7 March 2016
Assignment #1 According to a New York Times article titled “ Woman Used Daughter’s Medical settlement for Liposuction, Prosecutors Say”, a 31-year-old woman named Megan Mele was charged with second-degree grand larceny and second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument on February 25, 2016. Allegedly, the woman was using the money her daughter received from a medical malpractice lawsuit for her own personal costs. The woman’s daughter was set to receive payments after she turned 18 but had a saving account with $67,000, which required court approvals in order to make withdrawals. In 2016, Ms. Mele attempted to get a court order to withdraw $47,000 but when the court denied her request, she presented …show more content…
The term utilitarianism refers to the idea that people want to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. The main concepts of this school of thought is that it is an individual’s own decision to meet his or her needs or solve their problems through lawful means or criminal ways, crime is an enticing solution because it promises rewards with little effort, the rate of crime can be controlled through deterrence, and that punishment that was severe, quick and certain would best deter criminal …show more content…
During the nineteenth century, the scientific method was gaining popularity in Europe and North America. By making observations and analysis, scientists were making new discoveries that helped answer how the world functioned. This way of thinking was then applied to human behavior. The positivist school of thought is centered around the idea of positivism and was formed by Auguste Comte and his followers. Auguste Comte, who is considered to be the founder of sociology, argued that over time, societies pass through numerous stages. These stages can be grouped by how people try to understand the world they live in. The positive stage, according to Comte, is the stage in which people embrace a rational view of the world based on science. In comparison to the classical school of thought, this suggests that human behavior is influenced by outside forces such as social, biological, or psychological forces. The main concepts of the positivist school of thought are that it uses the scientific method to conduct research, it predicts and explains social phenomena in a logical manner, beliefs and statements must be capable of being measured empirically, and that science must be unbiased and unrelated to a political point of