Crime And Deviance Flashcards

Question

Left Realism **Cause** - Summarise Relative Deprivation

Answer 1

**Relative Deprivation** is lacking what others around you have and feeling a sense of entitlement, leading to crimes such as theft. **Lea and Young** pointed out that it isn’t poverty or unemployment which directly causes crime, but rather the expectations people have and a feeling of resentment about what they actually have compared to those expectations which leads to crime. **Young** blames the media for increasing this idea of relative deprivation.

Answer 2

**Subcultures** develop among groups who develop sets of values, forms of dress and modes of behaviour due to suffering relative deprivation and marginalisation. **Lea and Young** argue that subcultures are still located in the values of wider society. Subcultures develop precisely because their members still subscribe to dominant values of society but are blocked off from success. This results in crimes such as street crime or burglary.

Answer 3

**Marginalisation** refers to the situation where certain groups are more likely than others to suffer economic, social and political deprivation. Young people living in inner cities or social housing are likely to suffer higher levels of deprivation than those from privileged backgrounds. Political marginalisation refers to having no way to influence decision makers and thus feeling powerless. **Lea and Young** believe that a lack of a role and voice in society is a contributing factor to deviant behaviour such as violent crime.

Answer 4

1) Multi-Agency Approach - local schools, councils, charities, housing departments working together. 2) **Young** argues that we must tackle discrimination, provide decent jobs, improve housing and become a more tolerant society. 3) New Labour’s Anti-Truancy and ASBOs protect vulnerable groups from crime and low level disorder. 4) Left Realists favour police reform to create a more consensual force that would better represent the population. If there was genuine consensus policing and the public had more confidence in the police they would report more crimes. The public would work with the police and this would ultimately improve policing for communities and reduce crime.

Answer 5

**Becker** believes that deviance is a social construction. Deviant behaviour is behaviour people label as deviant so therefore a deviant is someone who has been labelled. He believes we must take a Voluntaristic Approach and focus on how something affects the individual, rather than how it affects a group of people or the whole of society.

Answer 6

**Moral Entrepreneurs** are individuals who lead us to believe they are creating a label to benefit society, e.g police or doctors

Answer 7

Being labelled can ultimately CAUSE people to become deviant. For example, **Young** studied hippies in Notting Hill, and found that persecution and labelling of hippies by police due to drug use lead the hippies to see themselves as outsiders.

Answer 8

**Lemert** suggests that when a label had been successfully applied to a person, all other qualities become unimportant. The label becomes their **’controlling identity’**. The rest of the world views them as an outsider due to the label. This can provoke a crisis in identity and the way to resolve it is to accept it and see themselves as the world sees them.

Answer 9

**Piliavin and Briar** suggest that arrests are mainly based on physical cues and judgement about a person’s character. An officer’s decision to arrest is based on the suspect’s age, gender, class, ethnicity and time/place of the crime.

Answer 10

Common-sense theories or stereotypes of what a typical delinquent is like. Leads to police to patrol working class areas more as they expect deviance.

Answer 11

Labelling can force people into a deviant career as they are outside mainstream society and therefore continue to commit deviant acts. The application of a deviant label does not prevent crime but rather produces more.

Answer 12

**Disintegrative Shaming** - the crime and the criminal is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society. **Reintegrative Shaming** - label the act as deviant but not the individual. The offender is made aware of the effect of their actions and are encouraged/welcomed back into society.

Answer 13

1) **Greer and Reiner** found that violent offences are more likely to feature in the news than property crime and street crimes are given more coverage than white collar, corporate or state crime. 2) **Surrette** argued that fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims are represented oppositely to official statistics and similar to news coverage. 3) **Soothill and Walby** found that newspaper reporting of rape cases focus on finding a ‘sex fiend’. 4) Increased coverage can cause copycat crime and desensitisation. 5) **Jewkes** notes the internet creates opportunities to commit new crimes such as software piracy aswell as conventional crimes such as fraud. 6) Leads to increased fear of crime.

Answer 14

**Hall** suggests that media labelling is to divert attention away from the failings of the ruling class. **Hall** found that the media labelled all black people ‘a threat’ and ‘muggers’. This served the purpose of: • Diverting attention away from the failings of capitalism. • Divide and rule - making it about ethnicity turned working class against other working class. • It would then justify increased surveillance and police violence.

Answer 15

Moral panics occur as a respone to the anomie created by change - by dramatising the threat, the media raises collective consciousness and reasserts social control when central values are threatened. People are unclear on values of society so moral panics help to fix this. By creating moral panic it brings people together as it condemns certain behaviour and asserts right and wrong.

Answer 16

**McRobbie and Thornton** believe that audiences now contribute to the news so there is less fear on a large scale, we have more news to fact check and are less likely to believe one large story, and most events are short lived so they do not stick around long enough to become moral panics.

Answer 17

The development of New Media has led to a new category of crime: cybercrime. The new media facilities crimes such as cyberbullying, identity theft, online fraud, terrorism and more.

Answer 18

1) **Gordon** stayed capitalism is criminogenic and a ‘dog eat dog’ society. 2) **Lea and Young** believe social deprivation to be relative based on perceived needs transmitted by society. 3) Society focuses on w/c crime. The laws are created and enforced to punish the w/c. Criminogenic capitalism disproportionately impacts the w/c as they are the most deprived.

Answer 19

1) **Circourel** found the m/c parents are better able to negotiate the justice system than w/c parents so there are lower levels of criminality for m/c youth. 2) **Becker’s** Labelling Theory can be applied here as w/c are labelled criminal and more likely to attract attention from police as they most closely resemble police stereotypes of a ‘typical criminal’.

Answer 20

1) **Murray** argues there is a criminal underclass of ‘idle young men’ due to the inadequate socialisation of males by lone parent families. 2) **Clarke’s** Rational Choice can be applied as the cost of crime is lower for working class criminals, they have less to lose in terms of public standing and are therefore more tempted by the rewards of criminality.

Answer 21

Working class have been disproportionately affected by globalisation. The outsourcing of traditional manual labour jobs has created higher levels of employment and a crisis of masculinity (Mac an Ghail). Therefore, crime has become a viable career and a source of status.

Answer 22

1) **Pollak** developed **Chivalry Thesis** to explain that ‘Men hate to accuse women, punish women, police officers dislike to arrest them, district attorneys dislike to prosecute them, juries dislike to find them guilty, and so on.’. Men also underestimate female offending because women are more naturally skilled at deception. 2) **Heidensohn** argued there are double standards in the Criminal Justice System: • women are treated badly when they deviate from their femininity • women are seen as ‘double deviants’ as they break the norms of society and the norms of women • double deviants lead to more severe punishments • women are divided into virgins, whores, witches or wives.

Answer 23

1) **Heidensohn** believes women are subjected to greater social control than men, therefore women have less opportunities to offend. Women are controlled in a) the home, b) in public, and c) at work. 2) **Heidensohn** also believes women have more to lose if they turn to crime. They are the ‘Guardians of Domestic Morality’ and have an expectation to set a good example and not to take risks. 3) **Parsons** developed Sex Role Theory and argued that women perform the expressive role at home and young females model this behaviour, while males reject ‘feminine’ qualities and distance themselves by engaging in ‘compensatory compulsory masculinity’ through antisocial behaviour.

Answer 24

1) **Adler** argues that as women become more liberated and society becomes less patriarchal, their crimes will become as frequent and as serious as men’s. 2) **Carlen** argues the most convicted serious female criminals are working class. 3) **Carlen** studied 39 w/c women who had been convicted of a range of crimes. Carlen argues w/c women were generally led to conform through the promise of two deals: **the class deal** was that women who worked would get a decent standard of living and **the gender deal** was that women who conform to conventional domestic gender roles will gain marital/emotional rewards through family life. For the women in Carlen’s study, they had been unable to find/keep a job or had been abused by fathers/partners, been in care, etc, and so neither deal applied to them and they had nothing to lose by committing crime. 4) **Sharpe** found that CJS professionals were influenced by the media stereotypes of violent ladettes.

Answer 25

1) **Messrschmidt** argues that men value normative masculinity, and may commit crime to achieve normative masculinity. Men might commit more crime than women to prove they are in control. **Heidensohn** argues that domestic violence is one criminal way men express control in private. 2) Labelling theory suggests that police are more likely to see men as potential offenders, to label their behaviour as criminal and to press charges. Men dominate the public sphere where most crime is committed and men face fewer constraints than women such as housework or childcare. 3) There is less social control over men so they have more independence/oppotunities to commit crime. Crime is more prevalent in male leisure activities such as drug use in clubs. High status male jobs provide criminal opportunities. **Winlow** found that being a bouncer became an attractive job for those seeking masculine status as they could assert their physical prowess and provided opportunities to engage in profitable criminal activities such as drug dealing. 4) **Katz** argues that masculinity finds excitement in the thrill of crime. Crimes such as robbery undertaken for the chaos, thrill or potential danger. 5) Men might commit more crime because they believe they need to be financially successful to be a real man. A man may wish to act out the role of ‘traditional breadwinner’ through getting a well paid job. This can be applied through **Merton’s** Strain Theory as not all men can achieve this goal through the legitimate means of getting a high paid job and as a result may turn to crime to show they are a successful man.

Answer 26

1) **Phillips and Bowling** found that minorities were more likely to think they were ‘over policed and under protected’. 2) **OCS** found that black people are seven times more likely to be stop and searched than white people and five times more likely to be in prison. 3) **Hood** found that even when previous convictions and the seriousness of the crime is considered black men are 5% more likely to be jailed and Black/Asian minorities are more likely to serve longer sentences.

Answer 27

1) **Hall et al** examined the moral panic over ‘mugging’ in the 1970s. Selective and stereotypical reporting represented young black men as potential muggers and given the role of folk devils. **Hall** explained moral panics in terms of the crisis of British capitalism: the state deflected attention onto a small group who could be scapegoated and on whom the state could be portrayed as cracking down firmly, using repressive policing. Young blacks were suitable for this role because of their visibility and powerlessness in the sense of lacking organisational or representatives to speak on their behalf. 2) **Gilroy** argues Black criminality is a myth. Self report studies show similar levels of criminality in black and white communities, but law enforcement was focused on black communities. This led to political resistance and action against this perceived oppression. 3) **Reiner** argued canteen culture amongst the police encouraged racist stereotypes and a mistrust of those from non white backgrounds.

Answer 28

1) **Lea and Young** argue that there are higher levels of crime in inner city areas where there are higher numbers of members of ethnic minorities, but those who live there are the main victims of crime also.

Answer 29

1) **Gunter** argued that blocked opportunities have led to a ‘road culture’ for young black males as they seek status from criminal activities. This links to status frustration as they are labelled and unable to achieve and therefore they try to do so illegitimately.

Answer 30

1) Role of the media in creating folk devils out of black and Asian males. 2) **Cicourel** could be applied as EMGs are less able to negotiate the justice system.

Answer 31

1) **Karofi and Mwanza** say that global crimes include international trade in illegal drugs, weapons and human beings, money laundering, terrorism and cybercrime. 2) **Castells** says that the global crime economy is worth over £1trillion per annum.

Answer 32

1) **Beck’s** **Risk Consciousness** can be applied as globalisation creates new risks. Risk is now seen as global rather than tied to a particular country, for example asylum seekers fleeing their home country has caused anxiety in western nations.

Answer 33

1) Global capitalism allows multinational corporations to move from country to country to in search for profit. 2) We now have global inequalities. The poor are being exploited through globalisation and so they turn to illegitimate means to succeed.

Answer 34

1) **Hobbs and Dunningham** found that although crimes have global links (e.g drug smuggling), they still depend on local settings (e.g where to sell the drugs). This is know as **Glocalisation**. 2) **Glenny** examiner organisations that came about in Russia and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. The new Russian government messed up the economy so prices of things such as food went up, but commodities like oil stayed the same, leading Eastern Europeans to buy them and sell them at a way higher price.

Answer 35

1) **Green and Ward** define state crime as ‘illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies’. There are 4 types of State Crime: • Political Crime - e.g corruption or censorship • Crimes by Police/Security - e.g torture, genocide, disappearances • Economic Crimes - e.g official violations of health and safety laws, apply Carsen • Social and Cultural Crimes - e.g institutional racism

Answer 36

1) **Michalowski and Kramer** argue that economic and political elite can bring death, disease and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision, and can affect entire human groups through the creation of criminal systems of oppression and exploitation. 2) State Crime is invisible in democratic states - media attention for state crime mostly focused on developing countries such as dictatorship in Cambodia, rather than the democratic states of Britain or the USA which have been found guilty of crimes such as military torture in Iraq and Northern Ireland. 3) The State is the source of the law - the state’s power to shape the laws means it has the power to avoid defining its own harmful actions as criminal.

Answer 37

1) **Cohen** argues that while dictatorships tend to deny committing human rights abuses, democratic states do have to legitimise their actions in more complex ways: • Stage 1 - ‘it didn’t happen’ • Stage 2 - ‘if it did happen, it is something else’ e.g in self defence • Stage 3 - ‘even if it is what you say, it is justified’ e.g to protect national security or fight the war on terror

Answer 38

1) **Cohen** suggests 5 techniques when attempting to justify Human Rights violations: 1) Denial of Victim - e.g they are terrorists not innocent victims 2) Denial of Injury - e.g they started it so we are victims 3) Denial of Responsibility - e.g i was obeying orders 4) Condemning the Condemners - e.g the whole world is against us even when it’s worse elsewhere 5) Appeal to Higher Loyalty - e.g self righteous justification

Answer 39

Zemiology is the study of social harms. Where as criminology looks at what the state considers to be a crime, Zemiology looks beyond crime and includes human rights. Crime is a construct and based on social judgments.

Answer 40

1) **Herman and Schendinger** argue we should define crime in terms of violation of basic human rights, rather than breaking legal rules. This means that states which deny individuals human rights must be regarded as criminal. 2) **Cohen** argues that human rights violations such as war crimes and torture are very clearly crimes, but other acts such as economic exploitation are not self-evidently criminal, even if we find them morally unacceptable. There is a culture of denial that states use to conceal and legitimise their human rights crimes so it makes these violations hard to research and police. 3) Hate crimes can also be seen as an example of human rights abuses, but usually done privately by individuals rather than states.

Answer 41

1) **Anthropocentric Harm** (Nation State Focus) - The human centred view of environmental harm. Humans have the right to dominate the earth and put economic growth before the environment. When they consider harm it is from the persepective of humanity. For example, climate change is a problem because of the impact on people and the cost of dealing with it. 2) **Ecocentric Harm** (Green Criminologists Focus) - Does not distinguish between humans and the rest of the ecosystem; they see harm to any aspect of the environment as harm to all of it. Therefore crimes such as animal cruelty or environmental degradation are green crimes, regardless of whether or not there is any specific human cost.

Answer 42

1) Primary Green Crime - crimes that are committed directly against the environment or acts that cause harm to the environment. 2) Secondary Green Crime - further crime that grows out of flouting rules relating to the environment. 3) **White** observed that: • countries cannot agree on what should constitute green crime • there is no global agency that has the power to police global green laws • international law is inadequate and weakly enforced

Answer 43

1) **Situational Crime Prevention** - strategies that have a preemptive approach that relies on reducing opportunities for crime. For example, **Felson** looked at how the NY bus terminal was poorly designed and provided opportunities for deviant acts. 2) **Environmental Crime Prevention** - strategies that look to improve the environment so that communities are involved in preventing serious crime, for example **Wilson and Kelling’s** Broken Windows. 3) **Social and Community Prevention** - rather than emphasis policing, these strategies emphasis dealing with social conditions that predispose individuals to commit future crime, for example SureStart centres to help reduce inequalities for w/c to prevent them from experiencing strain and committing crimes.

Answer 44

1) CCTV - camera and monitors enable people to view events live and records archive footage for later references. 2) Restorative Justice - a process which aims for victim satisfaction by reducing the victims fear, make the perpetrator aware of the consequences of their actions and creation of a community capital to increase public confidence. 3) Mosquito - mosquito alarms are used to deter loitering by young people by emitting sound at a high frequency. These devices have caused controversy on the basis of human rights and discrimination concerns.

Answer 45

1) **Foucault** suggests that previously it was sovereign power that dominated where the monarch would exercise physical power such as public executions but Foucault suggests disciplinary power is now more dominant. He suggests we like in a ‘prison-like culture’ where we are constantly monitored, or we think we are. Foucault uses the Panopticon to illustrate this. The Panopticon is a prison design where prisoner’s cells are visible to guards, but the guards are not visible to prisoners. This means the prisoners constantly behave as though they are being watched and begin to use self-surveillance. 2) Postmodernists believe society is cloud and constantly changing. Due to technology we now have liquid surveillance.

Answer 46

1) Deterrence - punishment stops future offending by making an example of offenders. 2) Rehabilitation - reform or change offenders. 3) Incapacitation - remove the offenders capacity to offend again. 4) Retribution - does not aim to reduce future offences it is simply there to punish.

Answer 47

1) Punishment gives the opportunity to express disapproval and reinforce social solidarity/shared values. 2) Builds social order and cohesion for the benefit of all. 3) Deters from offending. 4) **Durkheim** identifies 2 types of justice: • Retributive Justice - traditional society has a strong collective conscience so punishment is severe and vengeful. • Restitutive Justice - in modern society there is extensive independence between individuals, crime damages this and the function of justice should be to repair the damage, such as community service.

Answer 48

1) Punishment is part of the repressive state apparatus and reinforces ruling class power. 2) Law is selectively enforced. 3) Punishment to maintain social order and class divide. 4) Under capitalism, imprisonment is the dominant form of punishment as it is able to exploit prisoners for labour.

Answer 49

1) **Foucault** argues the Panopticon reinforces a state of self-surveillance. 2) Postmodernists believe that society has moved from sovereign power (obedience to a central authority figure such as the King) to disciplinary power (governing through surveillance).

Answer 50

1) **Official Crime Statistics (OCS)** - police recorded statistics. Published every 6 months by the Home Office. 2) **Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)** - people are interviewed about their experiences of crime in the past 12 months and their attitudes towards crime related issues. Random sampling of addresses from the Royal Mails list of addresses. 3) **Self Report Studies** - anonymous questionnaires in which people are asked to own up to committing crimes whether or not they’ve been discovered.

Answer 51

1) Ethnicity • EMG groups more likely to be victims of crime • Black minority groups are up 14 times more likely to be victims of racially motivated crimes • Honour crimes and forced marriages are linked to Black EMGs 2) Gender • 70% of homicide victims are male • Women are more likely to be victims of domestic and sexual violence • Crimes against women are less likely to be reported to the police or recorded in official statistics 3) Social Class • In areas of high deprivation there are higher levels of crime • Vulnerable unemployed, sick, low income families 4) Age • Infants under 1 are most at risk of being murdered • Older people are least likely to be victims of violent crime but are at risk of abuse • 16-24 years highest rate of victimisation

Crime And Deviance Flashcards

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