🎥 YouTube Lecture Notes — Crime and Criminals

Source

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQe8ZUZBIxt-X1qRVwO8XUck3IeCuUVZE

Notes extracted from the CSS Criminology YouTube lecture series, Topic 3 — "Crime and Criminals" (per FPSC syllabus), compiled from academy notes (NOA, Near Peer, JWT).

Lecture Notes — Crime and Criminals

Who is a Criminal?

• Per American Jurisprudence: a person judicially convicted of conduct that causes social harm and is punishable by law
• Per People's Law Dictionary: more loosely, anyone who has committed a crime, whether convicted or not — though the precise/technical usage restricts "criminal" to those actually convicted

Classification of Criminals (19th-century criminological attempts)

• Early criminologists in the 19th century attempted to classify criminals systematically rather than treat all offenders as a single undifferentiated category
• By nature/state of mind: born/insane criminals, habitual criminals, occasional (situational) criminals, criminals of passion (crime of passion — impulsive, emotion-driven)
• By an Italian criminologist's typology (paralleling Lombroso's tradition): born criminals, mentally-defective/psychopathic criminals, and criminals by passion
• Simpler working classification used for exam purposes:
  • Occasional/situational criminals — one-time offenders; commit crime due to a specific weak moment/temptation/circumstance rather than habitual criminality
  • Habitual criminals — repeat offenders; reoffend on most occasions, contrasted with first-time offenders; examples include repeat drug dealers, repeat drunk-driving offenders
  • Professional criminals — essentially habitual criminals operating with skill, range, and a criminal "lifestyle"/career; includes specialist criminals (e.g., burglars specializing in break-ins) who treat crime as a trade/vocation

Organized Crime

• UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) definition: a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time, acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or material benefit
• Structure/features: organizational hierarchy; element of planning; use of violence and coercion to maintain effective control; corruption of public officials to sustain continued operation
• Typical activities: distribution of narcotics, gambling, prostitution, illegal arms sales/trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, human trafficking, extortion

White-Collar Crime

• Sutherland's Differential Association Theory underlies the classic definition of white-collar crime
• Definition: a crime committed by a person of high social status and respectability in the course of their occupation
• Nature: financially-motivated, non-violent offences committed by professionals in business and government sectors
• Examples: fraud, bribery, Ponzi schemes, insider trading, embezzlement, cybercrime, copyright infringement, money laundering, forgery, identity theft, extortion, insurance fraud

Corporate Crime

• Crime committed by employees/officers for the benefit of the organization they work for, rather than purely personal gain
• Key features: offenders often do not perceive themselves as criminals; such conduct is frequently informally tolerated/normalized within professional or institutional subcultures — a form of "crimes of respectability"

Video Roadmap Note

• This lecture is Topic 3 of the CSS Criminology series; the next video in the series covers Topic 4 of the syllabus