Criminology: the study of crime, criminals, law enforcement, and punishment.
Criminologist: one who studies crime, criminals, law enforcement, and punishment.
The Movie "The Town" (2010, Directed by Ben Affleck) is about Charlestown, a neighborhood of Boston. Charlestown would make a good criminology study. As depicted in the movie, Charlestown is notable mainly for its ability to churn out armed robbers, generation after generation. Upon further research, there may be some real life truth to these allegations. Throughout the 1960s, all the way until the middle 1990s, Charlestown was infamous for its Irish Mob presence. Most notorious of these gangsters were the McLaughlin Brothers.
Decriminalize: to remove or reduce the criminal status of.
In the late 1980s, many upper-middle class professionals moved to Charlestown, drawn to its proximity to downtown and its stylish colonial, red-brick, row-house housing. This gentrification process; some would say, marked the beginning of end of Charlestown as it was and its eventual decriminalization. Today the neighborhood is a mixture of classes- yet a working class Irish-American demographic and culture is said to still be predominant. Given this setting, the central theme of the movie The Town is plausible, however the movie could also be depicted as a symbolic tribute to the decriminalization of the actual town. Ben Affleck, the tainted protagonist Doug MacRay, plays a lower class Irish bank robber that falls in love with an upper class bank teller (Claire), portending his hidden desire to leave a life of crime (decriminalize), and thus his family, friends, and the town he has known since childhood. In this battle between the old and the new, the bad and the good, the ugly and the beautiful, all the boundaries are unclear, except one: the code of silence.
Incriminate: to show evidence of involvement in a crime or a fault.
While the center of the movie is about Doug MacRay's inner struggle, the exterior is wrapped in a typical action robbery caper, in which the annoying FBI, bound by duty to law, attempt to capture and incriminate a group of bad, yet well constructed, clever, and lovable criminals.
Recrimination: An accusation in retaliation for an accusation made against oneself; the make of such an accusation.
As the story goes, in Charlestown criminals depend on a code of silence- those caught serve their time rather than turn in their friends, family, and neighbors- thus avoiding a slippery slope of recrimination in which one would turn another in, and in turn another would turn one in, in the end destroying all. Immune from recrimination Doug MacRay (Affleck), James Coughlin, Albert 'Gloansy' Magloan and Desmond Elden, the four life long friends and criminals, are able to do many robberies without getting caught. However, everything changes when during a dicy bank job the four take an attractive bank teller (Claire) hostage to escape, only later to learn that she is a new resident of their very own town. Thus as a new resident she is not a part of the towns history, therefore is not a criminal, knows not the code of silence, and thus owes no loyalty to them. For fear that she might have seen or heard something that might reveal their identities and incriminate them, Doug (being the least thuggish, most attractive and clever) contrives to meet her to ensure she doesn't know who they are. Doug follows her to try to find out what she knows. But Doug falls for her, as she does for him. As the story proceeds to tangle, Doug needs to try and keep his true identity from her, keep the fact that he is seeing her from his friends, keep his friends happy, keep the mobsters who pull the strings happy, all the while remain true to his love for Claire and his desire to leave "The Town" with her.
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