The Social Construction of Crime

Question 1

Outline how crime is socially constructed

Answer 1

• No act is inherently criminal or deviant in itself, it comes to be when others label it as such.
• A deviant is simply someone to whom the label has been successfully applied. This leads to labelling theorists to look at how and why rules and laws get made

Question 2

Describe the factors that influence whether someone is labelled as a criminal

Answer 2

• Interactions with agencies of social change (police): Poor speech code so may not explain to police well, hostile interaction. How you respond to the police and talk your way out of a situations, those with an elaborated code are more able to
• Appearance: Piliavin and Briar found police decisions to arrest are mainly based on physical cues (manner + dress) and background
• Situation and circumstance of the offence: more policing in certain areas (socio-economic factors)

Question 3

Give statistics that show that minorities are more likely to stopped by police

Answer 3

• Black and Asians were 4 times more likely to be stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act 2000 in 2013
• In 2013-14, 59% of people stopped under Section 60 by London’s Metropolitan Police Service were either Black British or Asian British

Question 4

How are officers’ decisions to arrest influenced by stereotypes about offenders?

Answer 4

• Cicourel found that officers’ typifications (police have ‘common sense theories’ of what a delinquent is like)
• Typifications led to law enforcement showing class bias, with police patrolling WC areas more than MC areas and therefore finding more people that fit that typification. This leads to more arrests, confirming their stereotypes.

Question 5

How do other agents of social control within the criminal justice system reinforce class bias?

Answer 5

• Cicourel argues probation officers held the common sense theory that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes and poverty.
• They tended to see youths from such backgrounds as likely to offend in the future and were less likely to support non-custodial sentence for them.

Question 6

How is justice not fixed but negotiable?

Answer 6

Cicourel argues e.g. when a young MC was arrested he was less likely to be charged. This was partly due to his background not fitting the idea of the police’s ‘typical delinquent’, and partly because his parents were more likely to be able to negotiate successfully on his behalf. This meant he was more likely to be warned, not prosecuted.

Question 7

Why shouldn’t official crime statistics be used a resource?

Answer 7

• Cicourel argues statistics don’t give a valid picture of the patterns of crime and can’t be used as a resource/fact.
• We should treat statistics as a topic to investigate and study the processes that created them, which sheds light on the activities of the control agencies and how they process and label certain types of people as criminal

Question 8

How are official crime statistics socially constructed?

Answer 8

• At each stage of the criminal justice system agent of social control (e.g. police) make decisions about whether to proceed to the next stage. The outcome depends on the labels they attach to suspects during their interactions, which is affected by the typifications they hold
• As a result, statistics only tell about the activities and decisions of the police and prosecutors, rather than the amount of crime or who commits it.

Question 9

What is the dark figure of crime?

Answer 9

The difference between the official statistics and the ‘real’ rate of crime, called the dark figure, as we don’t know for certain how much crime goes undetected and unreported

Question 10

What alternative statistics?

Answer 10

Some use victim surveys (people are asked what crimes they have been victims of) or self-report studies (they’re asked what crimes they’ve committed) to gain a more accurate view of the amount of crime