Age Flashcards
What is the peak age for offending?
15 and 18
- young males more likely to offend compared to young females
- gap is closing
Young people and crime statistics
Over-represented, each generation of adults create their own moral panic about the ‘youth of today’ and complaining that it was ‘never like this in my day’
Official statistics
half of all those convicted are aged 21 or under
2002- self-report study found almost half of Britain’s secondary school students admitted to having broken the law
What are young offences usually like
Trivial, opportunistic, short-lived, isolated incidents, peer-group related
- underage drinking, vandalism, shop lifting
What is the Crime and Disorder Act 1998?
Lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years old
What is nocturnal crime and youth offending?
Growth in pubs and clubs, selling alcohol
- crime occur when leaving these establishments
- intoxicated young men, lead to crime
- rise of violent crimes
Hobbs and Lister- used as justification for introducing 24 hours’ licenses in 2005
What are the 9 explanations for links between youth and crime and deviance?
1- Youth Labelling -Becker
2- Status frustration- Cohen
3- Inadequate and inappropriate socialisation- Murray
4- peer group status and WC focal concerns- Miller
5- Edgework- Katz and Lyng
6- The peer group and weakened social bonds- Control theory right realism
7- Delinquency, drift and techniques of neutralisation- Matza
8- Police stereotyping
9- Media and moral panics about youth crime
1- Youth Labelling -Becker
Self-fulfilling prophecy, start to believe they are the stereotype and label they have been given, act accordingly
Process of deviance creation
1- Variability
2- negotiability
3- master status
4- deviant career
2- Status frustration- Cohen
Resolve status frustration by joining delinquent subcultures
- create alternative status hierarchy
- give status by peers
- may stop sharing the same goals and give up
3- Inadequate and inappropriate socialisation- Murray
Argues a rise in matrifocal lone parents families lack male role models
- young boys lack discipline, find RM in street gangs
- encourages devaint behaviour
4- peer group status and WC focal concerns- Miller
WC male more likely to get involved
-toughness, smartness, fatalism, desire for freedom, acceptance of violence of part of life
- seek more thrill, get from crime
- appear tough and physically demonstarte this
- older people do not experience this pressure
5- Edgework- Katz and Lyng
Much delinquency is motivated by edgework or thrill seeking, applies increasingly to girls and young MC people as well
6- The peer group and weakened social bonds- Control theory right realism
Criminal behaviour is likely if the bonds to family and society are weakened and teenagers are more interested in the approval of peer group than their family or wider society
- especially if they are experiencing status frustration
7- Delinquency, drift and techniques of neutralisation- Matza
YP are going through a period of ‘drift’ where they are no longer children but not yet part of the adult world
- during this period societies moral bonds are weakened
- techniques of neutralisation used by juvenile delinquents show they have the same moral values as the rets of society, and feel guilt about their actions
How do techniques of neutralisation suggest they share the same moral values as the rest of society?
Proof of subterranean values, if people had a different set of values they would believe their deviant behaviour was appropriate/correct
What are some techniques of neutralisation?
Denial of responsibility, injury, victim, appeal to higher loyalties, condemnation of the condemners
8- Police stereotyping
Young people fit the police stereotype of a ‘typical offender’
- more likely to be monitored, stopped, questioned, arrested, charged and convicted
9- Media and moral panics about youth crime
Youth subcultures have been the focus of media and led to moral panics
- exaggerate the deviance of young people
- increased public panic about youth subcultures
Cohen found in study of Mods and Rockers
9- Media and moral panics about youth crime
Kelly
Lang used by journalists to describe young people who come in contact with the law and find 3 major types of representation
1-YP are dangerous
2- YP are in need of protection
3- YP are immature
Youth as victims
Crime and Justice survey
35% of 10-15 year olds
- 16-25 6X more likely than over 75
u16 not represented in police statistics
Youth as vulnerabilty
60% of YOI- speech, lang, communication problems
- 11% physical
- 43% emotional
- 49% substance
- excluded, status frustration
Older people less likely
1- Less peer group involvement and influence
2- less likely to experience status frustration
3- less likely to act tough, seek thrill, no focal concerns
