Exam Prep

Question 1

Who conceptualized Anomie and how it influences our understanding of crime and social harm?

Answer 1

Emile Durkheim

Question 2

What are Merton’s ‘modes’ of individual adaptation and how do they help us explain how and why crime/deviance occurs?

Answer 2

1. Conformity: Those who conform to cultural goals and the institutional means to obtain them.
2. Ritualism: Those who know that our cultural goals are blocked and that the institutional means are out of reach, yet continue to live life accordingly.
3. Retreatism: Those who ‘retreat’ from society and any of it’s goals. They generally join cults or move away from society
4. Rebellion: Those that seek to change the system by actively working against them e.g. organise movements etc
5. Innovators: Those that want to obtain the cultural goals but do so through illegal means

Question 3

According to Merton, what is the main cause of crime and deviance in contemporary, capitalist societies like the U.S and arguably here in NZ?

Answer 3

There is a contradiction between cultural goals and the means to achieve them. (Blocked opportunities)

Question 4

Why does the labelling process ‘matter’ in terms of understanding the causes of crime and consequences of coming into contact with the criminal justice system?

Answer 4

1. How we label people can affect their and our behaviour
2. People will find those that are the same as them - e.g., delinquents will find other delinquents because they are the same.

Question 5

Identify at least 3 key concepts or arguments that Labelling theorists employ to explain how and why crime/deviance occurs.

Answer 5

1. Crime changes and is socially constructed rather than universal and absolute.
2. Spoilt Identity - your name is tarnished. Ex-offenders find it hard to re-integrate back into the community.
3. The process of labelling.

Question 6

Name the 5-step process of labelling

Answer 6

1. The act of primary deviance
2. The primary act is observed and responded to (the ‘official response’)
3. The deviant label is applied
4. The recipient recognizes the label
5. The recipient acts according to the label.

Question 7

Identify at least 3 significant criticisms directed at Labelling theory.

Answer 7

1. Does not focus on why crime is committed but who commits it
2. It’s always negative - groups or individuals actively seek to be deviant
3. The theory had not been empirically validated.

Question 8

Identify at least 3 key concepts associated with Rational Choice Theory

Answer 8

1. People are free to choose their actions
2. Human beings are actors
3. Cost benefit analysis

Question 9

Identify at least 3 policies and interventions that have developed out of Rational Choice Theory

Answer 9

1. Deterrence - Tough on crime
2. Defensible spaces - changes to commercial and residential spaces to help prevent crime
3. Situational Crime Prevention - Target hardening i.e. if crime is a rational choice based on calculation, then make the calculation too costly for the criminal activity.

Question 10

Identify 2 key strengths and weaknesses of Rational Choice Theory

Answer 10

Strengths
1. Offers swift and severe punishment
2. The state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws.
Weaknesses
1. Harsher punishment or more prisons doesn’t mean crime will stop
2. Not everyone is scared of punishment

Question 11

What was the rationale upon which Jock Young and others based their decision to abandon radical/Marxist perspectives and develop Left Realism?

Answer 11

1. The changing political circumstances of the 70s and 80s
2. The general impact of feminism had on radical theorising.
3. Policing by consent - making the police accountable

Question 12

Identify the 4 critiques of Left realism according to Mathews and Young

Answer 12

1. Utopianism - get rid of the current system and all crime will go away
2. Romanticism - Politically motivated
3. Naive anti-empiricism - analysis of data is needed and should not be ignored
4. Naive abolitionism - there are certain individuals that are too dangerous for society.

Question 13

What are some of the critical issues facing NZ police at this point in their history?

Answer 13

1. Institutional racism including racial profiling
2. Use of force (e.g. Ururewa terror raids)
3. Focus on specific groups (e.g. gangs, muslims)

Question 14

What are some of the strategies/initiatives that police might instigate in response to these issues?

Answer 14

1. Iwi panels
2. The turning of the tide
3. Iwi liaison officers

Question 15

What are the 3 main roles of the police?

Answer 15

1. To maintain social order
2. To protect the public
3. To be highly visible

Question 16

Identify various way that male criminologists have theorised the causes of female offending throughout the 20th century.

Answer 16

1. Lombroso’s theory that biology is destiny
2. Women offenders were degenerative (lacked intellect)
3. Women had evolved more like men

Question 17

What were Thomas and Pollacks explanations for women’s offending?

Answer 17

1. Women are cold, calculative and amoral

2. Women are inherently more manipulative and secretive.

Question 18

Name two feminist criminologist and their theories of female offending?

Answer 18

1. Freda Adler: Argues emancipation and changes to gender roles post WWII that saw increased aggressiveness, competitiveness that exemplified a rise in criminality.
2. Loraine Gelsthorpe: countered Adlers emancipation by reasoning that the increase in female offending is due to poverty, economic marginalisation and that women’s roles in society had changed significantly.

Question 19

What are some of the policies/interventions and innovations that have resulted from feminist criminological theorising and perspectives?

Answer 19

1. Rape centers and women’s refuge
2. Mandatory arrests
3. Indpendent, indigenous programmes for survivors of sexual abuse
4. Specialised police training for domestic and sexual violence and victimisation
5. Courtroom practices - types of questions asked and the way questioning is conducted
6. More women researchers

Question 20

Identify the key arguments indigenous scholars make for explaining why indigenous peoples are over-represented in settler colonial criminal justice systems.

Answer 20

1. Combined results of colonialism (dispossession, violence and genocide)
2. The law
3. Policing, surveillance and containment
4. Education system
5. Labour market and social welfare

Question 21

What was the purpose for the Police and Corrections departments in NZ?

Answer 21

To police and control white men settlers but mainly to control the natives.

Question 22

According to Criminology in NZ, what are 3 of the foundational myths of colonialism and law.

Answer 22

1. The Maori people were uncivilised and being colonised was a blessing to the people.
2. The treaty was honourable and is designed for partnership.
3. British law is objective, fair and just.

Question 23

Identify the different components of a moral panic - including the different stages of a ‘moral panic’.

Answer 23

1. Focus on a particular behaviour - generally behaviour of a group known as folk devils coined by Stanley Cohen
2. Generation of concern by Media and other including politicians
3. The threat of the folk devils is exaggerated
4. Level of public concern subsides

Question 24

Identify the main players/institutions involved in the construction of moral panic

Answer 24

1. Folk devils
2. Rule or law enforcers
3. Media
4. Politicians
5. The public

Question 25

How accurately do moral panics reflect the 'real' level of threat that exists in society?

Answer 25

Media representation of crime is irrational and does not match actual crime statistics

Question 26

Name 2 situations of moral panic that have arisen in NZ in the past 20 years and what reasons/factors can be said to have influenced the developments of these panics?

Answer 26

1. Gangs - can be violent either within their chapters or with rival gangs (turf wars) 2. Muslims - Post 9/11 and the attack in Christchurch. They represent social anxieties around economic, social and techonological change, producing calls for solutions which often entail repressive laws or policing.

Question 27

Identify and describe the key rationale government officials offer to justify the use of prisons as a form of response to offending.

Answer 27

* Punishment: obtaining retribution from those who have committed social harms * Deterrence: both individual and general (Rational choice theory) * Reformation: reforming individual behaviour of offenders via rehabilitation * Reintegration: ensure the successful, non-criminogenic reintegration of an offender back into the community * Enhance community safety: removing the risk associated with the individual offender via incapacitation.

Question 28

2. Identify and describe two of the alternative ‘rationale’ Mathieson offers to explain why prisons are a popular response to crime in countries like New Zealand.

Answer 28

* The expurgatory function: those who are surplus to the needs of the labour market or disruptive to it can be siphoned and contained. This saw the introduction of the Jim Crowe laws. * The power-draining function: restricts problem populations from exercising political, social and economic power or contesting the contemporary power structures * The stigmatising function: Durkheim’s theory of punishment as a morally stabilising social force. * The diverting function: Crime is committed by all classes in society, but media, social and political attention focuses on the prison that is reserved mainly for the lower (dangerous) class. * The action function: Prison shows us that ‘something is being done’ about crime and risk

Question 29

What are the key concepts and components of Restorative justice?

Answer 29

1. Acknowledge the personal dimension crime 2. The formal system depersonalises crime and social harm 3. The personal nature of crime demands a personal process for dealing with crime 4. Effective response to social harm requires that those affected by an incident of crime participate in its resolution

Question 30

Identify 3 key differences between RJ and State justice processes.

Answer 30

RJ: 1. Crime is an act against another person and the community 2. Punishment alone is not effective in changing behaviour and is disruptive to community relationships 3. Crime control lies primarily in the community State: 1. Crime is an act against the state, a violation of a law, or an abstract idea 2. Punishment is effective 3. The criminal justice system controls crime

Question 31

What are Basemore's 3 principles of RJ?

Answer 31

1. Repairing harm 2. Stakeholder involvement 3. Transformation of community and government roles

Question 32

True or False: The official crime stats, as an indicator of the amount of crime and the types of crimes that take place is completely wrong and unreliable by 100%.

Answer 32

True

Question 33

What are the 3 main problems with crime Statistics?

Answer 33

1. Detection 2. Reporting 3. Recording

Question 34

Why do we need crime statistics?

Answer 34

1. A measure of the moral fibre of society 2. Source of information for social planning 3. Source of information for seeking political gain 4. Source of information for seeking increased crime control resources

Question 35

When counting convicted charges individually, list in order the most common offence types (2017/2018)

Answer 35

1. Traffic offences 2. Theft 3. Offences against justice, such as breaching community work orders 4. Assault 5. Drug offences

Question 36

What is the dark figure?

Answer 36

The gap in crime statistics between officially reported crimes and those that are either never reported to police or not disclosed by law enforcement.

Question 37

What is the grey figure?

Answer 37

refers to offences that are known to police, but not recorded or known to police but incorrectly recorded or miscoded.