INTRODUCTION
In our contemporary society, the system of criminal justice is an outcome of the various evolutionary transformations that society has experienced since the beginning of the United States of America (Martinez, 2017). The study of criminal justice has experienced a tremendous rise over some years back. The widespread, popularity and the rise of the enrolment in the criminology department and criminal justice across the international and United States of America, has brought an evolutionally paradigmatic shift that goes hand in hand with the issue of criminal justice. For example, pragmatic terms and the issue of discipline. Criminal justice has been identified as the first most sociological specialty area Matteoni, F. (2017). It has emerged as a stand-alone discipline in its own right. Criminal justice rises and grows surprisingly. Currently, criminal justice has inherently hypothetically but is being used as the focus and hence, more associated with the educational and specialist concerns of criminal justice and related to the various fields. In contemporary society, criminal justice is interdisciplinary that has become more rampant hence, making the lives of the people to be at risk in the United States of America. To overcome the situation, strict measures are in place to curb ad ensure that those people who engage in criminal acts are dealt with accordingly. This can be done through various punishments like giving fines, being jailed, and even the death penalty.
Justification of the topic
Like any other topic, the reasons, why people commit crimes, have become an essential topic because it explains various phenomena on why people commit crimes. Laws create a safe atmosphere for everyone and make an individual feel secure at all times Matteoni, F. (2017). It also contributes to fairness in society by safeguarding the rights and responsivities of an individual to belong to a given country. Transgression of laws has brought a great concern in society raising questions about the reasons people commit crimes. Going against this law there are various penalties that depend on the kind of crime that an individual commits.
Literature review
The criminal justice literature has been productively probing the causes of why people engage in crimes. According to the contribution of Richard J. Herrnstein and James Q. Wilson, they claimed that crimes occur as a result of external conditions to the lawbreakers or is an acts of psychological abnormality (Martinez, 2017). According to them, they argue that the offenders should either be responsible or get punishment for their criminal engagement. James and Wilson demonstrate that punishment is there to justify the crime committed despite the attack made by the social sciences on the concept of free action and personal accountability.
They further claim that the main reasons for the crime are not lawbreakers’ abnormal psychology or the surrounding. Rather, they assert crime is a result of those aspects that do not change the human nature that makes people accountable for their crimes. In other words, law-breaking is a manifestation of the same human nature that leads to actions of greatness(Kampmark, 2017). Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham are great philosophers who contributed to criminal justice they argued that people have free will in making decisions. Jeremy and Cesare understand argue that punishment can be a deterrent to the crime so long as the kind of punishment an individual goes through is directly proportional to the crime that an individual committed.
The thinkers like Hobbes and Locke understands that the concept of crime was vague and obscure because they believed that human beings is known to be simple by nature and their (Martinez, 2017) deeds are managed by some superpower. According to their argument, they claim that man commits crimes due to the external influence of spirits called demons or evils. Thus a lawbreaker commits a wrongful deed not because of his own free will but due to the external influence of some superpower. This contribution goes hand in hand with the theory of demonological theory of criminality which acknowledges the omnipotence of the spirit which they regarded as a great power. In this theory, the criminal is considered as the evidence of the fact that a person possesses demons is considered as the only cure for which testimony of the effectiveness of the spirit(Kampmark, 2017).
The lesson derived from this section is that criminal justice lies in the fact that it apparently contains concessions of free will. This implies that a person can break the law due to certain extenuating circumstances which should be taken into consideration at the time when getting a punishment. Therefore, criminal actions like the personality of the offenses as a whole for instance motives, general character, and antecedents should not be overlooked. It should note that the basis of the judging system on offenses jurisprudence is essentially an outcome of the reaction towards the handling of the lawbreakers in society(Davies & Matteoni, 2017). Both articles and theories come into agreement that criminality whether irresponsible or responsible is a threat to society and hence, needs to be eliminated.
Theoretical framework.
Great thinkers like Hobbes and Locke define demonological theory as a study of beliefs, and demons more especially how they summon and control people. The demonological theory of criminality states that crime does not come from one major source(Kampmark, 2017). Instead, there are many different ways behind the person’s criminal behavior. In the theory of demonology, there is a belief of evil spirits can penetrate through the human body hence, make people commit offenses. It uses different definitions like witches, wendigo, and demons that were being used to refer to people who had turned criminals in society(Martinez, 2017). According to various societies thought that criminals existed due to the influence of the evil spirit. Society believed that supernatural powers were considered as the best explanation for breaking the laws and committing sin at the same time. Hence there was a belief that a person never sinned voluntarily of his own free will but due to external influence that is the influence of the evil spirit.
The theory will be used in the study to investigate whether criminality is caused by external forces like evil spirits. People of different categories will be interviewed. The adult of age 50-80 years of both genders will be asked questions to explain what they believe or the cause criminal in society.
According to the theory of demonology, external forces such as demons, and evil spirits are the major cause of criminal offenses in society ( Kampmark, B. 2017). Once they enter into a person’s life, they alter the normal workability of an individual, hence making the person lose consciousness. This leads to committing the crime without being aware of an individual. The demonological theory is important in this study as it can reveal what causes an individual to engage in criminal actions in society.
Hypothesis.
People possessed by external influences such as demons and evil spirits commit more crimes than religious beliefs
Variables
The Independent variable is committing the crime while demons, evil spirits, and religious beliefs are dependent variables.
Research subject
This study is aimed at people who are having age to 50 to 80 years in the United States of America who have committed various crimes and those who have not committed crimes. In conducting research, a sample should be taken to stand for the large population to be studied. The best sampling criteria have to be sought relying on the reliability and suitability of the study. The simple random sampling method to be used should be suitable enough to reduce the chances of inconveniences ad errors occurring.
Data measure
To research the reason why people commit crimes in the United States of America a quantitative research design should be used. This means that the empirical investigation of both physical and tangible phenomena by the use of statistical, computation, and mathematical means to obtain the results. Quantitative research aims at using calculations models hypotheses and theories which are related to the topic under study. On the other hand, qualitative research investigates much more specific circumstances and skills with the objective of explaining the meaning of things.
Data sources
There exist some means by which data should be obtained for whatever the question of the research. Among the data sources to be used are as follows interviews, observations, focus groups, questionnaires, and secondary means such as ethnographies documents and records, these are to be utilized for our study depending on their advantages and disadvantages, which in turn depends on the suitability and the reliability of the method to be used.
Interviews
The interview is a method of gathering information by use of oral means which involves the researcher interrogating the respondent’s questions while recording the answers right there and then. It has some advantages and disadvantages
Advantages:
In the interview, there is speech modification. It gets easy to simplify an individual because both the interviewer and interviewee come together and therefore easily move step by step with maximum simplicity.
During the process of the interview, there is an interaction between the interviewer and the respondent, which may upsurge collaboration and universal acceptance between those who are involved hence, easy to obtain accurate answers full of honesty of those who are involved.
Disadvantages
Information gathered may not be correctly collected, because the examiner may get the examinee out of context.
Inadequate attentiveness by parties may lead to the proposed data receiving inaccurately.
It is extremely expensive and time-consuming when involving a large population.
Questionnaires
A questionnaire simply prepared questions by a researcher and accessible to a respondent with the aim of gathering some information on a given topic of study.
Advantages of a questionnaire:
A lot of the information can be collected from many people within a very short period, unlike other means of data collection.
It is easy to analyze information acquired by a questionnaire more logically than other methods of data collection.
Disadvantages
The questionnaire is contrasting to interviews in inadequate in thoughtful of some other factors such as emotional changes, and performances among other things that may easily alter the respondents’ responses.
It is very difficult to verify whether or not the respondent was honest o the process of filling out the questionnaire.
References
Davies, O., & Matteoni, F. (2017). Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine. Springer.
Kampmark, B. (2017). Releasing the “Terror Genie”: Man Haron Monis and the “Sydney Siege.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 37(4), 496–510.
Martinez, K. (2017). The Devil in the Details: Popular Demonology, Addiction, and Criminology (Ph.D. Thesis). Eastern Kentucky University.
