2.2.9 Crime and Deviance: Control, punishment and victims

Question 1

Crime prevention and control

What is SCP?

Answer 1

• Situational crime prevention.
• A pre-emptive approach which relies on reducing opportunity for crime.
• E.g ‘target hardening’
• Based on rational choice theory

Question 2

Crime prevention and control

What is a zero tolerence policy and who are the key theorists?

Answer 2

• Zero tolerance policy is based on Wilson and Kelling’s ‘broken windows’ theory that signs of disorder prompt a spiral of decline.
• Therefore, the solution is to crack down and have a no tolerance policy.

Question 3

Crime prevention and control

What is the approach of social and community crime prevention?

Answer 3

• dealing with the social conditions that predispose some individuals to future crime.
• E.g dealing with poverty, unemployment…

Question 4

Crime prevention and control

What is an example of social crime prevention?

Answer 4

• The perry pre-school project in Michigan gave an experimental group of two year olds an intellectual enrichment programme which led to fewer arrests compared to peers.

Question 5

Surveillance

What are the two forms of power identified by Faucault?

Answer 5

• Sovereign power - the monarch exercised physical power over people’s bodies and punishment was a visible spectacle. e.g public execution.
• Disciplinary power - controls not only the body, but the mind through serveillance. Dominant from the 19th century.

Question 6

Surveillance

What’s Faucault’s study of the panopticon?

Answer 6

• the panopticon is a prison design where cells are visable to guards but guards are not visable to prisoners.
• By not knowing if they are being watched, the prisoners constantly behave as if they are, turning into ‘self-surveillance’.

Question 7

Surveillance

What’s Mathiesen’s theory on surveillance developed from Faucault?

Answer 7

• Synoptic surveillance
• This is where everyone watched everyone.
• As well as Faucault’s top down minotoring, the public monitor the powerful groups, and the public also monitor each other.

Question 8

Surveillance

What are Haggerty and Ericson’s ‘surveillant assemblages’?

Answer 8

• Surveillant assemblages are combining multiple different technologies in surveillance.

Question 9

Surveillance

What is Feeley and Simon’s ‘actuarial analysis’?

Answer 9

• A method of statistical calculations to predict the likelihood of people offending.
• Individuals can be profiled using known offender ‘risk factors’ (e.g age, gender, ethnicity, religion).

Question 10

Surveillance

What is a limitation of Feeley and Simon’s actuarial analysis?

Answer 10

• Offender profiles are compiled using official statistics.
• Profiling leads to police targetting certain groups.
• Stereotyping and labelling - enables racist judgements.
• Self fulfilling prophecy.

Question 11

Surveillance

What did Norris and Armstrong find about CCTV and racism?

Answer 11

• found that CCTV operators targetted young, black, males based on stereotypes which led to a self sulfilling prophecy.

Question 12

Punishment

What are the four different justifications for punishment?

Answer 12

• Deterrence - may prevent future crime for fear of punishment.
• Rehabilitation - reforming offenders so they no longer offend.
• Incapacitation - removing the offenders capacity to offend.
• Retribution - the idea that society is entitled to take revenge for the offender having breached its moral code.

Question 13

Punishment

What is Durkheim’s functionalist perspective on the role of punishment?

Answer 13

• To uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values by expressing society’s moral outrage at the offence.

Question 14

Punishment

What are the two types of punishment identitied by Durkheim?

Answer 14

• Retributive justice - punishment is severe due to traditional society’s strong collective conscience.
• Restituitve justice - punishment’s aim is to repair damage due to society’s interdependence between individuals.

Question 15

Punishment

How do marxists see punishment?

Answer 15

• See punishment as part of the ‘repressive state apparatus’ that defends ruling class property from the lower class.
• The form of punishment reflects the economic base of society.
• Under capitalism, imprisonment takes the main form of punishment because time is money so offenders ‘pay’ by doing time.

Question 16

Punishment

How has the role of prisons changed?

Answer 16

• in pre-industrial society, imprisonment was just a form of holding prisoners before punishment (banishment, flogging, execution)
• Later, imprisonment became a form of punishment in itself.
• In liberal societies, prison is seen as the most sever form of punishment.
• However, most prisoners re-offend so it may just be a way of making bad prisoners worse.

Question 17

Punishment

In what way does Garland argue punishment has become more politicised?

Answer 17

• There has been a move towards ‘populist punitiveness’ - the political strategy of using criminal law to gain electorial popularity.
• The public approve of tougher sentances so more people are being incarcerated.
• The UK imprisons the highest proportion of people of most countries in Europe.

Question 18

Punishment

What is transcarceration?

Answer 18

• moving young people between different prison-like institutions such as foster care, young offenders institutions, adult prisons.
• There has been a burring of boundaries between criminal justice system and welfare agencies. e.g social services, health, and housing are given an increasing role in crime control.

Question 19

Punishment

What are some alternatives to prison?

Answer 19

• curfews
• tagging
• service orders

Question 20

The victims of crime

How does Christie define a ‘victim’?

Answer 20

• As a socially contructred category.
• The stereotype of a victim created by the media is weak and blameless.

Question 21

The victims of crime

What is positivist victimology?

Answer 21

• focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence.
• Seeks to find patterns in victimisation and aims to identify the characteristics of victims.

Question 22

The victims of crime

What are two characteristics of victims identified by positivist victimologists, and what is the evaluation on this perspective?

Answer 22

• Victim proneness - characteristics that make victims more vulnerable. e.g less intellegent.
• Victim precipitation - being the first to use violence.
• Can appear ‘victim blaming’ and ignoress structural factors such as poverty and patriarchy.

Question 23

The victims of crime

What is Wolfgang’s study and how does is show victim precipitation?

Answer 23

• Wolfgang studied 588 homocides and found that 26% involved the victim triggering the events that led to the murder. e.g being the first to use violence.

Question 24

The victims of crime

What is critical victimology?

Answer 24

• structural factors such as patriarchy and poverty place powerless groups at greater risk of victimisation.

Question 25

The victims of crime

In what ways do capitalism not apply the victim label consistently?

Answer 25

• When police fail to press charges against a man for assulting his wife/partner, she is denied victim status.
• Employers violation of the law leading to death or injury are often explained away as the fault of ‘accident prone’ workers.

Question 26

The victims of crime

Who are the main groups most likely to be repeat victims?

Answer 26

• the poor
• the young
• minority ethnic groups
• males - violence
• females - domestic and sexual violence.

Question 27

The victims of crime

What are the main impacts of victimisation?

(4)

Answer 27

• crime may create ‘indirect victims’ such as family, friends and witnesses
• crime may create fear of victimisation
• secondary victimisation by the criminal justice system
• create waves of hate crimes against minority ethnic groups.