Steven Briggs - Criminology For Dummies

The Lawrence v. Texas and Bowers v. Hardwick cases demonstrate how different cultural values across the United States manifest themselves in criminal laws. For instance, Texas and Georgia criminalized sodomy between consenting males even though such conduct was legal in many other states. On this topic, at least, you can reasonably conclude that the cultural values of Texas and Georgia probably differ from those of Massachusetts or Vermont.

Each state has its own electoral process and its own court system, so each state may develop laws (including criminal laws) that reflect the will and values of its people.

Outside of the United States, criminal laws are even more diverse, which demonstrate the dramatic cultural differences among different countries. For example, some Islamic countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, follow a code of laws based on their religion, known as sharia law. Based on this law, these countries allow the death penalty for homosexual acts in some circumstances. Also under sharia law, someone guilty of a crime such as theft may be punished by imprisonment and by amputation of hands — if the person has a very serious criminal history. Clearly, the cultures — as well as some of the laws — of these countries differ greatly from those of the United States.

To show the diversity of laws among the 50 U.S. states, I present three states’ efforts to define the crime of theft:

California Penal Code Section 484 — Theft

Every person who shall feloniously steal, take, carry, lead, or drive away the personal property of another, or who shall fraudulently appropriate property which has been entrusted to him or her, or who shall knowingly and designedly, by any false or fraudulent representation or pretense, defraud any other person of money, labor or real or personal property, or who causes or procures others to report falsely of his or her wealth or mercantile character and by thus imposing upon any person, obtains credit and thereby fraudulently gets or obtains possession of money or property or obtains the labor or service of another, is guilty of theft.

New York Penal Law Section 155.05 — Larceny

A person steals property and commits larceny when, with intent to deprive another of property or to appropriate the same to himself or to a third person, he wrongfully takes, obtains or withholds such property from an owner thereof.

Louisiana Code Title 14 Section 67 — Theft

Theft is the misappropriation or taking of anything of value which belongs to another, either without the consent of the other to the misappropriation or taking, or by means of fraudulent conduct, practices, or representations. An intent to deprive the other permanently of whatever may be the subject of the misappropriation or taking is essential.

In some provinces of Russia, where alcohol consumption has been a cultural norm, driving under the influence of alcohol isn’t a crime unless the driver crashes and causes an injury. This leniency contrasts sharply with the United States, where the permissible blood alcohol content (BAC) for adults dropped from 0.10 percent in some states to 0.08 percent in all 50 states. (In other words, driving with a BAC of more than 0.08 percent now constitutes a crime throughout the United States.)

Theoretically, laws in the United States reflect the will of the people, as carried out by their elected representatives in the legislature. But the passage of laws doesn’t always play out so neatly. Criminologists fall into at least two different camps on the issue of what influences the passage of laws in the United States:

One group believes that, generally speaking, criminal laws reflect a consensus of the values of the citizens.

Another group contends that the legislative process isn’t so clean and that the passage of criminal laws actually reflects conflicts between different interest groups.

Criminologists in the second group point to the scarcity of laws regulating large businesses or the wealthy because those interest groups wield lots of political power. These criminologists see conflict, rather than consensus, as the method by which criminal laws are passed. They argue that the more powerful and wealthy a group of people is, the less likely that group is to be regulated.

Having witnessed the passage of criminal laws firsthand, I argue that both views are partially right. With mala in se crimes — the crimes that most of us agree are evil (such as murder and rape) — the political process usually reflects the will of the people. However, in terms of malum in prohibita acts (the ones that aren’t necessarily evil but do need to be regulated), powerful and wealthy interest groups can sometimes sway legislators who are debating those acts.

Consider gun-control laws as an example: The National Rifle Association (NRA) devotes a good deal of time and money to influencing these laws. Depending on your personal views, you may see this fact as either good or bad. If you’re an NRA member, you may argue that the organization tries to ensure that individuals maintain their Second Amendment rights to own guns, hunt, and protect personal property. If you’re not an NRA member, you may consider the NRA an aggressive political advocacy group that prevents the reasonable regulation of firearms.

Almost every industry commits significant resources to protecting its corporate interests by lobbying (or influencing) legislators. And lobbying can sometimes mean trying to prevent the passage of criminal laws that may punish industry misconduct.

Nonetheless, U.S. society is far more regulated through criminal laws today than it was just 50 years ago. In a society that continues to grow more and more complex, new laws are often necessary to protect food and drug sources, the environment, civil rights, and personal safety.

Chapter 3

IN THIS CHAPTER

Gathering crime stats and determining how many crimes occur

Realizing how crime stats affect public policy

Calculating the costs of crime

Documenting how much crime occurs in the United States and calculating its impact on society is an incredibly difficult — some would say impossible — task. Yet, understanding how crime statistics are gathered and how reliable those statistics are is essential because politicians and other policymakers rely heavily on crime stats to make decisions that impact the rest of society.

Should money be diverted from social services to build more prisons? Should inmates be released early from prison to free up money to provide social services? Should schools develop Internet safety programs to protect kids from sexual predators? Crime stats, even imperfect ones, help people answer tough questions like these.

People who rely on statistics without really understanding them can make serious policy mistakes that waste money and may even risk lives. Reading this chapter is a great first step toward truly understanding where crime stats come from and what their flaws may be.