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Criminal Justice Studies

Definition

The applied study of the agencies that respond to crime, chiefly the police, the courts, and correctional institutions, and how they operate and interact.

Related terms

Biosocial Criminology
An approach that treats biological and social factors as mutually constitutive rather than alternative explanations for crime. It holds that genetic or...
Criminology
The scientific study of crime, its causes and distribution across populations, the operation of criminal justice institutions, and strategies for prevention and...
Interdisciplinarity
The practice of drawing concepts and methods from several established disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, and biology, to explain a single phenomenon.
Penology
The branch of criminology concerned with the theory and practice of punishment and imprisonment. It examines the aims of punishment (retribution, deterrence,...
Rational Choice Theory
A criminological theory, associated with Cornish and Clarke, that treats offending as purposive behaviour: offenders assess the rewards, costs, risks, and effort...

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