Criminology

Criminal Victimization

Crime is the breaking of rules or laws for which a legal system can provide a conviction (Darrow & Baatz, 2009). Historically, individual human societies have defined crimes differently. Crimes can be considered local, state, or international and can occur in several stages such as planning, disclosure, and intent (Darrow & Baatz, 2009). Many crimes are often unreported, not recorded, not followed through on, and unable to be proved.

According to professors Lawrence Cohen, James Kluegel, and Kenneth Land "the relationships of social inequality to criminal behavior and to the arrest, prosecution, and sentencing of alleged criminal offenders are among the most frequently studied topics in American criminology (1981, p. 505). Cohen, Kluegel, and Land also report that "many citizens and criminologist alike believe that the disadvantaged are less adequately insulted than the advantage from conditions that stimulate crimes and that the disadvantaged receive less favorable treatment...
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