Criminal Justice Chapter 3 Vocabulary – Flashcards
Unlock all answers in this set
Unlock answersquestion
Theory
answer
An assumption (or set of assumptions) that attempts to explain why or how things are related to each other.
question
Social Contract
answer
An imaginary agreement to sacrifice the minimum amount of liberty necessary to prevent anarchy and chaos.
question
Special or specific deterrence
answer
The prevention of individuals from committing a crime again by punishing them.
question
General Deterrence
answer
The prevention of people in general or society at large from engaging in crime by punishing specific individuals and making examples of them.
question
Biological Inferiority
answer
According to biological theories, a criminal's innate physiological makeup produces certain physical or genetic characteristics that distinguish criminals from non-criminals.
question
Criminal Anthropology
answer
The Study of "criminal" human beings
question
Psychopaths, sociopaths, antisocial personalities
answer
Persons characterized by no sense of guilt, no subjective conscience, and no sense of right and wrong.
question
Collective Conscience
answer
The general sense of mortality of the times.
question
Chicago School
answer
A group of sociologists at the University of Chicago who assumed in their research that delinquent behavior was a product of social disorganization.
question
Imitation or modeling
answer
A means by which a person can learn new responses by observing others without performing any overt act and receiving direct reinforcement or reward.
question
Learning Theory
answer
A theory that explains criminal behavior and its prevention with the concepts of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, extinction, punishment and modeling or imitation.
question
Positive Reinforcement
answer
The presentation of a stimulus that increases or maintains a response.
question
Punishment
answer
The presentation of an aversive stimulus to reduce a response.
question
Criminalization Process
answer
The way people and actions are defined as a criminal
question
Class Struggle
answer
Fro radical criminologist, the competition among wealthy people and among poor people and between rich people and poor people, which causes crime.
question
Relative deprivation
answer
This refers to inequalities (in resources, opportunities, material, goods, ect.) that are defined by a person as unfair or unjust.
