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In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term crime does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition, though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state. Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law.
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other crimes, and moral support for victims. The primary institutions of the criminal justice system are the police, prosecution and defense lawyers, the courts and the prisons system.
Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.
In the United States, the relationship between race and crime has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century. Crime rates vary significantly between racial groups; however, academic research indicates that the over-representation of some racial minorities in the criminal justice system can in part be explained by socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, exposure to poor neighborhoods, poor access to public and early education, and exposure to harmful chemicals and pollution. Racial housing segregation has also been linked to racial disparities in crime rates, as black Americans have historically and to the present been prevented from moving into prosperous low-crime areas through actions of the government and private actors. Various explanations within criminology have been proposed for racial disparities in crime rates, including conflict theory, strain theory, general strain theory, social disorganization theory, macrostructural opportunity theory, social control theory, and subcultural theory.
Environmental criminology focuses on criminal patterns within particular built environments and analyzes the impacts of these external variables on people's cognitive behavior. It forms a part of criminology's Positivist School in that it applies the scientific method to examine the society that causes crime.
Race in the United States criminal justice system refers to the unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups in convicting and sentencing felons in the United States criminal justice system. Although prior arrests and criminal history is also a factor. Experts and analysts have debated the relative importance of different factors that have led to these disparities.
Sentencing disparity is defined as "a form of unequal treatment in criminal punishment that is often of unexplained cause and is at least incongruous, unfair and disadvantaging in consequence". In the United States, men are most adversely affected by sentencing disparity, being twice as likely to be sentenced to prison after conviction than women and receiving on average 63% longer prison sentences, for the same offenses.
Lawrence W. Sherman is an experimental criminologist and police educator who defined evidence-based policing. Since October 2024 he has served as Chief Executive Officer of Benchmark Cambridge, a global police reform organisation. From 2022-24 he was Chief Scientific Officer of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, and since 2017 he has served as the Wolfson Professor of Criminology Emeritus at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology.
Meda Chesney-Lind is a US feminist, criminologist, and an advocate for girls and women who come in contact with the criminal justice system in Hawaii.
Lonnie Athens teaches in the criminology department at Seton Hall University and was senior research criminologist at Georgetown University Law Center.
Shaun L. Gabbidon is a British criminologist and the author of many articles and books that typically focus on the areas of racial and ethnic issues in criminology.
Richard Rosenfeld was an American criminologist and former Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
Ruth Delois Peterson is an American sociologist and criminologist known for her work on racial and ethnic inequality and crime. She earned her PhD in sociology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983. Peterson is emerita professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, former director of the Criminal Justice Research Center (1999-2011), and former president of the American Society of Criminology (2016). She is the namesake of the American Society of Criminology's Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Racial and Ethnic Diversity.
Darrell John Steffensmeier is an American criminologist and Liberal Arts Research Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Pennsylvania State University.
The Michael J. Hindelang Award is an award, established in 1992, that is awarded annually by the American Society of Criminology to books published in the three previous years, that are deemed to make "the most outstanding contribution to research in criminology." A book is only eligible to win the award if a member of the Society nominates it.
Janet Lynn Lauritsen is an American criminologist and the Curators' Distinguished Professor Emerita of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
John H. Kramer is an American criminologist. He is an emeritus professor of sociology and criminology at Pennsylvania State University, where he was a professor from 1973 until his retirement in 2015. He also served as executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing from 1979 to 1998, and as staff director for the United States Sentencing Commission from 1996 to 1998.
In criminology, racial invariance refers to a hypothesis that the effects of structural disadvantage on rates of violent crime are the same for all racial groups. This hypothesis is a major component of structural perspectives on the causes of crime, such as social disorganization theory and anomie. It can be traced back to William Julius Wilson's 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged, which argued that racial differences in crime rates are due to differences in the communities in which American whites and blacks live. Since then, it has become a major component of the general theory of crime.
Gregg Barak is an American criminologist, academic, and author. He is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University, a former visiting distinguished professor in the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University, and a 2017 Fulbright Scholar in residence at the School of Law, Pontificia Universidade Catholica, Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is most known for his research in the fields of criminology and criminal justice.
Preeti Chauhan is a Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). Her research mostly focuses on juvenile and criminal justice systems, with a particular emphasis on pretrial detention and lower-level enforcement, such as misdemeanors. Chauhan also co-founded the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, where her research has impacted policy changes throughout New York and other states.
References
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