1. · What Did Robert Merton Know, Anyway?
Chapter 12 discussed Policing and Special Populations. In a 1-2
page paper, using examples from policing, determine how
prejudice and discrimination intersect with each other.
You are encouraged to seek examples from at least three (3)
external sources.
Here are some notes down below to help!!
Police and Crime Prevention
The idea of crime prevention as an important function of
policing can be traced to Sir Robert Peel who established crime
prevention as one of the Metropolitan London Police goals.
Since the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice Report in the late 1960s, crime
prevention has become an acceptable function of policing in
America. The concept of crime prevention involves education,
training, public relations, and the development of strategies to
prevent criminal activities. For the last several decades, there
have been a variety of crime prevention studies, programs, and
strategies advocated to help prevent the individual,
neighborhoods, and government and private organizations from
becoming victims of crime.
The community has a role to play in crime prevention. National
commissions such as the President’s Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice and the National
Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice and Goals brought to
national attention the importance of crime prevention for the
community. The goal of Community Crime Prevention Programs
(CCPPs) in the 1970s indicated that community organizations
and local institutions had an important role in crime prevention
efforts. The goal was for the police and community
organizations to provide the impetus in neighborhood crime
prevention efforts.
In the final decades of the twentieth century the police came to
the realization, with a push from the federal government

2. studies, that crime cannot be solved when left without the
cooperation and assistance of the community. Only when citizen
participation exists in crime prevention can we expect that
crime can be reduced.
A community crime prevention approach involves the police and
the communities working together not only to reduce crime but
also to prevent it. To achieve community crime prevention
several techniques and strategies are put into operation.
Defensible Space as a crime prevention approach is workable
and to a great extent successful. Defensible space provides
residents with a secure environment relatively free from crime.
Another technique similar to “defensible space” is Crime
Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). This
concept holds that crime prevention involves the physical
design of buildings along with citizen involvement and the
effective use of police agencies. The thrust of the CPTED model
implies that the physical environment can be orchestrated to
prevent potential offenders from committing incidents of crime
along with improving the quality of life. The third strategy to
prevent crime is Situational Crime Prevention. This approach
hopes to reduce the “opportunity for crime.” Techniques used in
“situational crime prevention” include a wide variety of crime
prevention categories. They can include: burglar alarms, fenced
yards, graffiti cleaning, street lighting, baggage screening,
CCTV systems, identification cards, and credit card
photographs.
The concept of neighborhoods and communities being involved
in crime prevention fits into the concept of community policing.
Crime prevention and community policing are interrelated.
Police agencies have integrated their crime prevention efforts
into community policing. Crime prevention deals with problem
solving and can be incorporated into the community policing
operations. The linkage of crime prevention and community
policing can only strengthen the security and safety of
neighborhoods and the community as a whole. The goal should
be to integrate crime prevention into community policing

3. operations. Sweden provides an example of how an integrated,
comprehensive community crime prevention effort can be
mounted
Police and Special Populations
In this chapter, we focused on how police departments interact
with subordinate groups, those that do not possess power and
resources in society. The three such groups we examined in this
manner are racial and ethnic groups (especially African
Americans), women, and homosexuals. We learned about how
prejudice (an attitude) and discrimination (actions) are related
and operate together to produce certain forms of behavior, some
of which result in the unequal treatment of subordinate groups
by the police. We examined in particular research findings that
elucidate how the police in terms of three questions deal with
certain racial and ethnic groups, women, and homosexuals. The
first question is how members of a subordinate group who are
victims of crime are treated; the second is how the police deal
with members of a subordinate group who are offenders and
finally, we consider how well attempts at including members of
subordinate groups in police departments by hiring them as
police officers have worked. We then focus on the experience of
another country, the United Kingdom, in working out its own
police-subordinate group interrelationships.
Paper 2
· The photo on the phone
In 2013 the town of Steubenville in Ohio gained national
attention when two of its star high school football players were
found guilty of raping a classmate. In 2013 a Canadian teenager
committed suicide following an alleged gang rape.
For this assignment you are going to examine the concept of
rape and the social media. Select a case that has involved rape
or rape allegations (can be one above or one you research) and
explore that case’s facts in terms of the common law and
modern day rape laws.
Consider what influence social media as we know it today can,
did or should play in such cases. In the case of juvenile

4. offenders how should these crimes be treated? Develop a
specific proposal addressing how we should deal with juvenile
rape cases both in terms of offenders and victims.
Your paper is to be 2-4 pages long use APA format and include
at least two (2) outside sources that are to be properly cited and
referenced.
Here are some notes down below to help!!
Sex Offenses
Chapter 10
Crimes Against Persons II: Sex Offenses
Rape is second only to murder in being regarded by law and
society as the most serious crime. This isn’t just true today.
Rape was punishable by death in several states from colonial
times until 1977, when the Supreme Court declared that
execution for the crime of rape was cruel and unusual
punishment.
Rape is a seriouscrime even if victims suffer no physical injury.
That’s because rape violates intimacy and autonomy. Rape and
other sexual assaults are different from all other felonies
because under other circumstances, the behaviors connected
with them aren’t just legal, they’re healthy and wanted. One of
the most critical problems in sex offenses is to distinguish
between flirting and seduction and sexual assault.
Sex Offenses
Originally, the criminal law recognized only two sex offenses—
rape and sodomy. Common law rape was strictly limited to
intentional, forced, nonconsensual, heterosexual vaginal
penetration. Legally, men couldn’t rape their wives.
Common law sodomy meant anal intercourse between two
males. Modern court opinions have relaxed the strict definition
of “rape.” And criminal sexual conduct statutes enacted in the
1970s and the 1980s have expanded the definition of “sex
offenses.”
Reforms in sex offense law were brought about as a result of the
knowledge that the vast majority of rape victims are raped by
men they know. The criminal justice system deals fairly well

5. with aggravated rapes but not well with unarmed acquaintance
rapes.
This is because:
· victims aren’t likely to report unarmed acquaintance rapists,
or they don’t recognize them as rapes;
· when victims do report them, the police are less likely to
believe the victims than they are the victims of aggravated rape;
· prosecutors are less likely to charge unarmed acquaintance
rapists;
· juries are less likely to convict unarmed acquaintance rapists;
· unarmed acquaintance rapists are likely to escape punishment
if their victims don’t follow the rules of middle-class morality
This problem is made worse by the fact that most rapes are
unarmed acquaintance rapes. Another aspect of rape is the
number of victims that are men. It is almost impossible to get
details about how many men are victims of rape.
Common-law rape is intentional, forced heterosexual vaginal
penetration by a man with a woman not his wife. Four elements
were included in this definition of rape;
(1) sexual intercourse by force or a threat of severe bodily harm
(actus reus);
(2) intentional vaginal intercourse (mens rea);
(3) intercourse between a man and a woman who wasn’t his wife
(attendant circumstance);
(4) intercourse without the woman’s consent (attendant
circumstance).
At trial women were allowed to testify against their rapist but
the credibility of the woman depended on three criteria that
were difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy:
(1) her chastity
(2) whether she promptly reported the rape
(3) whether other witnesses corroborated her rape
The 1970s and 1980s were a time of major reform of sex offense
laws. Many states abolished the corroboration rule. Also, most
states passed rape shield statutes. Many states also relaxed the
prompt-reporting rule.

6. States also changed the definition of rape. For example, all but
a few states did away with the marital rape exception, the old
common-law rule that husbands couldn’t rape their wives.
Sexual assault statutes have also shifted the emphasis away
from whether there was consent by the victim to the unwanted
advances by the perpetrator.
The most far-reaching reforms in the definition of rape are
included in the sexual assault statutes of the 1970s and the
1980s, which consolidated the sex offenses into one
comprehensive statute. The definition of rape and sex offenses
was expanded to include all sexual penetrations: vaginal, anal,
and oral and they created less serious crimes of sexual contacts.
Finally, sex crimes were made sex neutral.
The seriousness of sex offenses under the new codes is graded
according to several criteria:
(1) penetrations are more serious than contacts
(2) forcible penetrations and contacts are more serious than
simple nonconsensual penetrations and contacts
(3) physical injury to the victim aggravates the offense
(4) rapes involving more than one rapist, “gang rapes,” are more
serious than those involving a single rapist
Most legislatures and courts still define rape narrowly. In
acquaintance rape cases, in most states, nonconsensual sex is
not rape unless the perpetrator employs force or a threat of
force, or the victim is unconscious, badly drunk, underage, or
otherwise incapacitated.
Modern Rape Law
Most traditional rape statutes, and the newer criminal sexual
assault laws, define rape as intentional sexual penetration by
force without consent. There are many variations in the statutes,
but in most jurisdictions, rape today boils down to three
elements:
1. actus reus – sexual penetration by force or threat of force
2. mens rea – intentional sexual penetration
3. circumstance – nonconsent by the victim
Rape is a crime of violence; its actus reus is sexual intercourse

7. by force. For most of its history, rape actus reus was governed
by the force and resistance rule. The “force” part of the rule
wasn’t satisfied if victims consented to sexual intercourse. The
resistance part of the rule meant the victim had to prove that she
had resisted.
The amount of resistance required to prove lack of consent has
changed over time. In the 1950s, most courts softened the
utmost resistance definition to the reasonable resistance rule,
the rule followed in almost all states today. According to the
rule, the amount of resistance depends on the
totalityofcircumstances in each case.
Many new rape and sexual assault statutes have dropped the
resistance requirement entirely—at least in formal law. Courts
today have adopted either of two definitions of “force”:
extrinsic force and intrinsic force.
· Extrinsic force in rape requires some force in addition to the
amount needed to accomplish the penetration.
· Intrinsic force in rape requires only the amount of force
necessary to accomplish the penetration.
The actual use of force isn’t required to satisfy the force
requirement. The threat of force is enough. To satisfy the
threat-of-force requirement, the prosecution has to prove the
victim experienced two kinds of fear: subjective fear and
objective fear.
· Subjectivefear means that the victim honestly feared imminent
and serious bodily harm
· Objectivefear means that the fear was reasonable under the
circumstances
Some empirical research from the late 1970s and early 1980s
reported that resistance might put victims’ lives at risk. Studies
from the 1990s have uncovered shortcomings in these earlier
findings. For one thing, stranger rapes were overrepresented.
Some important details about acquaintance rape can provide an
understanding of the effect of victim resistance.
· First, victims usually resist unwanted advances because
they’re not afraid men they know will hurt them.

8. · Second, resistance usually succeeds.
· Finally, the most sophisticated empirical studies of the 1990s
found that victim resistance is not what provokes rapists to
injure their victims. Rather, initial rapist violence provokes
victim resistance (Bryden 2000, 367).
The law has never required physical resistance in all cases. No
resistance is required if victims were incapacitated at the time
of the assault by intoxication, mental deficiency, or insanity.
Deception (fraud) can substitute for force. These cases fall into
two categories, fraud in the fact and fraud in the inducement.
· Fraudin the fact consists of tricking the victim into believing
the act she consented to was not sexual intercourse. This type of
intercourse is rape. Intercourse obtained by fraud in the
inducement is not rape.
· Fraudin the inducement (in rape) occurs when the fraud is in
the benefits promised, not in the act.
· Finally, sexual intercourse with a minor who consented is rape
because the law doesn’t recognize the consent of minors.
Rape is a general-intent crime. This, of course, doesn’t mean
there can’t be a different state of mind regarding circumstance
elements, specifically nonconsent. These circumstance elements
center around mistakes—mistakes about age in the cases
involving underage victims or mistakes about the consent to
sexual penetration by competent adult victims.
Since it is impossible to knowingly or purposely make a
mistake, that leaves three types of mens rea: reckless mistakes,
negligent mistakes, or no-fault mistakes (strict liability). The
states are divided as to which mental element to require.
Statutoryrape is to have carnal knowledge of a person under the
age of consent whether or not accomplished by force. Statutory
rapists don’t have to use force and nonconsent isn’t an element
because the victim’s immaturity means force isn’t necessary and
minors can’t legally consent to sex. Thus rape is a strict
liability crime in most states. Some states do permit the defense
of reasonable mistake of age if the defendant reasonably
believed his victim was at or over the age of consent.

9. Most statutes divide rape into two degrees: simple (second-
degree) rape and aggravated (first-degree) rape. Aggravated
rape involves at least one of the following circumstances: the
victim suffers serious bodily injury, a stranger commits the
rape, the rape occurs in connection with another crime, the
rapist is armed, the rapist has accomplices or the victim is a
minor and the rapist is several years older. All other rapes are
“simple” rapes, for which the penalties are less severe.
Crimes Against Persons II
Chapter 10
Crimes Against Persons II: Bodily Injury and Personal Restraint
Assault and battery, although combined in many modern
statutes, are two separate crimes.
· A battery is an unwanted and unjustified offensive touching.
· An assault is either an attempted or a threatened battery,
depending on how the statute defines it.
The essential difference between assault and battery is that
assault requires no physical contact; an assault is complete
before the offender touches the victim. Stalking involves
intentionally scaring another person by following, tormenting,
or harassing him or her.
The battery actus reus is unlawful touching. Unlawful touching
includes a broad spectrum of acts but usually means any
unjustified touching without consent. Statutes don’t always
spell out the battery mens rea. Modern courts and statutes
extend battery mens rea to reckless and negligent contacts.
Battery requires some injury. Batteries that cause minor
physical injury or emotional injury are misdemeanors in most
states. Batteries that cause serious bodily injury are felonies.
Some code provisions are directed at injuries caused by special
circumstances. Two examples include harm caused by pit bulls
and harm caused by drugs.
Assaults are either attempted batteries or threatened batteries,
depending on the state. Attempted battery assault consists of
having the specific intent to commit a battery and taking
substantial steps toward carrying it out without actually

10. completing the attempt.
Threatened battery assault, sometimes called the crime of
“intentional scaring,” requires only that actors intend to
frighten their victims, thus expanding assault beyond attempted
battery. Threatened battery doesn’t require actually having the
intent to injure their victims physically; the intent to frighten
victims into believing the actor will hurt them is enough.
Victims’ awareness is critical to proving threatened battery
assault.Specifically, victims’ fear of an immediate battery has
to be reasonable. Words alone aren’t assaults; threatening
gestures have to accompany them. Conditional threats aren’t
enough either because they’re not immediate.
Domestic Violence Crimes
Since the early 1970s, violence in the family has been
transformed from a private concern to a criminal justice
problem. Violence in intimate relationships is extensive and is
not limited to one socioeconomic group, one society, or one
period of time.
Every type and form of family and intimate relationship has the
potential of being violent. Cyberstalking is defined as “the use
of the Internet, e-mail or other electronic communications
devices to stalk another person through threatening behavior”
(Mishler 2000, 117).
Stalking Crimes
Stalking is an ancient practice but only a modern crime; it
involves intentionally scaring another person by following,
tormenting, or harassing him or her. Statutes criminalizing
stalking “intended to fill gaps in the law by criminalizing
conduct that fell short of assault or battery … by insuring that
victims did not have to be injured or threatened with death
before stopping a stalker’s harassment” (Curry v. State 2002).
Statutes making stalking a crime began in California but other
states quickly followed California’s example; today every state
and the U.S. government have stalking statutes. Although many
victims are celebrities the vast majority are “ordinary” people,
most of them women.

11. The antistalking statutes vary enormously from state to state
and the U.S. statute. The National Criminal Justice Association
has a model stalking law and many states have adopted parts of
it. The statute states that
· “Any person who purposely engages in a course of conduct
directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable
person to fear bodily injury to himself or herself or a member of
his or her immediate family or to fear the death of himself or
herself or a member of his or her immediate family; and has
knowledge or should have knowledge that the specific person
will be placed in reasonable fear of bodily injury to himself or
herself or a member of his or her immediate family or to fear
the death of himself or herself or his or her immediate family;
and whose acts induce fear in the specific person of bodily
injury to himself or herself or a member of his or her immediate
family or induce fear in the specific individual of the death of
himself or herself or a member of his or her immediate family;
is guilty of stalking.”
Despite great diversity from state to state, the stalking statutes
all share some common requirements when it comes to the
criminal act of stalking. All 50 states require that the act happen
more than once. As to the kind of conduct that has to be
repeated, all states require some variation of the model code’s
“maintaining a visual or physical proximity.” These acts include
following, pursuing, spying, and/or harassing.
About half the states require some kind of threat, including the
model code’s “verbal or written threats or threats implied by
conduct,” “threat,” “terroristic threat,” or “credible threat”
(LaFave 2003a, 832). Other statutes list very specific acts.
Stalking is a result crime. All statutes require a specific intent
to commit the acts in the actus reus section. They also require
some mental attitude causing the bad result, but the exact
mental attitude varies considerably among the states (836).
Slightly more than half the states require some level of
subjective fault. Most of these states require that the actor’s
purpose was to cause the bad result. About one-third of the

12. states require only objective fault. The remaining states require
no mental attitude; they provide for strict liability.
The bad result in stalking is placing stalkers’ victims in fear.
States take four different approaches to the fear caused. Most
states adopt a subjective and objectivefeartest. The second is
the subjective fear only test: the victim was actually afraid. The
third is the objective fear only test; a reasonable person would
be afraid. The fourth is the intent to instill fear test.
The Internetis a “fertile ground for stalking” (Merschman 2001,
275). This “dark side of the Web” provides cyberstalkers with
cheap and powerful tools for instilling fear in their victims—
mostly e-mail but also chat rooms and bulletin boards.
Cyberstalking is defined as “the use of the Internet, e-mail or
other electronic communications devices to stalk another person
through threatening behavior” (Mishler 2000, 117). In 1999, the
Los Angeles and Manhattan District Attorneys reported that 20
percent of its stalking victims were cyberstalked (Attorney
General 1999).
Cyberstalking reaches victims in their homes, where they feel
safest; what’s worse, stalkers can stalk from the comfort of their
homes. Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet, email, or other
electronic communication devices to stalk another person
through threatening behavior.
Personal Restraint Crimes
One of the greatest things about living in a free society is the
right to control our freedom of movement. In the eighteenth
century, they called it the right of locomotion—the right to
come and go as we please.
Kidnapping is an ancient result crime that originally involved
holding the king’s relatives for ransom. Kidnapping is the
taking and carrying away of another person with the intent to
deprive the other person of personal liberty. At common law,
kidnapping consisted of six elements: seizing; carrying away
(asportation of); and confining; by force, threat of force, fraud,
or deception; another person; with the intent to deprive the
other person of his or her liberty.

13. The heart of kidnapping actus reus consists of seizing and
carrying away (asportation of) the victim. Since at least the
eighteenth century, carrying a victim into a foreign country
where no friends or family could give her aid and comfort, and
the law couldn’t offer protection, added a terrifying dimension
to kidnapping.
In those early days, the victim had to be carried at least as far
as another county and usually across its border. Modern
interpretations have made the asportation requirement
meaningless.
Kidnapping mens rea is stated usually as the specific intent to
confine, significantly restrain, or hold victims in secret.
Kidnapping is usually divided into two degrees: simple and
aggravated.
The most common aggravatingcircumstances include kidnapping
for the purpose of:
· sexual invasions
· obtaining a hostage
· obtaining ransom
· robbing the victim
· murdering the victim
· blackmailing
· terrorizing the victim
· achieving political aims
The penalty for aggravated kidnapping is usually life
imprisonment and, until recently, occasionally even death.
False imprisonment is a lesser form of personal restraint than
kidnapping, but the heart of the crime remains depriving others
of their personal liberty. It’s a lesser offense because there’s no
asportation requirement; the deprivation of liberty is brief; and
the detention is less stressful.
Most forcible detentions or confinements, however brief, satisfy
the actus reus of false imprisonment. This doesn’t include
restraints authorized by law.
The Model Penal Code (MPC) requires the restraint to “interfere
substantially with the victim’s liberty,” but, in most state

14. statutes, any interference with another person’s liberty
is enough. Although physical force often accomplishes the
detention, it doesn’t have to; threatened force is enough. False
imprisonment is a specific-intent crime. The motive for the
detention doesn’t matter.