Caballero 1

Claricsa Caballero
Julia Intawiwat
ENG 11-139
9 NOV 17
Questions for Study and Discussion: Extra Credit
Ch. 17: What Is Crime by Lawrence M. Friedman (450)
1. The general definition of crime that most criminologists agree on according to Friedman is
that crime is bad behavior, antisocial behavior, blameworthy acts, crime is a legal concept that
deals with forbidden acts.
2. According to Friedman the major differences between a criminal case and a civil case are that
in a civil case you do not necessarily get a criminal record if you lose the case, also the majority
of the time if you get dragged into court it is to pay for any type of damages that may have been
caused, in this instance you are not forced to call in a lawyer unless you want one. In a criminal
case there are two crimes per say the real victim and the
victimless crimes. In real victim crimes, crime can be punished without the victims approval,
the complaining witness has a crucial role. In victimless crimes there is no one to blame both
parties are guilty or innocent there is no in between. In criminal cases the state pays all the bills.
3. Society is the victim in a criminal case in the sense that the society (the victim) is the person
who gets assaulted cheated or robbed. I do believe that it is important for society to join with the
real victim in prosecuting a criminal case because in that sense they can determine who really
did the crime, they can put themselves in that position to feel or think about what they want to
say or do in order to convict the person of wrong doing.
4. Friedman states that all sorts of nasty acts and evil deeds are not against the law, and thus
not crimes some examples that he provides that he illustrates to get his point across are daily
events that anger or irritate us, lying, cheating on a wife or husband, and charging a huge markup
at a store or restaurant. None of these examples really surprise me just because it is a thing that
humans always do we make mistakes and we cannot really help them in some instances.
What Friedman means by crime is a legal concept is that anyone can commit a heinous crime
and still there are people who commit crimes that are harmless, he refers to this as a two sided
spectrum. I believe he restates the same phrase because there is a way to get away with legal
crime and he views this as just working the system. This statement can lead to the
misunderstanding because people can take this statement in various forms when in reality it
should be taken as the law in a way creating crimes because before there was a law to punish
the crimes it was legal so there would be no infractions