Abstract
As a necessity of being a social being, humanity has lived as groups and communities throughout its entire history. The collective life has required some values, norms, and rules. As normative qualifications for human behavior, values, norms, and rules are based on the social order and the continuity of social life. In a very long period of humanity, social institutions such as religion, morality, and politics were determinant on the individual and social behavior of human beings. Then the legal system was activated and the provision of the behaviors were determined in detail. It can be said that the legal systems are based on the negative behaviors of the people, namely their criminal behaviors. However, there have always been people who violate the rules and legal norms required by social life. In its most general form, behaviors that violate the rules can be expressed by the concept of crime. Although the legal response of any behavior varies according to societies, crime is a sociological phenomenon that exists in all societies. This article explores the development of crime sociology.
TopBackground
Crime refers to a negative value of human behavior. The act of valuing human behavior is carried out by others. Man is the only living creature capable of producing ideas about himself and his environment, questioning the value of his behavior, and seeking out the ideal. The history of humanity is the history of the effort to achieve the best for human existence. The act of crime is a phenomenon that is always present as the dialectic of this humane effort. For this reason, as a necessity of being human and being social, virtuous behavior, as anti-crime behavior, covers the whole of human history.
Throughout history, all societies have sought to determine and evaluate the behavior of their members in order to protect themselves and their social systems. For the valuation of behaviors, social institutions were produced. Social institutions, such as political systems, the legal system, religion, and family, have provided limits and legitimacy in all areas of life in which the actions of the individual can be related, and this is still the case. Human behavior may be related to the individual himself, other human beings, the social and political system he lives in, the ecological system, and, if he believes in a particular religion, his God. For all these fields, all societies produce mechanisms that set values and limits to individual behavior. The crime phenomenon emerges as a deviation from the legitimacy standards set by these mechanisms. For this reason, all societies want to control the behavior of their members and gain the behavior habits that they accept as ideal.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Aberration: Diversion from common social values and norms.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): A machine that can make decisions, produced by modeling human intelligence.
Sociology of Crime: A science discipline that examines the phenomenon of crime through a sociological approach in its historical process.
Digital Age: The period in which smart machines are determinative in social life.
Disidentification: The disappearance of an individuals’ real social identifications in the digital world.
Digital Cage: Refers to an opinion that every moment of the lives of individuals is under surveillance in the digital age.
Public Sphere: The area of political and cultural discourse of the modern actor.