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CRIME NET

A model of the relationship between crime and the resources employed in its detection and punishment by the criminal justice system. In this model the agents of the criminal justice system (the law makers and law enforcers in particular) are thought to operate like fishers: they can use nets of varying dimensions or with varying sizes of mesh and the ‘net’ will determine how much crime is caught. This model tends to be favoured by critical criminologists as they are interested in understanding how the state can use the criminal justice system to support particular interest groups in society or to legitimize the political and economic arrangements of the society. Like the crime model it reflects realist assumptions about crime. Crime is assumed to exist objectively and the net simply determines what quantity of it will be revealed. Symbolic interactionists and ethnomethodologists would reject this model and insist that crimes are only those events which are recognized, identified or categorized as crime. See: CRIME FUNNEL / NET WIDENING / .

Last updated 2002--0-9-

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© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
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