Chapter 2- Practices Of Governance And Control: Theoretical Underpinnings

Question 1

Reformable young offender

Answer 1

One who required intervention and could be rehabilitated

Question 2

Today’s discourse on youth crime

Answer 2

4 groups
Violent youth
Squeegee kids
Aboriginal youth
(Increasingly) female offenders

Question 3

Punishable young offender

Answer 3

Requires punishment first and foremost leaving reform and rehabilitative interventions as secondary measures

Question 4

Intrusive punishment discourse

Answer 4

Holds young people accountable for their criminal actions and applies more punitive sanctions

“If we are tough on crime, if we punish crime, then (youth) get the message”

Question 5

Theoretical underpinnings

Answer 5

Assumptions, discourses, concepts, and implications of various responses to youth crime.

Question 6

2 discourses of youth and crime

Answer 6

1. Youth are vulnerable and in need of assistance and protection
2. Youth in need of discipline and punishment

Question 7

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Answer 7

Interested in social facts ie the effect of social structure on behaviour
Normlessness (anomie)

Found that suicide increases during industrialization

Question 8

Anomie

Answer 8

Society of Saints

• norms still exist
• deviance is built into society

Humans are egoistic
- society needs social control to regulate their wants and behaviours

Anomie

• conditions of normlessness
• results from rapid social change ex: war, industrialization, natural disaster
• rapid social change causes an increase in crime

Question 9

Robert Merton and Anomie

Answer 9

Anomie:
Rejection of deviance as human nature
Cultural goals versus legitimate means
Dissonance between culturally specified goals and culturally available means to achieve goals
Access to means is stratified but goals are universal
Lower class experience strain between goals and means…choose illegitimate means

Question 10

Merton’s Typology of Adaptation to Anomie

Answer 10

Conformists
Innovator
Ritualist
Retreatist
Rebel

Question 11

Cohen’s Delinquent Subcultures (1955)

Answer 11

Status frustration: delinquent boys engage in non utilitarian behaviour
For example
Can't measure up in middle class school so they get attention by breaking rules and develop r own rules

Question 12

Differential Opportunity

Coward and Ohlin (1960)

Answer 12

Illegitimate opportunities are not equally available to all

Stable criminal subculture

• established illegal activity
• they have the want and ability

Conflict subculture

• violent youth gangs, status in gang or violence
• they have the want but no ability

Retreatist Subculture (double failures) 
- drugs, alcohol, skid row

Question 13

Social control theories

Answer 13

All people are tempted to be deviant
Why do they NOT commit deviant acts

Emphasizes self concept and self esteem

Question 14

Hirschi’s Social Bond (1969)

Answer 14

Attachment: to your community
Commitment: to your community
Involvement : after school involvement
Belief: belief structure

Those who have these four bonds do not commit crime

Question 15

Contemporary social control theories

Answer 15

Braithwaite: reintegrative shaming (1989o

• disintegrative vs reintegrative
• highly influential in restorative justice
• works well with minor delinquency

Ulrich Beck: risk society (1992)

• risk is the central organizing principle in society
• influence on criminology and criminal justice
• crime prevention

Question 16

Critique of social control theory

Answer 16

Research supports basic claims of social bond as protection against delinquency (especially family ties) but some attachments encourage deviance, explains better for girls than boys, more explanatory for minor deviance

Question 17

Social learning theory

Answer 17

Deviance is a function of socialization

Question 18

Differential association

Edwin H. Sutherland (1883-1950)

Answer 18

Criminal attitudes and skills are learned through close interaction with significant others

Criminal learning includes skills and motives

Significant others give definitions favourable to law breaking results in deviance

Associations very in priority, frequency, duration, intensity

Criminal behaviour results from general needs and values not special needs and values

Research shows that:
Deviant friends are particularly important in illegal drug behaviours
Recently cultivated friendships are more important in deviant behaviours

Question 19

Differential reinforcement theory
Akers and Burgess (1966)

Aka social learning theory

Answer 19

Deviant behaviour starts as imitation and persists to the extent that it is rewarded or punished by significant others

Associates may be chosen because they reinforce a deviant behaviour

Question 20

Labelling theory

Answer 20

Deviance is not a behaviour but how we respond to a behaviour
Social groups create deviance by making rules
Moral entrepreneurs work to have their ideas about deviance enshrined in law
Laws are differentially enforced based on social status and social distance

Question 21

Howard Becker (1973) 
The Outsiders

Answer 21

Stigma
- degradation ceremonies such as court proceedings

Retrospective reading
- reassess past behaviour in light of deviant status

Labels

• master status
• basis of personal identity
• self fulfilling prophecy