Sociology (Scly4) - Crime And Devience

-Socialisation Process

agencies include: family, education, religion, police and courts

e.g. murder is not criminal in war, but is in a knife fight at the pub

Situational Devience - an act is devient depending on factors such as: the time (as definitions of criminal change), the society/culture and the context

-Allows social change and new ideas to develop

-Is a warning that society is not working

Innovation- accept means x accept goals ✓

Ritualism- accept means ✓ accept goals x

Retreatism- accept means x accept goals x

Rebellion- accept means ✓/x accept goals ✓/x

-Focuses on individual responces rather than sovial patterns

-Not all who face strain turn to crime/devience

-Ignores corperate crime

-Takes crime statistics as social fact

-does not explain why some are more deviant that others

-treats crime statistics as social fact

-Downes + Rock 2003

People have the goal of status

They gain status through deviancy quicker than through academic success

-MC achieve this through education success/parents

-WC fail at school due to lack of cultural capital and settle for lower paid jobs/unemployment

-WC denied status in wider society. Status frustration caused.

-WC forms a subculture with alternative status heirarchys

-Boys belong to 3 sub cultures

-criminal

-conflict

-retreatist

- Toughness, heightened sense of masculinity

- Trouble, anti-education/authority

- Excitement, thrill of criminal activity

These focal concerns make crime inevitable as WC boys find bordem if they live outside these concerns. (Links to Bloods + Crips)

-Due to large numbers, they split into sub divisions

-Identified through hair/tattoos/clothing etc

Nightingale 1993: They're driven by material wealth reinforced by media but excluded educationally/economically and politically

-it condenses boys to creatures of criminality

-not all WC boys deviate into subcultures or turn criminal

-groups WC as one subculture

-Family problems NOT social class is a better predictor of crime

-Needed to ensure they didn't have sex with too many male members to avoid negative labelling

-Joining a gang offers support to like minded youths

This can be prevented by provision of better education/job oppertunities

-White Collar

-State

-explains how official crime statistics could be representative of crime

-Wider societal origins of devient act

-immediante origins of devient act

-actual act

-origins of social reaction

-wider social reaction

-outcomes of social reaction

Victims are often WC

Official statistics are not JUST social constructs

There is an ethnic dimension to crime

what started as minor, insignificant drug use became a deviant career. The media reports and labels placed on hippies became their master status and so created a self fulfilling prophecy.

Modern example: London riots

-two gangs committing same crimes in same areas

-saints used cultural capital to escape punishment

-roughnecks punished/labelled

-2 rejected labels and succeeded, 2 frequent trouble, 2 serious offenders

-black areas more supsiciously/aggressivly

-overty racist comments to black suspects

-stereotype of typical criminal (from media?)

-activities from lower levels of class structure/ethnic minority labeled suspicious

-Both held similar ideas of typical delinquent

-Young people who fitted this image were more likely to be arrested/charged

-MC were usually counselled, cautioned, realeased

-This is the reason for characteristics shown in statistics

-Use of integrative shaming norm in places like Japan, where focus is to get offenders back into society

-Government not supposed to remove root cause, only punish

-Humans naturally selfish/greedy. Poor socialisation results in crime

-Crime can only be reduced

-Lone parent families who are dependent on benifits are the cause of crime

-Police need a zero tolerance approach to crime

-Single mothers more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators

-Rewards are often financial, but are sometimes peer approval

-A.C used to prevent crime e.g. harsher penalties/making crime more difficult to commit

-Speeding Cameras

-Body/Security guards

-Prison

-Repossession

-Minor/rare problems appear comon place

-Increasing publicity can increase deviant behaviour by glamourising it or normalising it

E.g. London riots spreading

-The more children that heard about the activities, the more that participated

-Moral panics fueled by media coverage

-Media uses 'symbloic shorthands', identifyiers like clothes, hair, language etc

-E.g. Sarah's law + Sun newspaper

-Media's coverage of Islam terrorism is seen to promote islamophobia

-The resulting government anti-terrorism legislation recieved broad public support despite reducing people's civil liberaties

-Single mothers 2000s

-Asylum seekers 2000s

-Satanic child abuse 1980s

-Crimes missing (White collar, rape etc)

-low in validity

-'Dark figure of crime'

-socially constructed

- recorded crime in UK (2014), 7.1million, decrease since 2013

-crime recorded by police increased between 1876-2000

-crime increased by 2 thirds between 1981 and 1995

Due to low changes, higher levels of inequality, improved policing, increased sensitivity towards victims, more victims due to increased affluence

(Links to Merton + Strain)

1998 - new counting rules or crime, records victim numbers rather than the whole crime

- 'official' crime statistics (OCS) include police recorded crime, court records, caution records etc, OCS suggests 5million crimes took place in 2008/9

-British Crime Survey (BSC) 10.7million crimes in 2008/9

-Self Report Studies: anon questionaires asking people about crime

-Shows pattern of crime since 1857

-used to identify trends/social backgrounds of criminals

-assesses effectiveness of law enforment agencies

(For approx 100 years crime stats taken as fact)

-Police recording practises: Simmons + Dodd; 30% of reported crime not recorded in 2002/3

-Police Priorities: events that are too trivial, have too much paperwork or lack evidence may not be recorded

-rReporting/Non-reporting: sexual crime not reported due to embarrasment/fear, victims view a crime as trivial, lack of faith in police

-Laws/rules/regulations change

-not all offences count as crime to be recorded (police wernt required to record assult until 1989)

-1998 - counting changes increased crime by 15%

1)incident

2)victim decides wether they are a victim

3)victim decides wether to call police

4)police decide if its a crime

5)police decide wether or not to record

-large scale victim survey (50,000 people)

-crime in england + wales

-uses interviews

-ages 10+ since 2009

-annualy

includes crimes not recorded by police

-uses peoples experiences

-checks police figures

-builds victimology profiles

-interview builds rapport

-answers anonymous

-large sample (40,000 actually take part)

-does not cover crime against businesses

-excludes categories like sexual assult

-people lie/exaggerate

-small proportion of population

-relies on people's memories

-questionable validity due to social construction of crime (Jock Young 1988)

-asks people about crime they have commited

-answers anonymous + confidential

-important in researching who commits crime

most respondants admitted to committing crime. This is evidence against the idea that some groups are more likely to be criminal than others

-SRS have validity/representiveness/relevence issues

Validity: respondents forget/playdown/exaggerate extent of criminal activity;

Rep: most SRS are on young people, rarely includes professional adults

Rel: majority of reported crime is trivial

Official crime rate underestimates the real or true rate of crime (4.7m 2008/9)

-BSC: true level of crime is twice the official crime rate (10.7m crimes 2008/9)

-stats show public fear of crime is rising

Why?

-crime is over reported in the media

-Home office (2003) those who read tabloid newspapers are twice as likely to be worried about crime compared to those that don't

Age: males/females under 25 report highest fear levels of crime

Ethnicity: minority ethnic groups fear crime more than white people

Gender: women 3x as likely to fear physical attack then men

-91% of british citzens are white (5% asian, 2% afro-carribean, 2% mixed or other)

-Prison population of 80,000: 70% white, 21% afro-carribean, 8% asian

-In the USA b;ack americans make up 13% of the population yet 50% of the prison population

-More likely to be arrested for robbery

-3.5x more likely to be arrested, face court rather than caution and recieve prison sentance

-3x more likely to be cautioned

-5x more likely to go to prison

-2x more likely to be stop searched

-more likely to recieve court rather than caution

-more likely to be arrested for fraud/forgery

-If guilty, more likely to recieve prison sentance

BME more likely to be victims of crime disproportionatluy to their numbers, particually evident with BME women

Most recorded racist inccidents are crimes against property and verbal abuse/harrassment

most incidents go unreported

Structualist (eg. functionalism, Trad. Marxism): they are just more criminal

Social constructionalist (eg. Neo-marxism, social action): justice system is unfair

Left realism:

balck people are not simply victims of a racist police force, but are more likely to be involved in street crime than whites

Due to: marginalisation, reletive deprivation, sub-cultrual responce

-Education: 2006 only 5% of Afro-carribean boys achieved 5 GCSE's

-Family structure: 60% of black males live in a SPF, wich tends to be poorer than the nucleur family

-Mass Media: influence of rap (New right: rap music encourages bling, violence + criminality)

-declining relgion and fundamentalism

- crime often has an ethnocentric demographic

Over representation of Afro-carribean groups in crime stats is a social construction, created as a result of discrimination towards blacks/asians by the police and law enforment agencies

'Canteen culture' amounst police force reinforces suspicion, macho values and racism wich encourages racial stereotypes

Higher levels of robbery amounst black people could be the result of labelling that arises from regular uses of stop/search proceedures, leading to a self fufilling prophecy

Neo Marxism:

-young blacks targeted by the police+media

-black crime is differet in that it is a conscious continuation of anti-colonial struggles

-therefor it is political and potentionally revolutionairy

eg. Rastifarianism is not just a religion, but also contatins revolutionary political ideas about overthrowing white culture

-Police stop a proportonalty hight number of blacks compared to whites

-police target 'high risk areas' where young EM groups hang out at night

-EM groups are therefor more likely to be stopped because of where they are rather than their ethnicity

-OSC suggest recorded crime apperes to be a masculine activity, 87% of all recorded crime

-Crime and devience seen as a (WC) male thing that ends as people settle down

Female crime is either invisible or stereotypical because

-male dominance of offenders

-male domination of sociology

-sociological theorising

-vicarious identification

-biological theory

-sex role theory

-transgression

'normal' females have a natural disposition that repels them from crime

EV: little support but links between menstrual cycle and crime have been made

sexes socialised differently

-female: passive, caring, domesticity

-male: toughness, agressiveness, sexual conquest

Women commit less crime due to ideological controlling

-societies cemented together with a shared value system

-bonding with family/peer groups

women avoid crime to avoid negative labelling

Functionalism!

Adopted social control theory;

-females become criminal because they have rejected the gender ideal (Durkheim's Anomie)

-females who reject normal family life are most likely to be rule breakers

-refers to women confined to the private home world

EV: women in work + cyber crime

Wilkinson: where there is equality in the work place, more crime was commited by women

Post-modernism:

Takes us beyond boundries of conventional criminology; considers as diverse as self imposed curfew, treatment of women as victims, domestic violence, abuse and rape

Mental health issues (including PMS) for female criminality results in lighter punishments by the courts

'bad' women are treated harsher than men, particularly if labels attached to them suggest they are promiscuous or a bad mother. Failure to conform to gender norms results in harsher punishments due to 'double deviancy'

Women's liberation will increase women's participation in crime

-evidence based on group of juvinille crime by girls

-women penetrate the labour market and criminal careers

-increase in women's property crime is related to poverty rather than liberation

-relationship between the increase of female officers and recorded female crime

-authorities have become sensitized, resulting in female crimes becoming more likely to be recorded

'normative masculinity' is highly valued by most men

-men have to constantly work for this

-excersized in power over women in work/home

MC boys have academic achievement at the expense of emasculation-accommodate for this outside of school with pranks, excessive drinking and high spirits (links to Chambliss: Saints)

adopt 'oppositional masculinity' inside and out; more aggressive in nature

Pimping and rape is sometimes used to express control over women

Young black males can be sucked into property and violent crime as a way of enhancing hegemonic masculinity

young men seek compensation for a lack of breadwinner status through aggressive masculinity

-masculinity expressed through criminal behaviour eg. fighting/football hooliganism etc

(links to Miller's 3 focal concerns)

criminology has failed to understand the role of pleasure in committing crime. The search for pleasure is meaningful within masculinities stress upon status. Violent crime is 'seductive', undertaken for thrills and potential danger

-25% of serious violence takes place in the home

-1 in 4 women are victims of domestic violence

-such crimes are under reported

-home office 2001: 1 in 20 women aged 16-60 had been raped, 45% by current partners

an act of domestic violence is committed every 6 seconds in Britain

A quarter of all violent crimes are domestic

-Traditional gender-role socialisation

-Crisis of masculinity

-reactions to femminisation of the work place

-sexual objectification of women as property

when evaluating, consider exaggeration

-Women more likely to be victims of domestic violence (DV) + least likely to be reported

-1/4 women suffer from DV

-89% of DV committed by men to women

-90% rape victims are women

-in rape trials, women are seemingly put on trial instead of offenders

Young men 16-24 are most likely to be victims of violent crime; this decreases with age

-Older men/women least likely to be victims of violent crime

-16-24 reports more personal crimes

-Youth culture opens opportunities to crime

-16-24yr olds face 3xmore violent crime than all adults

-6% of children experience violent crime

-honour Crimes

-150,000 racially motivated crimes in 2010

-black/asian more likely to victims of racially motivated crime

-risk of being victim of personal crime

-poorest sections of WC most likely to be victims of crime

-due to Merton + strain, high deprivation/disorder

-poorest areas most likely to be victims of household crime

-poor usually steal from poor

-Depends on attachment of victim label

-Black figure of crime

-some do not know they are victims

-some people denied label - seen as responsible for their own victimization

Tombs + Whyte 2007: accident victims of health/safety neglections blame themselves

Crime results in physical harm; financial loss; anxiety; panic attacks; PTSD; fear etc

-Security industry thrives on fear of crime

Secondary victimisation: in rape trials it is opften the female victim who is put on trial than the male suspect/offender

Includes identifying characteristics that make people different to non-victims: victim proneness and victim precipitation

V PRO: characteristics that make people vulnerable

V PRE: victims are actively involved/to blame for their victimization

Focus on wider social issues

-CJS creates victims

-social deprivation contributes to victims

-Fem: intimate crimes due to male socialisation

Racist police force explains ethnic crimes

->Durkheim (normlessness)

-> Merton (Strain)

-> Cohen (status frustration)

-Meritocracy

-Rational choice

-Poor socialisation

-Lack of Value consensus

-Single mothers + breakdown of families

VERY VICTIM BLAMING

pinpointed addresses in Chicago of where crime took place and devised 5 concentric zones

-area 2 had the most crime: it was closest to the center but it had rapid social change- people moving into the area created social disorganization meaning social control is weak

CT:poorest/socially disorganised areas- crime can become socially acceptable/passed through generations

Successful criminals become role models

DA: Shaw+Mckay too simplistic/difficult to prove, if the people around you commit crime you are more likely to be criminal

Studied Croyden; found that the way the council were housing problem families together caused high crime rates

Tipping: occurs when an area is seen to be going downhill, 'problem families' move in and affluent families move out, causing house prices to drop resulting in more 'problem families' arriving and more crime taking place

Crime prevention meathod; areas being privatised (shopping areas, leisure etc) have private policing to keep out undesirables. Results in mass gatherings on estates etc where they are more likely to become deviant and encounter police

Refers to growth in nightlife in UK cities

-thousands of drunk teenagers in early saturday/sunday mornings make more crime

-3/4 of all violent crime takes place in urban areas 9pm-3am

-mostly caused by drunk males

WC commit more crime than the MC because they chose to, since they have less to loose

WC individuals are controlled less by institutions such as family, peer groups and education

A process where the events, decisions and people in one part of the world has a significant impact on a different part of the world

Big corporations are able to go from country to country looking for the cheapest labor to make the most profit. This increases unemployment in the companies origin country, effecting WC males

Causes an 'underclass' culture to develop out of material deprivation

-Allows for increased white collar crime by exploiting proletariat in countries where it is cheaper to do so

-maximizes profit and sends dominant ideology to the country causing cultural imperialism

Through technologies such as email and the internet, Globalisation has allowed cultural diversity, causing a disorganisation of norms and values and lack of social cohesian

-in 88% of countries their drug trade is higher than their GPD

-drug traffickers were the first criminals to benefit from globalisation

-Colombians + Afghan's traffic drugs through well established routes

-more travelers mean easier cover

-causes 52,000 deaths per year in the USA

-14,000 - 17,000 trafficked into the USA every year

-50% of these are children

-800,000 trafficked world wide each year

-46% prostitution, 27% domestic, 10% agriculture, 5% factories, 12% misc

misc includes arranged marriages, adoption and organ trafficking

-Financial scams

-Money Laundering

-Virus attacks

-racial/religious hate promoting sites

-hacking

etc

Individuals - illegal waste dumping, poaching etc

Government - pollution, illegal waste etc

Businesses - Pollution, Illegal waste etc

describes the way that actions break the law concerning the enviroment

-individuals eg. fly-tipping

-private businesses eg. pollution, BP

-states/governments eg. millitary, pollution

-organised crime eg. mafia, yakuza

enviromental crimionolgy should adopt a more transgressive (wider) approach, going beyond defining enviromental crime as simply law breaking

uses the approach to define environmental crime as any human action that harms the environment, whether it is illegal or not

-BP

-Illegal fishing

-Union Carbide Chemical Company

-Trafficking of endangered animals

Includes intentionally disastrous consequences for the global environment. Events in one country can have effects on others

States are often reluctant to pass laws and regulations about pollution etc and generally only do so when pressured by the public. Enforced laws are calculated and relaxed to maintain profits

like other white collar and corperate crimes, eco-crimes do no carry the same stigma as conventional crimes, meaning that laws/regulations exist but are rarely enforced/punished

arises due to transnational corperations and nation-states hold a anthropocentric view of the world. The most important consideration is the well being of citizens through economic growth. The environment is an after thought.

Motivated by the same factors as ordinary crime, suggesting that individuals are motivated to commit green crime because crime pays (reduces cost/personal hassle etc) and actions are not considered 'as wrong'

most serious green crimes are 'crimes of the most powerful' - corporate businesses seeking to reduce cost and maximize profit

there is a lack of clarity in defining environmental crime. This can mean that green crime is accompanied by even greater risks of influence by the judgement and interpretations of researchers

-paperwork and non compliance

-environmental

-manufacturing

-labor law violations

-unfair trade

-financial offences

-hard to detect (Clarke 1990)

-Often without victims (Croall 2007)

-Benefit both parties

-hard to investigate

-lack of crime awareness

-rarely prosecuted

-better chance to be found not guilty

-Reletive Deprivation

-Control Theory

-Differntial Association

-Crimogenic captialism (Box, Slappper + Tombs) (if profits cannot be obtained legally in a global market they will be obtained illegaly)

two main forms of global criminal network

1) established mafias

2) newer organised crime groups- emerged since globalisation and collapse of communist regimes

emphasizes increasing international linkages between criminal groups and local criminal groupings becoming globalised

Global criminalized networks work within local contexts as interdependent local units

illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of state agencies to further state policies.

Eg. torture, corrupt policing, war crimes, assassination, genocide, violation of human rights

due to defining issues; involves going outside the usual boundries of defining crime as simply law-breaking. Suggested they should be considered as violating human rights

Have become global social norms. Schwendinger + Green + Ward see human rights as involving a wider package of basic social and economic rights

two main explanations:

1) Integrated Theory -suggesting crimes arise from similar situations to those of other crimes, involves integrating 3 elements of motivations, opportunities and lack of control

2)Crimes of social obedience model- emphasises conformity to rules

violent states encourage obedience by those who carry out state backed systematic human rights abuse in 3 ways:

-Authorization

-Dehumanization

-Routinization

The hollocaust was possible due to the violation of the social obedience model

Crime is justified by re-labeling them or excusing them as regrettable but justifiable

-Governments adopt strategies of denial

-dark figure of state crime

-researchers face strong official resistance

-research can be dangerous and information can be difficult to obtain

1) detering people from crime

2) protecting the public

3) punishing criminal behaviour

4) reforming/rehabilitating criminals

Functionalism - reinforces social solidarity and gives society an opportunity to express disapproval for deviant behavior, strengthening collective values

Marxism - protects ruling class ideology

Downing street strategy unit-

-22% increase in prison population since 1997 reduced crime by 5%

-47.5% of prisoners released in 2010 reoffended within a year of release

-each former prisoner committed an average of 4 offences

re-offending prisoners have chaotic childhoods, during wich many experience abuse, violence at home and being taken into care. Many are unemployed, have issues with accomodation and have histories of mental illness. Prison often makes things worse

Interactionalism - prisons have their own subcultures which provide training grounds for criminals and re-affirms the criminal label

Criminal label leads to a master status and self fulfilling prophecy

the emphasis on crime reduction has been changing to give higher priority to crime prevention. This is accompanied by a growing recognition that the CJS should also protect the victim

Draw attention to the growing detachment of the CJS fro centralized control to local arrangements e.g. policing is community based

The offenders and victims of crimes people worry about the most are in the most deprived areas, therefor tackle material and cultral deprivation such as poverty, poor housing, family conflict etc

Lack of trust in police means police use military style force which is ineffective and results in increased tensions

-building strong community cohesion

-multi-agency working

-democratic/community control of policing

-tackling social deprivation

-parenting support

-'soft' on crime

-explanations are inadequate

-ignore white collar crime

-neighbor hood policing can be seen as an extension of state control

makes crime a less attractive choice for offenders, achieved by 'designing out crime'

Pease - bars, bolts and barriers: anti-climb paint, CCTV, smartwater, locks, targeted policing make it more difficult to be criminal

Displacement theory - making one area less apealling to criminals causes a displacement of criminals to other areas

Linked to Hirschi's control theory:

individuals are encouraged to chose conformity over deviance when there are strong bonds tying them to communities e.g. Neighbor Watch, Zero tolerance policing and increasing parental responsibility

A broken window (symbol of social disorder) remains unfixed, more windows will get broken due to a sense of 'no one cares' and 'anything goes' which can lead to more serious crimes

1) Egotistical - insufficient intergration

2) Alturistic - excessive intergration

3) Anomic - anomie

4) Fatalistic - suicide presenting an escape of despair or hopelessness

-Suggested sociology could be measured scientifically

-aimed to show that even individual acts are a sum of social force

-quantitative data; suicide stats

found that:

-suicide rates fairly constant over time

-significant differences between societies e.g. catholic/protestant

-significant differences between social groups in the same society

suicide was concluded as a force of social integration and moral regulation

suggests Durkheim placed too much emphasis on religion rather than rural/urban groups. Some argue he is too vague in defining social integration and ways of measuring it. His definition of suicide is based of assumptions of what group membership means to people

-some may be misclassified

-coroner may give a narrative verdict (more than one possible cause of death)

-may be stigma attached to reporting death as suicide

-multiple definitions of suicide

Social construction of suicide means stats are neither valid nor reliable

To describe a death as suicide requires understanding of motive. Interpretivists suggests defining suicide involves social construction of meaning by others

Critical of Durkheim's stats use

-whether a death is called suicide is dependant on the factors durkheim identified as causing suicide

-eg. family/friends may try to cover up a suicide due to guilt/shame/religion

in constrast, some societies see suicide as honourable/has less stigma

suicide is not always the same act, the victim can construct how others interpret their deaths e.g. suicide notes

others can disguise their suicide as accidents

Developed Douglass's approach:

suicide is a rational means to gain something by problem solving

that something can be release from pain/hopelessness, revenge, joining a loved one in heaven or gaining excitement/thrills through risk taking

most people facing social problems will not commit suicide

studied coroners decision making using qualitative methods (interviews etc). Coroners can only guess and look for clues. 4 major types of evidence

-suicide notes -modes of death -location/circumstance of death -life history/mental condition

-Coroners are not consistent

-different interpretations of evidence lead to no solid conclusion

-therefor suicide stats are showing a highly selective, socially constructed set of classifications labeled as suicide

Agrees w/ Atkinson; acknowledges coroners role in defining suicide but argues it is still possible to find the causes of suicide. Also argues Durkheim wasn't positivist as social forces of integration are neither quantifiable nor observable

degree of certainty/attachment to others make people attempt/commit suicide. 2 main categories

-inter-directed suicides: very personal, individual is detached from others. certainly leads to success, uncertainty is about risk

-Other-directed suicides: involves relations to others and communicating a message to them

dosn't explain what the wider social factors are that influence certainty and uncertainty/attachment and detachment

Taylor may be indebted to Durkheim's theory of anomie, which may be the forces he's talking about