criminal

RECOGNIZING EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOR UNDER VERY DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES Criminologists generally study people who are labeled as “predators” and “convicts” because of the most antisocial and harmful acts they are known to have committed. Those who are sympa- thetic to offenders as troubled souls argue that people should not be judged solely by the worst things they […]

Gather Evidence to Test Hypotheses See if this criminal activity is linked to other social problems and whether effective responses have been devised and implemented. Now that the term road rage is firmly entrenched in the vocabulary of law, criminal justice, and journalism, discus- sions of the problem generate many interesting hypotheses. For example, a

Investigate How Victims Are Faring Zero in on the criminal justice system’s response. Motor vehicle collisions are a major cause of injury, disability, and death, especially of young people. On a soci- etal level, vehicle crashes are a major source of shattered lives, emotional damage (including phobias, and in extreme cases, post-traumatic stress disorder), truncated

Measure the True Dimensions of the Problem The analysis proceeds by estimating the frequency of occur- rence of this sort of incident and examining the victim– offender interaction in order to draw evidence-based portraits of the typical aggressors and their usual targets, and of the amount of harm done. Unfortunately, chilling accounts often were laced

  Identify, Define, and Describe the Problem: The analysis begins with a brief history that recounts when the problem was recognized and the way in which the victims’ plight was originally portrayed. For decades, concern about the risks surrounding auto- mobile travel centered on accidents caused by hazardous road conditions, speeding, and drunk driving. Although

Investigate How Victims Are Handled Researchers scrutinize how victims actually are treated by the criminal justice and social service systems that are ostensibly designed to help them. Their studies can pinpoint the sources of tension, conflict, mistreatment, and dissatisfaction that alienate victims from the agencies that are supposed to serve them. Program evaluations determine whether

Exploring the Bonds between Captives and their Captors Hostages (of terrorists, skyjackers, kidnappers, bank robbers, rebelling prisoners, and gunmen) are used by their captors to exert leverage on a third party—perhaps a family, the police, or a government agency. These captives could react in an unanticipated way to being trapped and held against their will.

SOURCES OF BIAS THAT THWART OBJECTIVITY To sum up the arguments presented in earlier sec- tions, when choosing projects to research and when gathering and interpreting data, victimologists must put aside their personal political orientations toward Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

Criminals Can Be Victims Too To further complicate matters, impartiality is called for when the injured party clearly turns out to be an undeniable lawbreaker. To put it bluntly, predators prey upon each other as well as upon innocent members of the general public. Some assaults and slayings surely can be characterized as 8 CH

Why would anyone even con- sider striving for objectivity to be an indispensable prerequisite of each and every scientific analysis? WHY OBJECTIVITY IS DESIRABLE At first glance, the importance of reserving judg- ments, refraining from jumping to conclusions, and resisting the urge to side with those who are in pain might not be self-evident. An