Chapter 14 Flashcards
What is criminology
¬ It is the scientific study of crime causation, crime prevention, and the punishment and rehabilitation of offenders
Three key areas of criminology
¬ The development of criminal law and its use in defining crime
¬ Causes of law-breaking behaviour
¬ Societal responses to crime and criminal behaviour
Crime
¬ behaviours and actions that require social control and social intervention codified in law
Deviance
¬ actions that violate social norms, and that may or may not be against the law
-As argued by Becker, an act is not inherently deviant: people’s reactions to the behaviour make the act deviant
Social norms
are shared and acceptable standards of behaviour and social expectations
Basic distinction between crime and deviance
Crime: behaviours and actions that require social control and social intervention, codified by law.
Deviance: actions that violate social norms, and that may or may not be against the law
Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham
- If crime results in some form of pleasure for the criminal, then pain must be used to prevent crime
- Sentences must be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime
Cesare Lombroso
¬ Argued that some individuals were born criminal
¬ The criminal man could be distinguishing by the anatomy -asymmetrical face, large ears, particular eye defects, narrowed jaw, thick beard, and thick nasal tips, etc.
Strain Theory- Robert Merton
¬ Merton, proposed a typology of social adaptations to the strain between the goals and means of achieving goals in a society
¬ Merton outlined five potential social adaptations in his strain theory:
1. Conformity: happens when individuals accept social goals and have the means to achieve those goals
2. Innovation: When individuals accept societal goals but incapable of achieving those goals through socially approved means
3. Ritualism: adaption when social goals are reduced in important. E.g. when someone belonging to a religious order is not driven to acquire material success
4. Retreatism: Reject societal goals and the legitimate means of achieving it (lack of success leads to social withdrawal)
5. Rebellion: An alternative set of goals and means, thus supplanting conventional ones
Illegitimate opportunity theory
proposes that individuals commit crime because of deviant learning environments
Functionalists (finish)
¬ Durkheim, argue the transition from pre-industrial societies to industrial societies produced anomie (normlessness), which led to deviant behaviour. In other words, as society transitioned into a new form, people failed to understand the new expectations and therefore they deviate or resort to diversions
Conflict theory
point to the role that government plays in producing criminogenic environments-those environments that, because of laws that privilege certain groups, produce crime and criminality
Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionists argue that criminal behaviour is learned just like other types of behaviours
Differential Association Theory (Sutherland)
People learn criminal behaviour through social interaction
“Excess of definition” lead us to conform or deviate
Labeling Theory (Howard Becker)
- Labelling theory asserts that once labelled as deviant, people come to accept the label as part of their identity
- Based on reactions of others to an individual’s act; response leads to the labelling of a person as deviant
Feminist theory
- Concerned with issues of power, distribution of resources
- Explain gendered nature of crime
- Historically female criminal viewed as “sick” or “individual pathology”
Feminist legal studies
Feminist legal theory argues that the law is a key instrument in women’s historical subordination and how the law maintains women’s inferior status
Critical race theory
Critical race theory examines issues of oppression, discrimination, and explores the links between race and law. It is interested in racial profiling and how the development of some laws reflects racism
Consequences of Women’s fear of crime
¬ Reinforces women’s dependency on men
¬ Focusing on risk shifts responsibility from the state protecting its citizens to individuals being responsible for avoiding risk and risky situations
¬ Focus on risk aversion overemphasizes women’s risk in the public sphere and underestimates women’s risk in the private sphere
Groups mostly subjected to moral regulation
¬ Welfare recipient: Social Assistance Policies are premised on notions of moral regulations (e.g. scrutiny of single mothers)
¬ Sex and sexual relationships: prostitution and homosexuality are two areas that face moral censor
¬ Crime victims: notion of proper and respectable femininity contributes to our understanding of who is a worthy victim deserving of sympathy
