Control, Punishment & Victims Flashcards
(14 cards)
In a nutshell
Sociologists believe that the ability to control criminal behaviour takes several different measures - notably, it is targeted at situational crime prevention and environmental crime prevention. In addition, surveillance is another method used to control and punish criminals. Sociologists also focus on victimisation, in which positive victimology focuses on victim proneness or precipitation, whilst critical victimology emphasises structural factors such as poverty.
VICTIMOLOGY
POSITIVE VICTIMOLOGY
Miers argues that there are certain factors that lead to some individuals or groups being a more likely victim of crime (Eg. the homeless are statistically the most vulnerable victims of crime, due to their lack of resources and power)
POSITIVE VICTIMOLOGY 2
Miers determines some victims provoke behaviour that would lead to their own victimisation. This can be applied to both ends of the spectrum: middle-class victims of crime have contributed to their own victimisation by ostentatiously displaying their wealth, therefore encouraging crimes such as theft, and the working class are more likely to provoke threats, leading to violent crimes against them.
CRITICAL VICTIMOLOGY
Mawby and Walklate suggest victimisation is a form of structural powerlessness, thereby structural factors such as patriarchy and poverty place powerless groups such as women and the poor at greater risk of victimisation.
CRITICAL VICTIMOLOGY 2
Tombs and Whyte believe a ‘victim’ is a social construct. Through the criminal justice system, the state applies the label of the victim to some but withholds it from others, and therefore have an ideological function of ‘failure to label’ or ‘de-labelling’. By concealing the true extent of victimisation and its real causes, it hides the crimes of the powerful.
CONTROL & PREVENTION (1/2)
SITUATIONAL CRIME PREVENTION
Clarke believes that SCP is a pre-emptive approach, focussed on reducing opportunities to commit crime, rather than improving society or institutions.
DISPLACEMENT
The idea that SCP moves crime elsewhere:
Spatial - moving elsewhere (eg. - if a house’s doors are locked, criminals will move to a different house to see if that is unlocked)
Temporal - Different time (eg. - doors are more likely to be unlocked in the daytime, not the night time)
Target - Choosing different target (eg. - if criminals are looking to kidnap, they may choose another child if one is with their parents)
Tactical - Different method (eg. - suicide is prevented by the fact you can only buy 2 packs of paracetamol at one time)
Functional - Different type of crime
CONTROL & PREVENTION (2/2)
ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME PREVENTION
The Broken Windows thesis by Wilson & Kelling refers to disorderly neighbourhoods with an absence of formal social control (police) and informal control (community). Police are merely concerned with serious crime and turn a blind eye to nuisance behaviour.
ZERO TOLERANCE POLICING
As a method of environmental crime prevention, Wilson and Kelling advocate a ‘zero tolerance policing’ approach whereby the police crack down and tackle any form of disorder and repair any disorderly signs in neighbourhoods (eg. graffiti).
SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY CRIME PREVENTION
Shifts emphasis from policing, to potential offenders and their social context. The perry preschool project attempted to do this with a group of young disadvantaged black children who were offered a two-year intellectual enrichment programme that aimed to reduce criminality in future. The longitudinal study showed significant differences with a control group who had not undergone an enrichment programme. By 40, they had fewer lifetime arrests for crimes and most were in a form of paid employment.
SURVEILLANCE
Surveillance is the monitoring of public behaviour for the purpose of crime control. In today’s society, surveillance is carried out by the use of CCTV cameras, biometric scanning, information databases etc.
FOUCAULT - TYPES OF POWER
Sovereign power - the monarch had absolute power over people and their bodies. Control was asserted by inflicting visible punishment on the body. This was a brutal and emotional spectacle, such as a public execution.
Disciplinary power - became dominant from the 19th century, and involves a new system of discipline that seeks to govern the mind, soul and the body. It does this through surveillance.
PUNISHMENT
REDUCTION
One justification of punishment is that it prevents future crime:
Deterrence - punishing an individual discourages them from future offending.
Rehabilitation - punishment can be used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend. This can be done so through providing education and anger management courses.
RETRIBUTION
Based on the idea that offenders deserve to be punished and society is entitled to take revenge on the offender.
