clauses, 50 of which dealt with crime and subsequent punishment. This code established what was known as lex talonis or the “eye for an eye” philosophy on crime and punishment, a philosophy that was also a prominent feature in Judaic law. Judaic law was the dominant code roughly 500 miles west of Mesopotamia in Canaan and became known as The Law of Moses. Elements of modern American criminal law can be traced back to these early written rules. Many of the behaviors outlawed in Judaic culture, for example, murder, rape, and robbery are also outlawed in many Westernized nations.

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Section 1.1 Overview of Criminology CHAPTER 1

The defining characteristics of the modern American legal system, however, were adopted from English common law, which was developed during the rule of Henry II as King of England (1154–1189) when royal judges started to publish case decisions. Judges were required to defer to judge-made law established in pre- vious cases, known as precedents. Once judges pub- lished their decisions regularly, a written body of laws was created and expanded upon over time. These legal rulings and precedents produced by the common law system became a central feature in the English Consti- tution, which eventually became the foundation of the American judicial process.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

• Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
• Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
• One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
• I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

• Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
• In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
• Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
• Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

• Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
• Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
• I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

• I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
• As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
• It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

 

LopesWrite Policy

• For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
• Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
• Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
• Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

• The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
• Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
• If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
• I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
• As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

• Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: 
  • Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
  • Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.