50 Fun Facts About Criminology

Which comic-book superhero was created by William Moulton Marston, the psychologist behind an early lie detector test?

Wonder Woman forces villains to tell the truth by binding them with her magic lasso. Her creator's systolic blood pressure test became one component of the modern polygraph.

Which crime, rather than bootlegging or murder, finally sent gangster Al Capone to federal prison in 1931?

Tax evasion earned Al Capone eleven years in federal prison and a $50,000 fine. Federal authorities had charged him with twenty-two counts, and a jury convicted him on five.

Which unidentified murderer did surgeon Thomas Bond describe in a report sometimes called the first offender profile?

Jack the Ripper, Bond wrote in 1888, was probably a quiet, inoffensive-looking man, middle-aged and neatly dressed. He added that the murderer had no scientific or anatomical knowledge.

Which detective agency claimed to have foiled the 1861 Baltimore Plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln?

Pinkerton detective Kate Warne arranged the disguises that got Lincoln through Baltimore and is said to have stayed awake all night guarding him. The agency later took an open eye as its logo.

Which hostage condition takes its name from a 1973 siege at a Kreditbanken branch on Norrmalmstorg square?

Stockholm syndrome was coined by criminologist Nils Bejerot, who never met or spoke to the hostages he diagnosed. He called it the Norrmalm Square syndrome, but abroad the city's name stuck.

Which psychologist halted the 1971 Stanford prison experiment on its sixth day, though it was planned to run two weeks?

Philip Zimbardo said he had internalized his own role as the prison's superintendent. He stopped the study after psychologist Christina Maslach confronted him about how the volunteers were being treated.

Which pseudoscience, developed by Franz Joseph Gall, claimed to read character and criminality from bumps on the skull?

Phrenology divided the brain into 27 organs said to shape personality. It was also among the first movements to argue that criminals should be rehabilitated instead of simply punished.

Which sport inspired the name of three-strikes laws, which give repeat offenders long sentences on a third conviction?

Baseball's rule that a batter is out after three strikes gave the laws their name. California's 1994 version passed with 72% of the vote and was more sweeping than any other state's.

Which country's penal colonies received about 162,000 convicts transported from Great Britain and Ireland up to 1868?

Australia took most of them for petty crimes: thieves made up 80% of those transported. More serious crimes became transportable only in the 1830s, and the last convict ship arrived in 1868.

Which Mesopotamian king's law code, carved on a basalt pillar, set punishments on the principle of an eye for an eye?

Hammurabi is shown at the top of the stone with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. The pillar was carried off as plunder to Susa, rediscovered in 1901, and now stands in the Louvre.

Which Italian physician claimed a 'born criminal' could be identified by a sloping forehead, unusual ears and long arms?

Cesare Lombroso built his list of signs from years of postmortem examinations and body measurements. The phrase 'born criminal' was actually supplied by fellow criminologist Enrico Ferri.

Beccaria's 1764 treatise On Crimes and Punishments made some of the first modern arguments against which punishment?

The death penalty, Beccaria argued, is neither a useful nor a necessary form of punishment. His brief book also protested against torture to obtain confessions and against secret accusations.

Which prison design by philosopher Jeremy Bentham lets a single officer observe every inmate without being seen?

Panopticon comes from the Greek for all-seeing. Because inmates never know when they are being watched, Bentham reasoned, they would have to follow the rules all the time.

Which term did sociologist Edwin Sutherland introduce in 1939 for offenses by respectable people at work?

White-collar crime became the title of Sutherland's 1949 book, but corporations threatened to sue and had their names removed from it. The uncensored text was not published until 1983.

Which theory, set out by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, says visible petty disorder invites serious crime?

Broken windows takes its name from the claim that one unrepaired window signals that no one cares, so more get smashed. New York police commissioner William Bratton popularized it in the 1990s.

Which Home Secretary founded London's Metropolitan Police in 1829, earning its constables the nickname 'bobbies'?

Robert Peel later served twice as prime minister. He is thought to have helped write the force's first instructions to officers, which stressed its civilian nature and policing by consent.

Which FBI director led the bureau and its predecessor for 48 years under eight presidents, until he died in 1972?

J. Edgar Hoover was appointed by Calvin Coolidge in 1924, when the agency was still called the Bureau of Investigation. It became the FBI eleven years later, with him still in charge.

Which term for a repeat murderer is FBI profiler Robert Ressler often credited with coining in the 1970s?

Serial killer is in fact a direct translation of the German Serienmörder, coined in 1930 by Berlin investigator Ernst Gennat. Ressler helped interview thirty-six such convicts to find common patterns.

Which half-cousin of Charles Darwin put fingerprint identification on a scientific footing in his book Finger Prints?

Francis Galton devised a classification system that survives to this day and helped courts accept the evidence. He never acknowledged that the idea was not his own: Henry Faulds had proposed its forensic use in 1880.

Which forensic technique did Alec Jeffreys discover in 1984, leading to murderer Colin Pitchfork's conviction?

DNA profiling first cleared Richard Buckland, a suspect who had confessed to one of the crimes. Pitchfork had tried to dodge the mass screening by coercing a coworker to give blood in his place.

Which Frenchman standardized the mug shot and identified repeat offenders by a system of body measurements?

Alphonse Bertillon's method was the first scientific system police used to identify criminals, until fingerprinting supplanted it. His flawed evidence also helped wrongly convict Alfred Dreyfus.

Which forensic pioneer, dubbed the Sherlock Holmes of France, taught that every contact leaves a trace?

Edmond Locard started what became the first police forensic laboratory in 1910 with two attic rooms and two assistants. His exchange principle is still treated as the basis of forensic work.

Which TV crime drama lends its name to an effect in which jurors expect forensic evidence in every criminal trial?

CSI premiered in 2000, and the effect was first reported in a 2004 USA Today article. Jurors who expect instant lab results may raise the standard of proof prosecutors have to meet.

Which novelist and magistrate founded the Bow Street Runners, called London's first professional police force, in 1749?

Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones, began with a force of six men. His blind half-brother John succeeded him as magistrate and could reputedly recognize criminals by their voices alone.

Which French criminal turned detective founded the Sûreté and inspired both Valjean and Javert in Les Misérables?

Eugène Vidocq also headed the first known private detective agency. His life story inspired Honoré de Balzac and Alexandre Dumas as well as Victor Hugo.

Which French city has hosted the headquarters of Interpol since the organization left a Paris suburb in 1989?

Lyon took over from Saint-Cloud, just outside Paris, but Interpol was founded in Vienna in 1923. The United States did not join until 1938.

The FBI Academy, where new agents train, sits on a Marine Corps base near which Virginia town?

Quantico's Marine Corps base first lent the FBI its firing ranges, and the bureau later built its own academy on 547 acres there. Construction of the present complex began in 1969.

Which federal prison in San Francisco Bay, nicknamed The Rock, closed in 1963 after costing far more than others to run?

Alcatraz cost about $10 per prisoner per day in 1959, against $3 at the federal prison in Atlanta. Its name comes from an old Spanish word for a seabird, usually taken to mean the pelican.

Which American prison, opened in 1829 with a wagon-wheel floor plan, became the model for over 300 prisons worldwide?

Eastern State Penitentiary kept every inmate in separate confinement, in the hope that isolation would bring reform. It held Al Capone and bank robber Willie Sutton before closing in 1971.

Which New York prison on the Hudson gave English the phrase 'up the river' for being sent to jail?

Sing Sing stands about 30 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, so convicts sentenced in New York City really were sent upstream. It was renamed Ossining Correctional Facility from 1970 to 1985.

Which execution method, conceived by a Buffalo dentist, was first used on William Kemmler at Auburn Prison in 1890?

The electric chair was promoted by dentist Alfred Southwick as a more humane alternative to hanging. Kemmler's lawyers argued in vain that it was a cruel and unusual punishment.

Which Latin phrase names the criminal intent prosecutors must usually prove alongside the actus reus, or guilty act?

Mens rea is Law Latin for guilty mind. The common law maxim behind it holds that an act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty too.

Which Latin phrase do detectives use for a criminal's habitual way of working?

Modus operandi translates roughly as 'mode of operating'. It covers how offenders carry out a crime, prevent its detection and make their escape, which helps investigators link separate cases.

Which term, from the Latin for 'recurring', describes a convicted offender's return to crime after punishment?

Recidivism joins the Latin for 'again' and 'to fall'. One US report found that inmates who took part in residential drug treatment in prison had rates 9 to 18 percent lower than those who got none.

Which French sociologist introduced the concept of anomie in his 1893 work The Division of Labour in Society?

Émile Durkheim never used the word normlessness, the usual modern gloss: he described anomie as derangement and an insatiable will. His 1897 book Suicide made the idea famous.

Which sociologist introduced strain theory in 1938, blaming crime on pressure to achieve the American Dream?

Robert Merton is perhaps better known for popularizing the phrases 'role model' and 'unintended consequences'. His theory says society pushes everyone toward the same goals while denying many the means.

Howard Becker's 1963 book Outsiders popularized which view of deviance, in which society's reaction creates it?

Labeling theory is associated with the self-fulfilling prophecy and with stereotyping. Becker made it popular, but its key concepts had been introduced earlier by Edwin Lemert.

Edwin Sutherland's differential association theory says the motives and techniques of crime are acquired how?

Criminal behavior is learned from others, Sutherland argued, through interaction that passes on values, attitudes, techniques and motives. His theory explains how people become criminals, not why.

Which US city gave its name to the 1920s school of sociologists who mapped delinquency across concentric urban zones?

Chicago supplied the model: Ernest Burgess pictured cities growing outward in rings, with a slum 'zone in transition' around the business center. Lake Michigan kept the real rings from closing.

Which French philosopher's 1975 book Discipline and Punish traces how prison became the principal form of punishment?

Michel Foucault opens with the violent public torture of Robert-François Damiens, then sets it against a regimented prison timetable. He saw the same disciplines in schools, hospitals and barracks.

Routine activity theory says crime needs a motivated offender, an attractive target and the absence of what?

A capable guardian can be a person or an object whose simple presence deters an offense. Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen devised the theory to explain why crime rose alongside prosperity from 1947 to 1974.

Travis Hirschi's social bonds against crime are attachment, commitment, involvement and which fourth element?

Belief, for Hirschi, meant accepting the dominant values of mainstream society. He later moved away from his bonding theory and, with Michael Gottfredson, developed a general theory built on self-control.

Which phrase did sociologist Stanley Cohen introduce while studying British public reaction to the Mods and Rockers?

Moral panic first appeared in Cohen's PhD thesis, the basis of his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. He set out to study two youth subcultures and found a repeating pattern of public reaction instead.

Where in Missouri did a 1972 experiment find that changing routine police patrols had no significant effect on crime?

Kansas City residents did not even notice when the frequency of patrols in their area changed. The year-long study was the first to show that different policing styles could be tested safely.

Which police management system did Bill Bratton and Jack Maple create for New York's police department in 1994?

CompStat is said at the NYPD to be short for 'compare stats', an existing program that a junior staffer modified to analyze the figures. The first data was a hand count of major crimes from early 1993 and 1994.

Which toxic metal do some researchers link to the fall in crime rates that began in the 1990s?

The lead–crime hypothesis holds that children's exposure dropped once the additive left motor fuel, reducing later offending. A 2011 UN report tied the end of leaded fuel to 58 million fewer crimes.

Whose 1964 murder outside her Queens apartment building prompted decades of research into the bystander effect?

Kitty Genovese's case was misreported: The New York Times claimed thirty-seven witnesses did nothing, but in 2016 the paper called that story flawed and its witness count grossly exaggerated.

Which 1970 US law gives prosecutors extended penalties for acts committed as part of an ongoing criminal organization?

The RICO Act gave prosecutors in the 1970s a new weapon against the Mafia. It also lets victims bring civil lawsuits, and many states have since passed versions of their own.

Which Mafia code of silence did Joseph Valachi famously break in 1963 by testifying before a US Senate committee?

Omertà is a rule mafiosi break at the risk of their lives, yet Sicilians adopted the code long before Cosa Nostra emerged. The word itself may derive from a rare Spanish term for manliness.

Which chemical do forensic investigators spray at crime scenes to make trace amounts of blood emit a blue glow?

Luminol reacts with the iron in hemoglobin, and the glow lasts only about 30 seconds. A brighter patch does not mean more blood, only that more spray landed there.