Crime, Punishment and Social Control

Question 1

What is a crime?

Answer 1

An act that violates the penal code
What is considered a crime varies across contexts.
Ex. legality of marijuana

Question 2

Who is a criminal?

Answer 2

A person who has violated the law

Question 3

What is the context of crime?

Answer 3

Understanding crimes involves thinking beyond the individual to consider:
Networks of peers
Bonds to family, school, work, and other institutions
Features of the environment that make a crime more or less likely

Question 4

Mass incarceration

Answer 4

The U.S. imprisonment rate is 11 times higher, and exceeds that of every other country in the world, while the crime rate has decreased (kept a steady pace)

Question 5

What is Michelle Alexander claim in her reading?

Answer 5

The rise of mass incarceration due to the war on drugs.

Question 6

Mass incarceration as a racialized policy

Answer 6

Since it is more likely that a black man will go to prison (1 out of 3) compared to a white man (1 in 17)

Question 7

The New Jim Crow

Answer 7

Mass incarceration as the New Jim Crow, a racialized caste system
Individuals with criminal records are often permanently stripped of rights granted to all other citizens, thus legalized discrimination and exclusion from rights and benefits
It is part of a system designed to maintain racial inequality and a means of social control

Question 8

Punishment and the social construction of crime

Answer 8

Robberies vs Wage theft
Wage theft is reported more than robbery
Wage theft is a crime, yet few prosecutors charge for it
One form of theft with administrative and civil (by employer to you) but
Employee stealing from the employer lead to jail time
Not all social harms are criminalized

Question 9

Institutional racism in the criminal justice system

Answer 9

Symbolic power: Which groups are disproportionately defined as criminal by the CJS and which are not?
African Americans
Political power: Whose rights and political participation are
disproportionately curtailed by the CJS due to the mark of a
criminal record?
African Americans
Social power: Who is disproportionately excluded from opportunities to acquire adequate housing in desirable
neighborhoods due to the mark of a criminal record?
African Americans
Economic power: Who is disproportionately excluded from labor-market opportunities due to the mark of a criminal record?
African Americans