Examining The Concept Of Crime And Its Dimensions Criminology Essay

Examining The Concept Of Crime And Its Dimensions Criminology EssayTappan (1947) defined iniquity asan intentional act or omission in violation of felon practice of law, affiliated without defense or justification, and penalized by the state and vehemently advocated the nonion that the heavy interpretation of umbrage is representative of what society consensually defines curse as. However, as near(prenominal) Greer and Hagan (2001) and Morrison (2009) emphasised, whilst what is deemed a crime will be based on the divided up societal perceptions in many instances, at last acts argon legislated as criminal by those in authority and therefore disagreement between what is lawfully deemed a crime and what is perceived as a crime by members of the society to which the law applies will inevitably exist. Furtherto a greater extent, enthalpy and Lanier (1998) also highlighted that if the excogitation of crime is based purely on the legal explanation past actions such(prenomin al)(prenominal) as racism, sexism, and other denials of human rights as well as other deviant and anti- fond behavior may fail to be recognised, since these engender often been excluded from what constitutes crime in the definition proposed by law. As such, Hagan (1977) posited that crime should be regarded as a subcategory of all harmful acts, regardless of whether they argon proscribed by law, thus emphasising that the legal definition of crime solely is too condense. Similarly, some theorists (Burgress 1950 Durkheim 1933 Roshier 1989) have take oned to dilate the legal definition further still to include a universal sense of moral philosophy and argue that actions should be defined as crime when moral dishonour ensues from a breach of hearty norms. This perspective thus strikes the reactions of society, although as Blackburn (1993) emphasised, non all criminal acts violate moral codes, such as supposed(a) victimless crimes including the gambling, drug abuse and prosti tution. Hence this definition may still not encompass the crime phenomenon fully.Whilst a good starting point in terms of defining crime, evidently, the legal definition alone is too narrow since it lacks recognition for the hearty nature of crime, social harm and morality and is ultimately determined by those in power rather than a familiar consensus. As Lindgren (2005) emphasised, social constructionists, alternatively, argue that what is defined as crime in law is historically, temporally and culturally relative and as Sumner (2003) argued, we, as a society, have an impact on what is defined as crime, firstly by the social conditions that enable or encourage the behaviour that causes harm and secondly by our reactions to that behaviour and our collective disapproval and condemnation of such behaviours, which ultimately lead them to becoming defined as criminal, but which be issuing to change over epoch as our societal attitudes change. The notion that the definition of cri me is subject to change with changing societal attitudes, was supported by Feldman (1993) who suggested that whilst the core of criminal law is consistent across societies, the borders move. So whilst, as Lemert (1972) found in a cross cultural comparison, murder, rape and larceny are universally condemned crimes whatever the prevailing legal system and period context, the definition of many other acts as criminal depends heavily of which societies are examined and when. For example, in 1533 English law identified homoeroticism as guilty by hanging, and until the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was passed, homosexuality remained illegal within the UK. The rampart of alcohol between 1920 and 1933 in America is some other example of crime being context and time dependent. Notably in both cases, homosexuality and the consumption of alcohol are still illegal in some(prenominal)(a) other cultures. This definition of crime therefore accounts for the social nature of crime, and explains ho w societal attitudes influence what becomes licitly defined as crime, how definitions of crime are time and context dependent, and is able to recognise that not all actions are legally classified as criminal but nevertheless constitute behaviour worthy of the definition according to societal beliefs.In an initial stress to integrate the aforementioned components of crime into one conceptual model, Hagan (1977) postulated that deviance and crime are akin and fall under rule breaking which constitutes anything from tyke deviance from accepted standards of behaviour such as public dipsomania to highly offensive acts involving serious harm such as terrorist act or murder. He emphasised that crime is a deviation from a social norm proscribed by criminal law, thus recognising the social constructionists idea of relativity of crime via norm violation, the legal tradition of law violation, as well as societal consensus and social harm. Hagan (1977) demonstrated his attempt to integrate the various definitions of crime within a framework named the profit of Crime which is illustrated below, and reflected the definitions within three measures of seriousness each ranging from low/ lightheaded to high/strong, namely societal consensus regarding the crime, the severity of the legal response, including fines, imprisonment, the death penalisation and so on, and the level of harm inflicted, arguing that some crimes such as drug use, gambling and prostitution are victimless crimes, thus producing less social than individual harm.Source Henry and Lanier (1998)In response to Hagans (1977) pyramid of crime, Henry and Lanier (1998) decided to redesign the visual presentation of the pyramid into a prism, to expand on some elements of the crime phenomenon, namely dimensions of social agreement, probable social response, individual and social harm and the extent of victimisation into a more integrated approach. The complex visual representation of the definition of crime highl ights the complexness of defining crime. Their model is illustrated below, with the swiftness pyramid representing the highly visible crimes, typically those of the structurally powerless, which are committed in public including assault, murder, stranger rape, and arson, and the raze, upside-down pyramid representing relatively invisible crimes, including a variety of crimes of the powerful, such as offences by government officials, corporations, organisations, crime that people commit through their occupations such as fraud and embezzlement, and even some offences such as interior(prenominal) violence, sexism and hate crimes. These crimes are typically perpetrated in private settings such as the workplace, homes and involve violations of trusted relationships.The manner in which the prism is formed has several implications for the way crime is examined. Firstly, the position of crimes in the prism varies over time. As vocal dominant groups and mass-mediated culture focus on diff erent issues so the public awareness of what counts as crime is formed and reformed. In such a formation acts are recognised as more or less visible, more or less serious and more or less harmful, for example the position of domestic violence and sexual harassment have changed, both recently have begun to move from the lower to the upper half of the prism. Second, the upper half of the prism contains predominantly conventional crimes whereas the lower half contains clean-living collar crimes. It is arguable that those committing most of the conventional/ alley crimes are relatively powerless in society whereas those committing most of the white collar crimes hold structural positions of power. Due to this, white collar crimes are located at the bottom of the prism as they are very(prenominal) harmful, but often obscured as they harm their victims indirectly and diffusely. Often the victims are not aware of who the offender or even if they have been victimised.By developing Hagans (1977) analysis, Henry and Lanier (1998) have produced an integrated approach to defining crime, which consider the major constitutive dimensions of what counts as crime. The prism is able to capture the dependent on(p) and changing nature of crime, locating its constitutive features into a framework that allows criminologists to render their combined and interactive effects, but is by no means definitive. The prism allows one to see how specific crimes are related to one another and to wider social forces that intersect with those crimes at certain moments in time, rendering some acts rather than others serious crimes.