Understanding Crime
Week 2 Lecture Notes
Thinking Critically about Crime and Criminology
Critically Thinking
• Critically thinking is the ability to think clearly, rationally, understanding the logical connection
between ideas.
• Someone with critical thinking skills can:
- Understand the links between ideas
- Determine the importance and relevance of arguments and ideas
- Recognise, build and appraise arguments
- Identify inconsistencies and errors in reasoning
- Approach problems in a consistent and systematic way
- Re ect on the justi cation of their own assumptions, beliefs and values.
Sociological Imagination
• In 1940s C. Wright Mills, coined the phrased ‘sociological imagination’.
• Considering our daily lives in a larger social and historical setting.
• Parting from the common- sense view of the world.
• Placing our personal biography into a bigger picture, where history and the many relationships
and process we call ‘society’ come together.
• We are constructed to act in ways we do not always understand.
• Despite our intentions, many of our actions have consequences we might not anticipate.
What is Theory?
• A simple way of thinking about theories is that they provide explanation of why the world works
the way it does.
• Theories can be erroneous, and accurate predictions can be made using them.
• All respected theories of crime in the modern ear are based on science.
• We continuously re ne and improve our theories to gain a better understanding of what causes
people to commit crime.
Criminological Theories
• Classical perspective
• Positive perspective
• Con ict perspective
• Sociological perspective
• Multifactor perspective
Focus of Traditional Theories
Individual Factors Situational Factors Social Structural Factors
• Individual characteristics • Sites of analysis • Broader social relationships.
• Biological aspects • Speci c ecological or • Class, sex, gender, race, SES,
• Individual choice environmental factors etc.
• Interactions between • Operation of social institutions-
individuals and systems education, legal, family and
work.
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Week 2 Lecture Notes
Thinking Critically about Crime and Criminology
Critically Thinking
• Critically thinking is the ability to think clearly, rationally, understanding the logical connection
between ideas.
• Someone with critical thinking skills can:
- Understand the links between ideas
- Determine the importance and relevance of arguments and ideas
- Recognise, build and appraise arguments
- Identify inconsistencies and errors in reasoning
- Approach problems in a consistent and systematic way
- Re ect on the justi cation of their own assumptions, beliefs and values.
Sociological Imagination
• In 1940s C. Wright Mills, coined the phrased ‘sociological imagination’.
• Considering our daily lives in a larger social and historical setting.
• Parting from the common- sense view of the world.
• Placing our personal biography into a bigger picture, where history and the many relationships
and process we call ‘society’ come together.
• We are constructed to act in ways we do not always understand.
• Despite our intentions, many of our actions have consequences we might not anticipate.
What is Theory?
• A simple way of thinking about theories is that they provide explanation of why the world works
the way it does.
• Theories can be erroneous, and accurate predictions can be made using them.
• All respected theories of crime in the modern ear are based on science.
• We continuously re ne and improve our theories to gain a better understanding of what causes
people to commit crime.
Criminological Theories
• Classical perspective
• Positive perspective
• Con ict perspective
• Sociological perspective
• Multifactor perspective
Focus of Traditional Theories
Individual Factors Situational Factors Social Structural Factors
• Individual characteristics • Sites of analysis • Broader social relationships.
• Biological aspects • Speci c ecological or • Class, sex, gender, race, SES,
• Individual choice environmental factors etc.
• Interactions between • Operation of social institutions-
individuals and systems education, legal, family and
work.
fl flfi
fifi
