crim lecture 6 (8)-13 Flashcards
Classical criminology/Classical theory
school that contributed to the growth of individualistic explanations for criminality and deviance
Spiritual theory
people who committed crimes were possessed by demons/evil forces
- People were fundamentally good, evil acts were caused by external forces
- Punishments were used to determine guilt/innocence, torture/death/public humiliation, usually inflicted on the body
–> Public, deter people from committing crime, imprisonment was less common
–>Believed that harsher punishments = stop people from committing crimes
The enlightenment’s impact on criminology
Began 17th and 18th century Europe,
Use of scientific method to study humanity,
Spread of rationalism and social optimism in Europe
–> Justice system (torture) is reformed, punishments reflect the crime, found that brutal punishments do not fundamentally deter people from engaging in crime
–> more human rights, humans aren’t seen as inherently sinful
The classical school
Classical theorists say we enjoy rationality and free will
→ Hedonistic calculus - maximize pleasure, minimize pain
- Decisions to violate the law are made by weighing cost benefit against possible punishments
- Primary purpose of punishments should be deterrence other than vengeance
→ Deterrence and denunciation → what does the punishment acheive
→ Punishments must be individualized and proportionate
Objectives of punishments
- General deterrence
→Deter the general public - Specific deterrence
→Deter recidivism(?) - reoffenders - Denunciation
→Our society condemns the behavior - Incapacitation
→Control movements of potentially dangerous offenders → jail/prison/monitoring - Rehabilitation
- Reparations/restitutions
→ Pay back individual harmed or community - could be literal or by imprisonment of the offender - Retribution
Neo classical theories and deterrence
Concepts of just deserts (appropriate reward or punishment for one’s actions) at the core of neo classical approach
Deterrents
→ The certainty of punishment is the most effective element of deterrence
→ The criminal justice system often works slowly, making speed or celerity difficult
→ More severe punishments have no effect and can actually increasing the risk of reoffending
Rational choice theory - event and involvement decisions
- Criminology was overly focused on individual level factors
- Offenders and non-offenders engage in similar decision making processes
- Rational choice theory includes “involvement decisions” and “event decisions” everyone who commits crime has both
→ Involvement decisions based on background factors, prior experience, and solutions to our needs
→ Event decisions include immediate and situational factors, Ex. security, location, time, human behavior, victim
Routine activities theory - rational choice based theory
- Cohen and Felson, American society in 60s and 70s was more affluent.
People had more wealth, larger homes, possessions. Changes in lifestyle increased victimization - Crimes require a motivated offender, suitable target and absence of a capable guardian
→ Motivated offender and suitable target must be accompanied by lack of a capable guardian
→ Guardianship can be formal or informal (formal is police/security/cameras, informal is friend/neighbor/concerned citizen/ street lighting)
→ Informal is the most important form of guardianship
Felson claims the fourth variable is the absence of an ‘intimate handler’, a significant other; for example, a
parent or girlfriend – who can impose informal social control on the offender.”
Physical environment and offending
Focuses on the role of place in crime prevention
- Easier to predict high crime locations than people
Changes to physical, social, and organizational environment can reduce offending.
Techniques of situational crime prevention
- Increasing the perceived effort of crime.
- Increasing the risk of crime.
→ Extending guardianship - Increases certainty of being caught
- Reducing the rewards of crime.
→ Concealing high value targets - Reducing the provocations of crime.
→ Less cause for crime/incentives, reduce frustrations, conflict control
Reducing excuses for criminal behavior
→ Clear rules, increasing compliance ex. No parking signs
Critique of rational choice
- How do theories account for illogical and expressive crime?
- Rational choice theories do not sufficiently account for social, structural, and individual influences
→ Ex emotional state - People often underestimate the risks of crime and consequences
What is recidivists
Reoffenders
“victimization actor” model
Understanding what influences on the offender caused them to commit the offense
What happens when the law expresses values that are rejected by powerful people in society?
Legal backlash → Powerful people using the law to resist legal change
Michelle Alexander’s thesis on mass incarceration
Mass incarceration is a legal strategy of discriminatory treatment that has emerged to preserve racial hierarchy in American society
Law is layered
- In a federal system, laws are layered from the local up to the national level
- When these laws conflict, the federal layer always wins
- Courts tell us when laws conflict → called Judicial review
After slavery ended, amendments were added to the constitution to attempt to integrate black people into society
→ Thirteenth amendment
→ Loopholes within the law
How did law continue to discriminate against black people?
Mandatory contracts for adults
→ Disproportionately enforced on African Americans
- Apprenticeship for children
- Wage fixing
- Vagrancy laws
- Convict leasing
→Labour of prisoners
“Black codes”:
- Understanding clause
→ Illiterate black people were not allowed to register to vote while their white counterparts could
- Grandfather clause
→ If your parents did not fight in the civil war or if you didn’t have the right to vote in the past
- Good character test
→ Subjective and biased assessment
Fifteenth amendment
Black men were given the right to vote
Not to be discriminated against “on account of race, color and (past) servitude”
- There’s still loophole to this, in which doesn’t explictely discriminate on the basis of race, but disproportionately against black men
“Separate but equal”
Equal segregation - “equal opportunities but separated”
- Except opportunities were not given equally → reproduces inequality through legal channels
“Legislation is powerless to eradicate racist instincts”
War on drugs affect on black men
Different amounts of drugs got the same sentence - because of the populations that use them
Reinforces discrimination, but under the guise of only felons (disproportionately black men):
1. Previous felons were usually not allowed to vote
→ States that allowed it had mostly white populations
2. After being convicted, you cannot participate in a jury
→ After disproportionate incarceration of African Americans, juries become disproportionately white and biased
3. Employers asking if you have been convicted of a felony
Basis benefits like public housing and food stamps were then denied from felons
The truth of the war on drugs
Crime rates and incarceration rates move nearly independent of each other
“The drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, despite the fact that studies consistently indicate that people of all races use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates.”
- White youth are more likely to commit drug crimes than youth of colour
- In some states, African Americans constitute 80 to 90% of all drug offenders sent to prison
Blindness to mass incarceration
Statistics help reinforce blindness to this issue by excluding those who have been incarcerated, therefore not accurately depicting the disproportionate amount of black people who have felt the effects of discrimination in areas like housing and employment
→ Downplays the impact of racial discrimination
Legal consciousness definition
Orienting ourselves to Law –> the way individuals experience and react to the law
Law is in society
- Law has a place in texts, statutes, codes and in judicial rulings
- Most of us don’t consult these sources when deciding what to do
- Instead we rely on common sense (approximate, imperfect, contradictory)
- Terms and conditions → ironclad rules to prevent being sued for violating rights
Culture and Contradiction
Culture → the way in which we make sense of the world (often very contradictory)
→ We select which culture to use based on the situation
Proverbs → Contradict each other, relevant on a situational basis
→ Ex. Out of sight, out of mind, But absence makes the heart grow fonder
Legality as a social construction perspective
Social construction → A common sense understanding that produces the reality of the construction, become real in their consequences
Ex. witch trials
- Examples of the trial is that the law is divine and external → religious morality
Nietzsche - god is dead
→ We abandoned gods to dictate morality - we now look to law in contemporary societies
→ Visually, law imitates religion (supreme court - church)
→ How do we enforce legitimacy when law loses its divinity?
With the law perspective
With the law perspective - the game is the rules
- Ex. self regulating in sports or referees in competitions
James Harden - When you play the game, you play the rules
- Achieving goals within the realm of what is allowed
Against the law perspective (especially in low income neighborhoods)
Over Policing explodes the myth of “before the law
- Policing loses its legitimacy
- “Legal cynicism”
- “Code” replaces the law - a sense of community over the law - anti snitching code becomes the organizing principle
→ It doesn’t need to be real to organize our conduct → communities just need to understand and follow the moral of the story
Before the Law
“In this form of consciousness, the law is described as a formally ordered, rational, and hierarchical system of known rules and procedures. Respondents conceive of legality as something relatively fixed and impervious to individual action.”
“Often in these situations people express loyalty and acceptance of legal constructions; they believe in the appropriateness and justness provided through formal legal procedures, although not always in the fairness of the outcomes.”
- Can result in anger towards the law, due to the laws restrictions of individual autonomy
Schemas
“include cultural codes, vocabularies of motive, logics, hierarchies of value, and conventions, as well as the binary oppositions that make up what he calls a society’s ‘fundamental tools for thought.’”
“By applying schemas from one setting in another, people are able to make familiar what may be new and strange; moreover, they can appropriate the legitimacy attached to the familiar to authorize what is unconventional”
- The power of naming → assigns meaning and familiarity
- Explaining one concept with an adjacent more familiar concept
Social disorganization and strain
in disadvantaged neighborhoods
- How does social disorganization impact residents of disadvantaged communities?
- Experiences with concentrated poverty, frustration, anger and lack of opportunity can contribute to strain
Durkheim argued that strain is a normal part of society
- Anomie shapes our relationship to norms
- Reaffirming our norms when responding to crime
Durkheim on the function of crime
Crimes serves a positive function in society
- Social responses to crime can contribute to expanding social norms and to social change
- The structure of society and how groups interact are the primary causes of crime and deviance
- Society can be organized through either mechanical or organic solidarity
- Differentiated by the division of labor in our society → as society becomes more advanced, more division of labor and specialization
Mechanical solidarity
Mechanical solidarity is linked to the pre-modern era, where there was a greater degree of consensus surrounding social norms and values
People lived in smaller towns and villages
Populations were more homogenous with shared histories and traditions
Individual freedoms are sacrificed for the common good
- Group is prioritized over individuals
- Violation of norms was seen as an attack on the collective consciousness and was punished severely
→ Repressive sanctions
Organic solidarity
Emerges in modern society characterized by greater complexity and diversity
Modern societies are characterized by interdependence
Greater independence and personal freedoms also came with problems of regulation
- More needs in society → no longer sacrificing individual needs for the “greater good” of society
- More opportunities for crime → more need for laws to regulate our behaviours
→ Repressive sanctions (harsh criminal legal sanctions, reinforce collective social order) and restitutive sanctions (address harm caused to others in society, to repair the relationship between the individual and society ex. Paying a fine)
- The legal system plays an essential role in binding us under organic solidarity
Durkheim and Anomie
- Anomie occurs when there is a break down between the desires of the individual and the ability of society to fulfill those needs
- Anomie involves feelings of alienation and isolation
- People experiencing anomie may turn to alternative behaviors and choices to meet their needs
→ Can involve crime and deviance
Mertonian Anomie
Anomie occurs when there is a disconnect between culturally defined goals and socially approved means (institutional means) of achieving those goals
Culturally defined goals can include money, status and respect
Strain is caused by these blocked opportunities
When people experience strain, they turn to alternative ways of achieving their goals
Meton’s ‘Modes of adaptation’
Conformity (key component in the function of our society),
innovation (most common deviant adaptation), the use of illegitimate means to achieve cultural goals
ritualism (find alternate ways to get respect and status, can be through clubs or religion),/rigid compliance with rules, without a clear commitment to the goals.
Retreatism (reject society’s goals, pull back from society, can include substance abuse to do so),
rebellion (reject means and goals, want to create their own, reshape society → can include political violence)
Assessing classic or “mertonian” strain
Meton’s work considered how crime and deviance are linked to broader opportunity structures in society
–> The focus of the theory is lower income neighborhoods
How can we critique this approach?
→ Not everyone shares the same values and belief
→ Does not consider crimes of the powerful or more affluent
→ Does not effectively explain violent crime
Mertonian strain or ‘classic strain’ is still highly influential
Agnew’s general strain theory
Agnew’s general strain theory builds on Merton’s work by considering non-monetary stressors or strains
Shifts the focus from a macro to micro focus
- How we deal with strain in our individual lives
Seeks to understand why some people who experience strain commit crimes, while others do not.
Sources of strain - Agnew
- Failure to achieve a positively valued goal
- A disconnect between our expectations and achievements
- The loss or removal of positive stimuli
→ Ex. loss of a loved one - The presentation of negative stimuli
→ Experiencing negative events or global stimuli
Coping with stress and strain
Sources of stress and strain can overlap and condition each other
Stress impacts us all in different ways
People with greater resources and stronger support systems may be more resilient to strains
– Coping mechanisms are shaped by our backgrounds
Who we associate with and where we live can influence our responses
Social bonding theory –> from Hirschi’s control theory
Why do people obey the law?
Crime is caused by a weakening of ties that bind us to society:
- Attachment
→ Bonds we have to people in our lives, ex. Family, friends, coworkers, etc
→ Without these bonds, we will not be properly socialized → life not following social norms/understanding them
- Commitment
→ Personal goals, academic achievement, career goals - Involvement
→ School, community organizations, clubs, religious groups - Activities that bond us to society
→ No time to get involved with crime or deviance - Belief
→Social values, shared norms, shared responsibility
→ Belief in the legitimacy and justness of the law
Self control theory
- Gottfredson and Hirsch
- Uses concepts from rational choice theory including bounded rationality
- Moves beyond crimes as defined by the law to self-interested behaviors
- Low self-control can result in crimes, but also in other risk-taking or impulsive behaviors
Low self control
Low self control is a key factor contributing to criminality
- Impulsive personality
- Lack of self control
- Withering of social bonds
- The opportunity to commit crime
- Insensitivity to others
*Must separate crime from criminality
When does strain cause criminality?
“individuals must
- (a) possess a set of characteristics that together create a strong propensity for criminal coping,
- (b) experience criminogenic strains, which are perceived as unjust and high in magnitude, and
- (c) be in circumstances conducive to criminal coping.”
Low self control in our lives - where does it stem from?
- Comes from how we were raised
- Focused on immediate gratification increasing chance they will engage in crime
- Leads to weak relationships
Crime and the American Dream: institutional anomie theory
- Achievement
- Individualism
→ The American dream is achieved on the individual level - Universalism
→The ideal is widely held - The fetishism of money (or “monetary rewards”)
→The visibility of success - The econonomy is intertwined with other institutions, hindering them
Legal cynicism measurement
Measured with five variables on a five point scale which participants rate from strongly agree to strongly disagree:
→ Laws were made to be broken.
→It’s okay to do anything you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone
→To make money, there are no right and wrong ways anymore, only easy ways and hard ways.
→Fighting between friends or within families is nobody else’s business.
→Nowadays a person has to live pretty much for today and let tomorrow take care of itself
Status frustration
the dominant type of strain experienced by lower-class boys.
reaction formation
lower-class boys in gangs develop alternative values that allow them to experience success and thereby gain status (at least in the eyes of their peers).
Cloward and Ohlin’s subcultures in lower-class communities
“Criminal subcultures exist in neighbourhoods that are well organized for crime, where norms all but require criminal involvement and where values support, validate, and rationalize involvement in crime”
“Conflict subcultures predominate in areas that lack criminal traditions. Without criminal patterns to follow and without readily available opportunities for crime, conflict and violence become the primary means of gaining status”
“The retreatist subculture is culturally and socially detached from the lifestyle and everyday preoccupations of the conventional world… The extensive use of drugs for fun and pleasure is encouraged and expected within this subculture.”
Neighborhood disadvantage and crime
Socio ecological theories draw on perspectives rooted in the socio-structural paradigm
These theories focus on the relationship between economic disadvantage and crime
The socio cultural environment that we live in, such as our neighbours, the built environment, and our life experiences all contribute to our socialization
- More police citizen contacts
- Social disadvantage
Social inequality in a stratified society
All societies face issues of economic, social and political inequality
These divisions are evident in the stratification of society by social class
- Majority (shapes justice system) vs minority groups
→ Majority is numerically the smallest - ex. Upper SES have the most influence but smallest group
A hierarchical system of grouping persons into social categories typically based on economic, social, political or educational status
Typically, persons are considered as coming from low, middle, and upper class.
Socio-economic inequality and criminalization
Society is divided by social class through process of social stratification
Broadly speaking, there are lower, middle and upper socio economic classes
Upper socio economic class groups control a disproportionate amount of wealth and power
Persons from lower socio-economic class groups face various social and structural barriers
Assimilation and multiculturalism
When groups come into contact, they can undergo competition, accommodation, assimilation, or acculturation.
→ The U.S. model is one of assimilation or a ‘melting pot’.
→ Canada tends to be described as a ‘multicultural’ state
Social ecology and crime
- Some of the first work in this field
was done by Park and Burgess, who studied Chicago as a sort of “living laboratory” - Chicago was a rapidly growing city that represented the changing nature of urban life
- Population growth inevitably led to compensation
- Immigrants to the city go through a process of assimilation
→ Tend to go to neighbourhoods with a large percentage of their ethnic group
Concentric zone theory
- contends that social problems are spatially distributed
- Neighborhood characteristics are the most important determinant of social problems
- There are five distinct zones:
→ Central business
→ Transition zone (Immigrants live there when they arrive, want to move to another area, usually towards commuter zone)
→ Working class zone
→ Residential zone - middle class
→ Commuter zone (suburbs - upper middle class)
Shaw and McKay: social disorganization
“Social disorganization undermines or hinders informal social controls within the community and neighbourhood thus allowing high rates of crime to occur” (Bursik, 1988)
Application of concentric zone theory to the study of juvenile delinquency
- Found that rates of delinquency persisted for certain neighbourhoods, regardless of which group inhabited the area
The characteristics of the neighbourhood play and important role in shaping rates of crime and delinquency
- Institutions were weaker in these neighbourhoods
Socially organized communities
vs disorganized
Organized:
- High solidarity and consensus on important norms and values
- High levels of social cohesion
- High levels of social integration or social ties
Disorganized:
- Low levels of solidarity, low agreement on norms and value → because people are always moving in and out of the neighborhood
- Low levels of social cohesion and weak social bonds amongst residents, low levels of informal social control
→ Largely self interested, not a lot of investment in the community
- Low levels of social integration and weak social ties
How does social disorganization lead to crime?
Young people aren’t socialized into community norms and lack social controls
When socialization is weak, so are relationships with law-abiding and conforming peers and adults
Weak relationships mean young people are less likely to be involved with community activities
- More likely to be socialized into deviant or criminal behavior
All the above contribute to the problem of low collective efficacy
Cohen’s delinquent subcultures and middle class measuring rods
Lower-income youth are unable to achieve more conventional forms of success
- Therefore experience anomie and strain
These youth face the problem of middle class measuring rods
- The teachers, coaches, etc are middle class with middle class expectations
In response, young people form their own subcultures
These delinquent subcultures are formed in opposition to middle-class values
Cloward and Ohlin’s differential opportunity
Considers access to legitimate and illegitimate opportunities - innovation
→ More social disorganization s lead to more illegitimate opportunities
We must understand the motivations to commit crimes and the available opportunities to do so
This theory helps to bridge the gap between neighborhood conditions and criminal opportunities
The “code”
The code emerges as a subcultural adaptation to stressors and strains in marginalized communities
- When formal law is weak → police are uncaring/ineffectual
- Over policing → police are focused on minor crimes, and under policing → police don’t care about citizens’ actual problems
Respect or “juice” is a central tenet of the code
- Cultural currency
Residents use the code as a way of regulating daily life and ensuring safety
Through the code we can see complex social organization in seemingly “disorganized” communities
- These neighborhoods have differential social organization → a complex form of social organization
- Code contributes to a cycle of violence in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
→ Dealing with problems themselves leads to revenge
Social structural theories and public policy
- Crime cannot be responded to solely by criminal justice approaches
- Focus on the root-causes of crime
- Focus public spending on areas with highest levels of concentrated disadvantage
- Focus on family unity and neighbourhood collective efficacy
Factors that influence social control
Solidarity means that a neighborhood must have agreed-upon values and norms.
Cohesion refers to residents of a neighborhood having a strong bond with one another (i.e., they know and like one another).
Finally, integration means that there are frequently occurring social interactions among residents
What is collective efficacy?
Collective efficacy refers to the extent to which neighborhood residents can marshal their own informal social controls, making the variable an alternative to social disorganization
“Decent” vs “street” families
- Decent families adhere to mainstream values, are stricter parents, try to keep their kids away from the street by putting them on the “straight and narrow”
- Street families are governed by code, have higher rates of substance abuse and violence, value respect over all else and teach their kids the same
Women and code
- Respect is associated heavily with manhood
- Women have begun to adopt this “manhood” in fighting and aggression
- Although, women are not as willing to lay down their lives to defend their status, saving the highest respect for the men who do
Law is for losers
- An alternative resolution that is meant to protect weakest parties
- People turn to the law when a more powerful figure creates injustice
Dispute
A conflict between multiple parties (individuals/or other entities) where no mutually agreeable resolution can be met
- Institutions can be a party in the lawsuit
Courts
a monopolized authority for dispute resolution bound by standard and accessible procedures
- The only come when they’re called → not proactive like other facets of the law
- A court will only intervene after an offense has (allegedly) taken place
Translating disputes into claims
The adjudication process in initiated by private individuals, organizations, or their representatives
This initiative must take the form of a legal claim
- A claim on the interest of another party (ex. Family law)
- A claim that another party is responsible/liable for a personal harm or injury (personal injury lawsuits)
→ Can be difficult to find someone responsible even when harm is clear, ex. Holding an institution liable for something that could have had multiple factors like cigarette companies link to cancer
- The claim must appeal to an existing legal standard such as a law or a right
- Plaintiffs take cases against defendants ****
Civil vs common law
Civil law is more lawyers working with the judge to try to resolve the issue
Common law: Lawyers as intermediaries, not interests, meant to argue the most compelling part of their claimant truth, loyalty to their client not the overall truth
- It is the role of the judge and jury to weigh or deliberate these partial presentations to ascertain the truth
What are juries? –> criminal and civil trials
Made up of peers in a community
Criminal trials:
- 12 members of juries
- Unanimous decision on guilt
- Was intended to limit bias
- Guilt proven “beyond reasonable doubt”
Civil trials:
- Often, no jury at all
- 6 members if there is a jury
- Majority of 5 finding liability
- Liability found “on a balance of probabilities” → more likely than not
What does a judge do?
Presiding role: overseeing proper conduct in court procedures
- Evidence is submitted and considered in required forms
Adjudicating role: rendering a legal decision with regard to the claims and defense of the disputants
- More active role in civil trials.
In criminal trials, judge determines sentence not the verdict of guilty/innocent
Interpretive role: Evaluating the legal basis for the claims made by
lawyers
- Canadian charter of rights and freedoms
The structure of canadian courts
Provincial/territorial courts →
Provincial/territorial superior courts and the federal courts →
provincial/territorial courts of appeal and the federal court of appeal →
The supreme court of canada
Importance of judicial review and precedent
Judicial review - claim against a law ex. The quebecois law of restriction of religious wear
Once you have a ruling, you have precedent - how judges and court interpret similar cases relative to yours
Structural inequalities in the court system
Judges are more likely to give people of color longer sentences than white people for the same offense
- Juries may hold prejudice as well that sway rulings
Not all parties in a dispute are created equal
- Access to legal representation
If peers can be biased, juries can too
One-shotters versus repeat players
- If you have been sued multiple times, arguments improve same with the understanding of how the legal system works
Claimant is who is suing for the first time does not have those advantages
Monetary disadvantages, more money = more access to resources
Stabilizing roles in court
Both parties don’t walk in at the same time!
- The initiating party is called the plaintiff and the other party the defendant
Translating substance in court
- A claim is not just ‘I want my stuff’; it must be against another party (“…and I can’t have it because of something wrong the defendant did”)
- And you can’t just give any reason: A claim must cite an existing law or right
- You must also bring evidence in support of your claim
You’re no longer doing the arguing: You need an advocate in court
The adversarial system of law means that each side has a legal obligation to present
evidence and argument for the party whose interests they represent
The time for compromise has passed: Courts are about winners and losers
- The backstop threat of the legal system encourages a mediated compromise called a
settlement - But settlements frequently favour the already advantaged, such as repeat players
Adjudication
When a judge renders the official judgment
of the trial court in a civil or a criminal case as to the defendant’s guilt or innocence, the
process is called adjudication.
A tort
A tort is a wrong committed against the private interest of an individual, corporation, or government (Boyd, 2002). The wrong committed may be intentional, or due to
negligence.
