CMY3704 Exam Notes: The Explanation of Crime Study Pack (UNISA)

CMY3704, often searched as a UNISA crime explanation study pack, is one of the most important criminology modules for understanding why crime occurs, how it is explained, and how different theories connect to South African realities. This study guide presents the major approaches to the explanation of crime in a structured, exam-focused format, with a strong emphasis on theory, comparison, criticism, and application.

1. Understanding the Explanation of Crime

What “explaining crime” means in criminology

The explanation of crime is not simply a matter of describing unlawful acts. In criminology, an explanation seeks to answer why certain individuals, groups, or communities engage in criminal behaviour, why some acts are defined as crime while others are not, and why crime rates vary across time and place. A proper explanation therefore goes beyond the event itself and looks at the deeper social, psychological, economic, cultural, and political conditions that make crime possible or likely.

Crime is a complex social phenomenon because it is shaped by both individual choice and structural conditions. A burglary, for example, may be committed by a person who sees an immediate opportunity, but that choice may be influenced by unemployment, addiction, peer pressure, family breakdown, or living in a high-crime environment. Likewise, the same act may be interpreted differently depending on who commits it, where it takes place, and what social reaction follows.

In criminology, explanations of crime are usually grouped into broad categories:

• Biological explanations, which emphasise inherited traits, brain function, and physical conditions.
• Psychological explanations, which focus on personality, cognition, learning, and emotional development.
• Sociological explanations, which examine social structure, institutions, culture, inequality, and relationships.
• Critical and conflict explanations, which argue that power, class, race, gender, and law-making shape what is called crime.
• Integrative explanations, which combine several of the above perspectives rather than relying on one alone.

A core exam skill in CMY3704 is distinguishing between causes, correlates, and conditions. A cause is a factor that directly contributes to crime. A correlate is a factor that is associated with crime but does not necessarily produce it. A condition is part of the environment in which crime becomes more or less likely. For example, poverty may be a condition linked to crime, but it does not cause crime automatically; many poor people do not offend, and many offenders are not poor.

Crime as a social construction

A key idea in the explanation of crime is that crime is not merely a natural category. Acts become criminal because societies define them that way through law. This means that crime is a social construction: what counts as crime depends on social values, legal systems, political power, and historical context.

This is important because it prevents students from treating crime as if it were a fixed universal object. For example, some behaviours may be legal in one country and illegal in another. In South Africa, the legal definition of crime is influenced by the Constitution, legislation, court decisions, and social policy. Offences such as corruption, gender-based violence, fraud, drug trafficking, assault, robbery, murder, and cybercrime are treated as serious crimes because they violate legal norms and harm individuals or society.

The social construction approach also shows why some harmful acts are punished more severely than others. Corporate misconduct, environmental pollution, and state violence may cause enormous harm, yet they are often not addressed with the same intensity as street crime. This leads to a major criminological question: who gets labelled a criminal, and why?

The role of theory in crime explanation

A theory is a systematically organised set of ideas that explains a phenomenon and can be tested against evidence. In criminology, theory helps researchers make sense of patterns of crime and propose methods of prevention. Theories are essential because no single factor can explain all crime.

A useful way to study theory is to ask four questions:

1. What is the theory trying to explain?
2. What causes crime according to the theory?
3. What assumptions does the theory make about human behaviour and society?
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the theory?

For exam purposes, theories should not be memorised as isolated facts. They should be compared. A theory that sees offenders as rational decision-makers will differ sharply from one that sees them as products of social inequality. The best answers show how these theories may complement or contradict one another.

Major dimensions of crime explanation

The explanation of crime can be organised around several recurring dimensions:

Dimension	Focus	Example
Individual	Traits, choices, and psychology	Impulsivity, aggression, low self-control
Family	Parenting, attachment, supervision	Neglect, abuse, weak bonding
Peer group	Influence of friends and gangs	Delinquent peer pressure
School	Educational environment	Truancy, exclusion, failure
Community	Neighbourhood structure	Disorganisation, weak informal control
Society	Inequality, culture, economic conditions	Poverty, unemployment, inequality
Power and law	Who defines and punishes crime	Selective enforcement, labelling

This table matters because many exam questions ask students to compare micro-level and macro-level explanations. Micro-level explanations focus on the individual and immediate environment, while macro-level explanations focus on broader structural forces in society.

Why crime explanation matters in South Africa

Crime is a major concern in South Africa because it affects safety, development, social trust, and economic confidence. The South African context includes high levels of violent crime, robbery, burglary, gender-based violence, corruption, organised crime, and cyber-enabled offences. A useful explanation of crime in South Africa must therefore consider both the legacies of apartheid and current social realities such as unemployment, inequality, urbanisation, informal settlements, service delivery protests, and uneven access to policing and justice.

South Africa’s history is important because apartheid created spatial segregation, inequality, and social fragmentation that still influence crime patterns today. Many communities continue to experience limited opportunities, poor infrastructure, and weak state presence. In this context, criminological theory is not abstract. It helps explain why crime clusters in some areas, why certain offences are more common, and why different forms of social control succeed or fail.

2. Classical and Rational Choice Explanations

Classical criminology

Classical criminology emerged in the Enlightenment period and is associated with thinkers such as Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. Classical theory argues that human beings are rational and have free will. People weigh pleasure against pain before acting, and crime occurs when the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs.

The central idea is that punishment should be certain, swift, and proportionate. If people know that punishment is likely and immediate, they will be deterred from offending. Classical criminology therefore places strong emphasis on law, punishment, and deterrence.

Key principles include:

• Human behaviour is guided by rational calculation.
• Crime is a product of choice.
• Laws should be clear and publicly known.
• Punishment should fit the offence.
• Excessive punishment is unjust and ineffective.
• The aim of punishment is prevention, not revenge.

This approach was revolutionary because it challenged arbitrary punishment and torture. It also helped shape modern criminal justice systems by promoting due process and legal certainty. However, it assumes a level of rationality that may not always exist in real-life offending.

Rational choice theory

Rational choice theory developed from classical ideas and is widely used in modern criminology. It argues that offenders make decisions by considering risk, reward, effort, and situational opportunity. Crime is not necessarily a result of deep pathology; it can be a strategic response to immediate circumstances.

A burglar may choose a target house because it appears unoccupied, lacks security cameras, and offers visible valuables. A shoplifter may act because the probability of being caught seems low. An internet fraudster may exploit anonymous online platforms because the risk of identification is reduced. In each case, the offender is seen as responding to opportunity and cost-benefit calculation.

Rational choice theory does not claim that offenders are perfect decision-makers. Rather, it says they make boundedly rational decisions under limited time and information. This makes the theory especially useful for explaining opportunistic offences such as theft, burglary, robbery, and cybercrime.

Deterrence and crime prevention

Deterrence is one of the major policy implications of classical and rational choice theory. It works through fear of punishment. Deterrence can be divided into:

• General deterrence: Punishing one offender discourages others.
• Specific deterrence: Punishing the offender discourages repeat offending.

For deterrence to be effective, punishment must be perceived as:

1. Certain — offenders believe they will be caught.
2. Swift — punishment follows quickly after the offence.
3. Severe enough — but not excessively brutal.
4. Consistent — similar offences receive similar responses.

In practice, certainty often matters more than severity. Increasing punishment length without improving detection may have little effect if offenders believe they will avoid arrest. For this reason, situational crime prevention, CCTV, better lighting, target hardening, and improved guardianship are often more effective than simply increasing sentences.

Strengths of classical and rational choice theories

These theories remain influential because they are practical and easy to apply. They provide a clear framework for prevention and policy. Their strengths include:

• They explain why some crimes are spontaneous and opportunity-driven.
• They support evidence-based prevention strategies.
• They recognise offender decision-making.
• They have direct relevance to policing and environmental design.
• They help explain why crime changes when opportunities change.

These theories are especially useful in studying offences where the offender carefully plans the act, such as corruption, insurance fraud, theft, online scams, and embezzlement.

Criticisms and limitations

Despite their influence, classical and rational choice theories have important weaknesses.

First, they overestimate rationality. Many offences are committed under the influence of anger, intoxication, fear, peer pressure, or emotional distress. A person involved in a violent assault may not have weighed costs and benefits in a careful way.

Second, they ignore social inequality. Not everyone has equal opportunities, and not everyone experiences punishment in the same way. A poor young person, for example, may face different pressures and opportunities from a wealthy executive who commits financial fraud.

Third, they do not explain why some people become offenders while others in the same situation do not. Two individuals may face similar temptation, but only one may offend. This suggests that personality, socialisation, or structural factors also matter.

Fourth, deterrence is often limited by weak enforcement, corruption, overburdened courts, and inconsistent sentencing. In such contexts, the certainty of punishment is low, and deterrence loses force.

Application to South African crime

In South Africa, classical and rational choice theories help explain crimes such as street robbery, vehicle theft, hijacking, shoplifting, burglary, and some forms of corruption. These crimes often involve opportunities created by weak security, poor surveillance, or predictable routines.

For example, a hijacker may target a driver leaving a shopping centre at night because the opportunity is favourable and escape routes are available. A corrupt official may accept a bribe after calculating that detection is unlikely and gains are substantial. In both cases, the offender may be influenced by opportunity structures and perceived reward.

However, these theories alone cannot explain why crime is so widespread in communities with deep poverty, limited services, and persistent inequality. They must therefore be supplemented by sociological and critical theories that address the social roots of offending.

3. Biological, Psychological, and Developmental Explanations

Biological explanations of crime

Biological explanations focus on the idea that some aspects of criminal behaviour may be linked to inherited traits, neurological functioning, hormones, or physical conditions. Early biological criminology was often crude and even deterministic, but modern approaches are more careful and scientifically grounded.

Historical biological theories, such as those associated with Cesare Lombroso, claimed that criminals could be identified by physical features. This view is now widely rejected because it is simplistic, biased, and methodologically weak. Modern biological criminology does not argue that a criminal looks a certain way. Instead, it explores how genes, brain structures, neurotransmitters, and physiological processes may interact with social conditions to influence behaviour.

Current biological perspectives include:

• Genetic influences, which suggest that inherited traits may affect impulsivity, sensation-seeking, or aggression.
• Neuropsychological factors, which examine brain development, executive functioning, and impulse control.
• Hormonal influences, such as testosterone and stress responses.
• Physiological arousal, which may be linked to low fear conditioning or thrill-seeking behaviour.

These approaches are useful because they help explain why some people show persistent patterns of aggression or poor self-regulation. However, they must be used cautiously because biological factors do not cause crime in a simple direct way. They usually interact with family, environment, and social learning.

Psychological explanations

Psychological theories emphasise mental processes, personality, emotions, cognition, and behaviour. Unlike biological theories, which focus on the body, psychological explanations ask how people think, feel, and learn.

Major psychological approaches include:

• Personality theories, which suggest that certain traits, such as impulsivity, low empathy, aggression, or sensation-seeking, increase the likelihood of offending.
• Cognitive theories, which focus on how offenders interpret situations, justify behaviour, and solve problems.
• Behavioural learning theories, which explain crime as a learned response reinforced by rewards.
• Psychodynamic theories, which connect crime to early childhood conflict, trauma, and unresolved emotional problems.

One of the strongest psychological insights is that offenders often use neutralisation techniques or self-justifications. For example, a person who steals may tell themselves that the victim is rich, that everyone does it, or that they had no choice. Such thinking reduces guilt and makes offending easier.

Learning, imitation, and socialisation

Although learning theory is often discussed in sociology, it also fits within psychological analysis because it focuses on behaviour acquisition. People learn criminal behaviour through observation, imitation, and reinforcement. A child who grows up in an environment where violence is normal may learn that aggression is a legitimate way to solve problems. A teenager who receives praise, status, or money from peers for delinquent acts may be more likely to repeat them.

This is why family and peer environments matter so much. A household marked by neglect, harsh discipline, inconsistent supervision, or abuse can create emotional and behavioural problems. Peer groups can reinforce aggression, theft, drug use, and gang involvement. In this sense, crime is not merely chosen; it is often learned through interaction.

Developmental criminology

Developmental criminology studies how criminal behaviour emerges and changes over the life course. It asks why some individuals begin offending early, why some persist, and why others stop. This perspective is important because crime is not static. Offending patterns vary across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.

Developmental research often distinguishes between:

• Early starters, who begin offending in childhood or early adolescence and may continue for a long time.
• Late starters, who begin offending later, often in adolescence, and may desist after a shorter period.
• Persistent offenders, who maintain criminal behaviour across many years.
• Adolescent-limited offenders, whose criminality is tied to youth, peer influence, and identity formation.

This approach highlights the importance of developmental risk factors such as poor parenting, school failure, trauma, child abuse, learning difficulties, substance misuse, and delinquent peer networks.

Strengths of psychological and biological explanations

These explanations are useful because they help identify individual differences. They are especially relevant when dealing with repeat offending, aggression, impulsivity, and patterns of poor decision-making. Their strengths include:

• They explain why not everyone exposed to the same conditions offends.
• They help identify risks early in life.
• They support interventions such as counselling, early childhood programmes, and cognitive-behavioural treatment.
• They show how emotional and cognitive processes shape criminal action.
• They recognise that behaviour is influenced by both disposition and experience.

Criticisms and limitations

These approaches also have major limitations. Biological explanations can be reductionist if they focus too heavily on genes or brain factors while ignoring social environment. Psychological theories may individualise crime and fail to address inequality, unemployment, racism, or political violence. Both can unintentionally imply that offenders are fundamentally defective, which may lead to stigma.

Another problem is that biological and psychological factors do not explain the legal and social meaning of crime. A person may have an aggressive temperament, but whether that aggression becomes criminal depends on law, opportunity, and context. Similarly, trauma may raise risk, but it does not make crime inevitable.

Application to South Africa

In South Africa, psychological and developmental explanations are particularly relevant to youth offending, gang involvement, substance abuse, and violent behaviour in contexts of social stress. Children exposed to domestic violence, neglect, community violence, or unstable caregiving may face long-term emotional and behavioural difficulties. Poor school attachment and peer delinquency may then increase the risk of crime.

For instance, a young person in an informal settlement may experience chronic exposure to violence, inconsistent supervision, and school disruption. These conditions can affect impulse control, emotional regulation, and trust in authority. However, the same environment does not produce the same outcome in all children, which is why developmental and psychological explanations must be combined with broader social analysis.

4. Sociological, Strain, and Social Learning Explanations

The sociological approach

Sociological explanations locate the causes of crime in social relationships, institutions, and structures rather than in individual biology alone. They ask how poverty, inequality, socialisation, neighbourhood conditions, culture, and social control shape offending and victimisation.

This approach is central to criminology because most crime does not occur in a vacuum. People live in families, schools, workplaces, communities, and wider political economies. These environments create opportunities and pressures that influence behaviour. Sociology therefore helps explain why crime rates differ across groups and places.

Strain theory

Strain theory argues that crime results when people experience a gap between culturally approved goals and legitimate means of achieving them. In its classic form, associated with Robert Merton, strain occurs when society encourages people to pursue success, wealth, and status, but legal opportunities to achieve these goals are blocked. Some individuals respond through crime, innovation, retreatism, ritualism, or rebellion.

Merton identified several modes of adaptation:

Adaptation	Goals accepted?	Means accepted?	Description
Conformity	Yes	Yes	Accepts goals and legal means
Innovation	Yes	No	Accepts goals but uses illegal means
Ritualism	No	Yes	Abandons goals but follows rules
Retreatism	No	No	Rejects both goals and means
Rebellion	Replaces existing goals	Replaces existing means	Seeks new social order

The most criminogenic adaptation is innovation, where people accept society’s emphasis on success but turn to illegitimate means to achieve it. Fraud, theft, drug dealing, and corruption may all be interpreted through this lens.

General strain theory

Robert Agnew’s general strain theory expanded the classic model by arguing that strain is not only about blocked economic goals. Strain can also come from the removal of positive stimuli, the presentation of negative stimuli, and the experience of failure to achieve valued goals. Examples include abuse, family conflict, peer rejection, unemployment, humiliation, victimisation, and chronic stress.

General strain theory is especially useful because it recognises emotions. Strain produces negative feelings such as anger, frustration, resentment, and hopelessness. Crime can then become a coping mechanism. A person may assault someone after repeated humiliation, or use drugs to escape stress. The theory therefore connects social stress to emotional response and then to offending.

Social learning theory

Social learning theory argues that criminal behaviour is learned through interaction with others. People learn definitions, techniques, motivations, and justifications for crime. A person is more likely to offend if they are exposed to favourable attitudes toward crime and receive reinforcement for it.

Important elements include:

• Differential association: association with delinquent others.
• Definitions: attitudes and meanings that support or reject crime.
• Imitation: copying observed behaviour.
• Differential reinforcement: rewards and punishments that encourage or discourage crime.

This theory explains how criminal behaviour spreads within gangs, peer networks, criminal families, and some workplaces. It is particularly effective for understanding habitual offending, gang crime, and organised crime.

Subcultural theories

Subcultural theories argue that certain groups develop value systems that differ from mainstream norms. In disadvantaged neighbourhoods, for example, young people may adopt norms of toughness, respect, masculinity, and retaliation because conventional routes to status are blocked. Offending may then be seen as a way to gain respect or survival.

This does not mean that all people in poor communities are criminal. Rather, it suggests that some subgroups create alternative norms in response to exclusion, marginalisation, and blocked mobility. A gang may function as a source of identity, protection, income, and belonging. Crime is therefore linked to social context and group culture.

Social control theory

Social control theory asks a different question: not why people commit crime, but why most people do not. The theory argues that people are naturally capable of deviance, and conformity depends on strong bonds to society. Travis Hirschi identified four key bonds:

1. Attachment — emotional ties to parents, teachers, and others.
2. Commitment — investment in conventional goals.
3. Involvement — time spent in lawful activities.
4. Belief — acceptance of social rules.

When these bonds are weak, delinquency becomes more likely. Weak family supervision, school disengagement, and lack of community integration can therefore increase crime risk.

Strengths of sociological explanations

Sociological theories are powerful because they show how crime is shaped by broader patterns of inequality and social organisation. Their strengths include:

• They explain group differences in crime rates.
• They identify environmental and structural risk factors.
• They account for learned behaviour and peer influence.
• They are highly relevant to policy and prevention.
• They show why crime is concentrated in certain spaces and social conditions.

These theories are especially valuable in South Africa because they connect crime to unemployment, inequality, family stress, substance abuse, gang activity, urban marginalisation, and social dislocation.

Criticisms and limitations

Sociological theories can sometimes understate individual agency. Not everyone under strain commits crime, and not everyone in a deviant peer group becomes an offender. Some theories also risk treating certain communities as inherently problematic rather than structurally disadvantaged.

Another limitation is that some versions of strain theory focus heavily on economic goals and not enough on gender, race, and power. Likewise, social learning theories can explain how crime is transmitted, but they may not fully explain why criminal opportunities arise in the first place.

Application to South Africa

The South African context strongly supports sociological analysis. High inequality, unemployment, spatial segregation, household stress, and uneven service delivery create conditions of strain. Young people who see few legitimate opportunities may be drawn toward theft, robbery, gangs, drug markets, or other illicit economies.

For example, in a community with weak school performance, unemployment, and visible consumer inequality, a teenager may experience frustration and status pressure. If peers already normalise offending, crime becomes more likely. This does not excuse the offence, but it helps explain the social process that produces it.

5. Critical, Feminist, and Integrated Perspectives

Critical criminology

Critical criminology argues that crime cannot be understood without examining power. It asks who makes the laws, whose interests are protected, and why some harms are criminalised while others are normalised or ignored. Rather than treating the legal system as neutral, critical theory sees it as shaped by class, race, gender, and political power.

This perspective challenges the idea that criminal law simply reflects universal morality. In reality, powerful groups often influence what is defined as crime and how law is enforced. Critical criminology therefore pays attention to inequality, exclusion, policing practices, incarceration, and the social production of crime.

One of its most important insights is that crime is not only about offender behaviour; it is also about social harm. Corporate fraud, corruption, environmental damage, unsafe labour conditions, and state abuse may cause harm on a massive scale, yet they may not always receive equal public attention or punishment.

Labelling theory

Labelling theory argues that deviance is not inherent in an act. Instead, behaviour becomes deviant when society reacts to it and labels it as such. A person may commit a minor offence, but if authorities label that person as a criminal, the label can shape identity, social relationships, and future behaviour.

This process involves:

• Primary deviance: initial rule-breaking.
• Secondary deviance: deviance that develops after labelling and social reaction.
• Stigmatisation: negative social marking.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: the label contributes to the behaviour it predicts.

Labelling theory is useful for understanding juvenile justice, police discretion, and the long-term consequences of exclusion. It explains why some people drift deeper into crime after being treated as “deviant,” while others are able to recover.

Feminist criminology

Feminist criminology focuses on how gender shapes crime, victimisation, and criminal justice responses. Traditional criminology often centred male offending and treated women as exceptions or as passive victims. Feminist theory argues that this neglects the realities of women’s lives and the gendered nature of both crime and control.

Key issues include:

• Women’s pathways into crime often involve abuse, coercion, poverty, substance dependence, and survival strategies.
• Gender-based violence is a major crime problem that cannot be explained properly by theories developed solely from male experiences.
• Criminal justice systems may respond differently to male and female offenders based on stereotypes about femininity, motherhood, and moral worth.

Feminist criminology also highlights how masculinity contributes to crime. Some forms of violent offending are linked to social expectations that men should be dominant, tough, and emotionally controlled. This connects gender norms to aggression, domination, and victimisation.

The concept of intersectionality

Intersectionality is crucial for understanding crime in real social settings. It shows that gender does not operate in isolation from race, class, age, disability, sexuality, and other identities. A poor young woman in a marginalised township may experience different risks and criminal justice outcomes from a middle-class woman or a man of the same age.

Intersectional analysis is especially useful in South Africa because history, inequality, and gender-based violence intersect in powerful ways. Crime prevention cannot be effective if it treats all victims and offenders as if they share the same social position.

Integrated theories

Because no single theory explains all crime, criminology increasingly uses integrated approaches. These combine insights from different levels of analysis. For example, an integrated model might argue that:

• structural inequality creates strain,
• strain generates frustration,
• weak social bonds reduce control,
• delinquent peers reinforce offending,
• and rational calculation shapes the final decision.

This kind of model is stronger than any one theory alone because it recognises the complexity of crime. People do not offend for only one reason. Their choices are shaped by a web of influences.

Comparing the theories

A strong exam answer should compare theories rather than simply describing them separately. The following table offers a useful summary:

Theory	Main cause of crime	Key focus	Strength	Limitation
Classical theory	Rational choice	Punishment and deterrence	Clear policy relevance	Overestimates rationality
Rational choice	Cost-benefit calculation	Opportunity and situational factors	Explains opportunistic crime	Weak on social causes
Biological theory	Genes, brain, physiology	Individual traits	Useful in developmental research	Can be reductionist
Psychological theory	Cognition, learning, personality	Mental processes	Explains behaviour patterns	May ignore structure
Strain theory	Blocked goals, stress	Social inequality and frustration	Explains motivation	Not all strained people offend
Social learning	Association and reinforcement	Peer influence and learning	Explains transmission of crime	Underplays structural causes
Social control	Weak bonds to society	Conformity and attachment	Explains why many do not offend	Less strong on serious crime
Critical theory	Power and inequality	Law, class, race, control	Reveals hidden power relations	Sometimes less predictive
Feminist theory	Gendered power relations	Violence, victimisation, patriarchy	Highlights gendered crime	Needs integration with other factors

South African application and exam relevance

For CMY3704, the South African context is essential. Students are often expected to show that theories are not merely foreign ideas imported from Europe or North America. They must be applied to local realities such as township crime, gang violence, corruption, domestic abuse, service delivery tension, organised crime, informal economies, and youth marginalisation.

A strong answer should therefore:

• identify the theory accurately,
• explain the main assumptions,
• discuss strengths and limitations,
• and apply the theory to a South African example.

For instance, an exam question on violent crime could be answered by combining strain theory, social learning theory, and feminist analysis. High levels of unemployment and inequality may create frustration; delinquent peers may normalise violence; and gender norms may encourage aggressive masculinity. This produces a more convincing explanation than any single theory alone.

Conclusion: what examiners usually look for

Examiners typically want more than memorised definitions. They expect students to show understanding, comparison, critique, and application. A high-quality answer should demonstrate that crime is explained at multiple levels:

• individual,
• interpersonal,
• community,
• social structural,
• and power-based.

The best criminological explanations are therefore not simplistic. They recognise that crime is produced through the interaction of choice, opportunity, learning, control, inequality, and social reaction. In the South African setting, this integrated understanding is especially important because crime is deeply connected to historical injustice, current deprivation, and unequal access to safety and justice.

Final revision points

Before an exam, the most important revision tasks are to remember:

1. The difference between describing crime and explaining crime.
2. The main differences between classical, biological, psychological, sociological, and critical theories.
3. The importance of South African examples.
4. The strengths and weaknesses of each theory.
5. The value of integrated explanations.

If these five areas are mastered, CMY3704 becomes far easier to answer in a clear, analytical, and well-structured way.