Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of painful consequences upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or behavior that is deemed undesirable. It is, however, possible to distinguish between various different understandings of what punishment is.
Safety in numbers is the hypothesis that, by being part of a large physical group or mass, an individual is less likely to be the victim of a mishap, accident, attack, or other bad event. Some related theories also argue that mass behaviour can reduce accident risks, such as in traffic safety – in this case, the safety effect creates an actual reduction of danger, rather than just a redistribution over a larger group.
Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns. It is a key component of crime analysis and the CompStat policing strategy. Mapping crime, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), allows crime analysts to identify crime hot spots, along with other trends and patterns.
Gun violence is a term of political, economic and sociological interest referring to the tens of thousands of annual firearms-related deaths and injuries occurring in the United States.
Property crime is a category of crime, usually involving private property, that includes, among other crimes, burglary, larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, shoplifting, and vandalism. Property crime is a crime to obtain money, property, or some other benefit. This may involve force, or the threat of force, in cases like robbery or extortion. Since these crimes are committed in order to enrich the perpetrator they are considered property crimes. Crimes against property are divided into two groups: destroyed property and stolen property. When property is destroyed, it could be called arson or vandalism. Examples of the act of stealing property is robbery or embezzlement.
Operation Ceasefire (also known as the Boston Gun Project and the Boston Miracle) is a problem-oriented policing initiative implemented in 1996 in Boston, Massachusetts. The program was specifically aimed at youth gun violence as a large-scale problem. The plan is based on the work of criminologist David M. Kennedy.
Sibling abuse includes the physical, psychological, or sexual abuse of one sibling by another. More often than not, the younger sibling is abused by the older sibling. Sibling abuse is the most common of family violence in the US, but the least reported. As opposed to sibling rivalry, sibling abuse is characterized by the one-sided treatment of one sibling to another.
The professional practice of behavior analysis is a domain of behavior analysis, the others being radical behaviorism, experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. The practice of behavior analysis is the delivery of interventions to consumers that are guided by the principles of radical behaviorism and the research of both experimental and applied behavior analysis. Professional practice seeks to change specific behavior through the implementation of these principles. In many states, practicing behavior analysts hold a license, certificate, or registration. In other states, there are no laws governing their practice and, as such, the practice may be prohibited as falling under the practice definition of other mental health professionals. This is rapidly changing as behavior analysts are becoming more and more common.
Victimisation is the state or process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology.
Black Cobra is one of the largest immigrant street gangs in Denmark and is represented in most major Danish cities, with approximately 100 members. The gang is also active in Sweden, having established itself in the Malmö district Rosengård and the Stockholm suburbs of Tensta, Rissne and Rinkeby. The Black Cobra gang also control a youth gang called the Black Scorpions. Their criminal activity involves drug trafficking, robbery, theft, racketeering, extortion and murder. The police describe Black Cobra as a loose network composed of strong leadership figures. Black Cobra members wear black and white shirts with an emblem on the back of a cobra in attack position. The shirts also have Black Cobra written on them, above the emblem in Old English-style writing.
Rickettsia parkeri is a gram-negative intracellular bacterium. The organism is found in the Western Hemisphere and is transmitted via the bite of hard ticks of the genus Amblyomma. R. parkeri causes mild spotted fever disease in humans, whose most common signs and symptoms are fever, an eschar at the site of tick attachment, rash, headache, and muscle aches. Doxycycline is the most common drug used to reduce the symptoms associated with disease.
Trial as an adult is a situation in which a juvenile offender is tried as if they were an adult, whereby they may receive a longer or more serious sentence than would otherwise be possible if they were charged as a juvenile.
David Nelken is a Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change Faculty of Political Science, University of Macerata and the Distinguished Visiting Research Professor, Faculty of Law, Cardiff University. His work focuses primarily on comparative criminal justice and comparative sociology of law. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.
Neurocriminology is an emerging sub-discipline of biocriminology and criminology that applies brain imaging techniques and principles from neuroscience to understand, predict, and prevent crime.
Criminology is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, legal sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, scholars of law and jurisprudence, as well as the processes that define administration of justice and the criminal justice system.
Imagination inflation is a type of memory distortion that occurs when imagining an event that never happened increases confidence in the memory of the event.
Social network analysis in criminology views social relationships in terms of network theory, consisting of nodes and ties. These networks are often depicted in a social network diagram, where nodes are represented as vertices and ties are represented as edges.
Positive criminology is based on the perspective that integration and positive life influences that help individuals develop personally and socially will lead to a reduced risk of criminal behavior and better recovery of offenders. Integration works in three levels: inter-personal, intra-personal and spiritual. Positive influences include participation in recovery programs, such as those for substance use disorders. Factors that can make growth difficult include a long-standing pattern of criminal activity, serious adverse life events, and chronic mental health illness.
David Philip Farrington is a British criminologist, forensic psychologist, and emeritus professor of psychological criminology at the University of Cambridge, where he is also a Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellow. In 2014, Paul Hawkins and Bitna Kim wrote that Farrington "is considered one of the leading psychologists and main contributors to the field of criminology in recent years."
Secondary victimisation refers to further victim-blaming from criminal justice authorities following a report of an original victimisation.
