Crime and Deviance Sociologists and Statistics Flashcards
There are a lot of crimes that aren’t deviant and vice versa… - Govt Department of Transport
According to the Government Department of Transport, over 52% of drivers exceed the speed limit on 30mph roads.
Althusser - Repressive State Apparatus
Althusser argued that the state consists of two apparatuses which keep the bourgeoisie in power, one of which is the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA).
Repressive state apparatuses maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force, such as the police, army, and the courts.
For instance, when considering the Black Lives Matter movement, the media was key to promote ideological control around the riots and ideologies of conformity. However, when this broke down, the police and policies effectively went to criminalise the protests.
Durkheim - 3 key ideas about crime and deviance
1) Crime is inevitable and necessary
2) Crime has multiple positive functions for society
3) Too much crime is bad for society
Positive functions of crime - the publicity function - Erikson (1966)
Erikson (1966) pointed out that the dramatic setting of the courtroom where the lawyers and judges dress in special clothes, and where there is a ceremony, condemns a persons actions in a public arena. In contemporary society, newspapers also help to perform the publicity function, with their often lurid accounts of criminal acts.
Positive functions of crime - Acts as a warning device to indicate that aspects of society is malfunctioning - Cohen
Cohen suggests that certain deviant acts are useful warning devices to indicate that an aspect of society is malfunctioning. This may draw attention to the problem and lead to measures to solve it.
Too much crime - Durkheim
Durkheim believed that the result of too much crime would lead to the development of a state he called ‘anomie’. This means that people regard the social expectations to respect the rights and the needs of others as unimportant and prefer to look after their own interests, even at their neighbours expense.
They return to their natural state of greed and self-interest, and this results in the long-term collapse of social order and harmony. Anomie, is dangerous and harmful to all.
Merton and Nightingale
Merton and Nightingale have pointed out that for some the desire to achieve the success goals of society outweighs the pressure to obey the law, advertising only adds to this strain between the legitimate means and the goal of material success.
Rothkopf - ‘Superclass’
Rothkopf coined the ‘Superclass’, who are mainly the people who run global corporations, and at the very bottom we have the lower class (in the developed world) and the slum dwellers, the street children and the refugees in the developing world.
Bauman - Capitalism, Inequality, and Crime
Bauman points out that the super wealthy effectively segregate themselves from the wealthy, through living in exclusive gated communities and travelling in private jets and armoured vehicles with security entourages. If people can afford it, they move to a better area, and send their children to private schools. However, this doesn’t prevent the poor and the rich from living side by side.
Chambliss - Crime is Justified
Chambliss even goes so far as to say that economic crime ‘’represents rational responses to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies”.
This is because the visible evidence of massive inequality gives the people at the bottom a sense of injustice, anger, and frustration that the lack of wealth distribution is being flaunted in their faces.
The Law benefits the elite and works in their interests… - Manheim
Manheim writes that “The history of criminal legislation in England and in many countries shows that an excessive prominence was given by law to the protection of property.”.
Chambliss has argued that ‘at the heart of the Capitalist system lies the protection of Private Property’.
Health and Safety Laws - Snider (1993)
Snider (1993) argues that Capitalist states are reluctant to pass laws which regulate large capitalist concerns and which might threaten profitability.
Stuart Hall (1978) - Black Muggers
Snider (1993) - Crimes are costly
Snider (1993) points out that the cost of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime to the economy far outweighs the cost of street crime by ‘typical’ criminals.
Cost of Fraud - General Accounting Agency
The General Accounting Agency of the USA has estimated that hundreds of savings and loan companies have failed in recent years due to insider dealing, failure to disclose accurate information and racketeering.
The cost to the taxpayer in the USA of corporate bailouts is estimated to be around $500 billion, or $5000 per household in the USA.
David Gordon - Ideological functions
David Gordon argues that the police mainly focus on policing working class (and underclass) areas and the justice system mainly focuses on prosecuting working and underclass criminals.
The system ignores the crimes of the elite and the middle classes, although both of these classes are just as likely to commit crimes as the working classes.
Gordon argues that the disproportionate prosecution of working class criminals ultimately serves to maintain ruling-class power and to reinforce ruling class ideology (thus performing ‘ideological functions’ for the ruling class.)
David Gordon - 3 benefits of law enforcement for capitalism
According to Gordon, ‘selective law enforcement’ benefits the capitalist system in three major ways:
1) Defining individuals as ‘social failures’
2) Imprisonment of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system
3) Imprisonment of the underclass also sweeps out of sight the ‘worst jetsam of capitalist society’
An additional fourth benefit is that the focus on working class crime means that society’s attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elites.
Who commits white-collar crime? - statistics
University of Cincinnati School of Criminal Justice - Three-quarters of white-collar offenders are white males.
2020 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse - About half of occupational fraud perpetrators have a university degree.
2020 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse - Thirty-nine per cent of fraud perpetrators at non-profit organizations are owners or executives.
What is labelling? - Becker (1963)
Becker (1963): his key statement about labelling is: “Deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.”
Police and labelling - Townsley and Marshall
Studies of police officers by sociologists such as Townsley and Marshall’s study show that they operate using stereotypical assumptions or labels about what is ‘suspicious’ or ‘criminal’ in terms of social types and behaviour.
For example the decision to stop or arrest someone may be based on whether they correspond to a stereotype.
Holdaway
Holdaway notes that there is strong evidence that suggests racial stereotyping by some police officers may be a crucial element governing their decision to stop black people and their interaction with black people, especially African-Caribbeans, i.e. some officers see all black people as potentially criminal.
Home Office Statistics on police stop-and-search (2010)
Home Office statistics on police stop and search released in March 2010 can be used to support the idea that racial stereotyping underpins policing because they reveal that the police stop and search black people and Asians six times and two times respectively more than white people.
Cicourel
Primary Deviance - Lemert
Lemert argues that primary deviance is widespread and often trivial in nature. Such acts have little significance for a person’s status or identity. Those who commit primary deviance often do not see themselves as deviant.
Secondary Deviance - Becker and Lemert
This societal reaction and the subsequent labelling of the person as a criminal, deviant, etc is known as ‘secondary deviance’. Both Becker and Lemert argue that secondary deviance can have negative consequences in that being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatized, shunned and excluded from normal society.
Deviancy Amplification - Triplett (2000)
Triplett (2000) notes an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviance such as truancy.
Social policy and shaming - Braithwaite (1989)
Braithwaite (1989) suggests there are two types of shaming available to the criminal justice system:
> Disintegrative shaming
Reintegrative shaming
Braithwaite argues that the concept of reintegrative shaming avoids stigmatizing or negatively labelling the offender as ‘evil’ or ‘bad’ while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of their actions upon others.
Criticisms of labelling theory
Ackers argues that labelling theory puts too much emphasis on societal reaction – he argues that the act is always more important than the reaction to it, e.g. rape, murder and child abuse are always deviant.
However, Plummer, in defence of labelling theory, points out that labelling theory’s emphasis on societal reaction is valuable because many activities are defined as deviant or non-deviant depending on the audience and/or the social context in which it occurs, e.g. soft drug use is acceptable to many younger people but is deemed deviant by the establishment.
Becker - no such thing as deviant acts…
Howard Becker argues that there is no such thing as a deviant act – no act is intrinsically criminal or deviant in itself, in all situations and at all times. Instead, it only defined as such when others label it as ‘wrong’.
In other words, it is not the nature of the act that makes it deviant, but society’s reaction to it. As Webb notes, deviance is in the eye of the beholder.
Becker - power…
Becker argues that the social construction of deviance requires two activities. One group –which normally lacks power – acts in a particular way, and another group - with more power - responds negatively to it and defines it as criminal.
For Becker, therefore, a deviant is simply someone to whom a negative label has been successfully applied and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people with more power (e.g. parents, teachers, police officers etc) so label.
Becker - rules…
Becker is interested in why and how rules get made because it is the breaking of those rules that creates the potential for deviance.
In this sense, interactionism is interested in how social controls such as laws can create the potential for deviance.
Becker rejects the functionalist idea that rules and laws are the product of value consensus or universal agreement.
Instead he notes that powerful groups create rules or laws and label those who fail to conform to these social controls as criminals or outlaws/outsiders.
Becker - moral entrepreneurs…
Becker notes that in Western societies, those with the power to label others as deviant are often ‘moral entrepreneurs’ – religious leaders, politicians, editors and journalists –who lead campaigns to change the law and label particular types of behaviour as criminal or deviant.
Becker - agents of social control…
Becker notes that agents of social control, particularly the police and the judiciary work on behalf of powerful groups to label and therefore define the behaviour of less powerful groups as problematical.
They do this by paying these groups disproportionate negative attention in terms of stop and search, arrest, prosecution and giving them custodial sentences etc.
Charles Murray - the ‘underclass’…
The Right Realist, Charles Murray suggests that both in the USA and UK, there exists a lower-class subculture or underclass below the ‘respectable’ working-class, which subscribes to deviant and criminal values rather than mainstream values.
He claims that parents in this underclass transmit this deficient culture to their children via socialization.
He suggests that this criminal underclass is growing as a result of welfare dependency.
Bennett, Dilulio, and Walters (1995) - support for a criminal ‘underclass’…
Bennett, Dilulio and Walters (1995) argue the young criminal underclass exists as a result of ‘growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent, and criminal adults in a practically perfect criminogenic environment that is, one that seems almost consciously designed to produce vicious, predatory unrepentant street criminals’.
Clarke (1980) - rational choice theory…
Individuals have free will and the power to reason and thus choose their own actions.
Clarke (1980) argues that an individual’s decision to commit crime is a choice based on a rational calculation of the likely consequences of their actions.
If the perceived rewards of crime outweigh the perceived costs of crime, or if the rewards of crime appear to be greater than those of non-criminal action, then people are more likely to choose to offend.
Felson (1998) - support for rational choice theory…
In a similar analysis, Felson (1998) notes that if community controls (e.g. from family, neighbours, the community etc) are strong, this increases both the risk of being caught and punished, and deters crime.
However, all too often, especially in inner city areas, community controls are weak, and the risk of being caught and punished is low.
Wilson - zero tolerance policing…
Wilson stresses the certainty of capture which he believes will result in the risks of being caught outweighing the benefits of crime.
He particularly recommends ‘zero tolerance’ policing, i.e. the police should keep the streets clear of all deviant elements especially those crimes which threaten to undermine or threaten the sense of community in neighbourhoods such as prostitution, begging, drug-dealing and drunkenness.
He believes that the streets should be flooded with police in order to both deter crime and so that law-abiding citizens can feel safe. This policy proved to be very successful in New York in the 1990s.
Wilson - ‘broken windows’ theory…
Wilson’s ‘broken windows’ theory argues that if signs of disorder and lack of concern for others are allowed to develop then crime rates rapidly increase. He suggests it is essential to maintain the orderly character of neighbourhoods to prevent crime taking hold.
Any sign of deterioration such as graffiti or broken windows must be dealt with immediately because failure to deal with these problems sends out a clear signal to criminals and deviants that no one cares which encourages the escalation of crime.
Rex and Tomlinson - working-class values…
Rex and Tomlinson point out that survey evidence suggests that the poor subscribe to the same sorts of values as everybody else and that their poverty is often caused by factors beyond their control, e.g. economic recession, globalisation, government policies etc.
Stanley Cohen - New Right thinking leads to class inequalities and victimisation…
The rich live in ‘gated communities’ guarded by technology and private security forces. This has the effect of displacing crime to poorer less protected areas such as council estates and inner cities.
Lyng - ‘edgework’
With no other outlets for their anger and frustration at being excluded from the lifestyles they aspire to, they are more likely to involve themselves in various forms of what Lyng calls ‘edgework’.
This involves all manner of thrill-seeking and risk-taking behaviour, not necessarily criminal or deviant, but the pursuit of peril may include exploring the boundaries between legal and criminal behaviour, potentially leading to crime and violence, anti-social behaviour, rioting, and self-destructive confrontations with the law,
Runciman (1966) - relative deprivation…
Runciman’s (1966) concept of relative deprivation to explain crime. This refers to how someone feels in relation to others, or compared with their own expectations.
The concept of relative deprivation helps to explain the apparent paradox of increasing crime in the context of an increasingly wealthy society. Although people are better off today, they have a greater feeling of relative deprivation because of the media and advertising have raised everyone’s expectations for material possessions.
