Crime Flashcards
Durkheim - Function
Limited amount of CD is necessary
Deviance is functional because its used as a deterrent
When a evil crime occurs it brings everyone together in disgust
Boundary Maintenance
Merton - Function
American society share the goal of being rich and successful
Those who didn’t achieve the American Dream were deviants
People retreated to drugs and alcohol to deal with the strain of failing the American dream
Hirschi - Function
Control Theory - weak willed humans need social bonds to deter them from crime.
Informal Social control - caregivers can be effective in stopping crime like the police force
A.Cohen - Subculture
Most delinquents are looked down upon by society and denied status.
Deviants are culturally deprived so create a subculture to deal with this.
Subculture allows its members to show frustration by breaking rules and gain prestige by peers.
Cloward and Ohlin - Subculture
Different types of deviance - sniff glue, take drugs, steal a car or burgle houses.
Criminal subculture exists in w/c communities as stolen goods can benefit all members due to financial situation
Frustration amongst subcultures creates conflict.
Miller - Subculture
Subculture members develop an alternative value consensus
W/C have different values that promotes crime and deviance.
w/c have a higher conviction rate than m/c
Lemert - Labelling
Primary deviance - actions that aren’t publically labelled.
Secondary deviance - when someone has been labelled as a rule breaker
Societal reaction creates deviance
Young- Labelling
Hippies in Notting Hill smoked weed as their alt lifestyle.
Police had false stereotypical perception of hippies - deviance
Hippies rejected former lifestyle so became a self-fulfilling prophecy
S.Cohen - Moral Panics
Mods vs Rockers - 1964
Press created false image of mods and rockers which led to police and public harassing this image despite innocence.
Media created spiral of deviance amplification which caused conflict between mods and rockers.
Fishman - Moral Panics
Media reporting of mugging of elderly created impression of a crime wave despite the statistic decreasing.
Media air news of mugging when nothing else is going on.
Theme of street crime ties together a number of stories.
Croall - Marxism
Corporate/White-collar crime is more serious than street crime.
Owners of companies commit crime in order to get more money
Convinced public that these crimes were complicated so they weren’t taken up in court
Box - Marxism
Difference in perception between street and corporate crime.
When a burglar shoots and kills an innocent it is seen as cowardly but when a businessman doesn’t give someone the correct health and safety, it is seen as negligence.
Robber and businessman both didnt care for safety so should be punished in the same way.
Gordon - Marxism
Selective law enforcement benefits capitalism.
If members of w/c are considered criminals, ruling class punish them ti protect the interest of others.
Few prosecutions of corporate crime shows that it is necessary for capitalism.
P.Cohen - Youth Subculture
Immediate context - Old communities undermined because cockneys moved towns. This led to redevelopment, decline of the docks and decline of the extended family.
Wider Context - Majority of w/c embraced hegemonic values of ruling class but elsewhere poverty maintained.
This led to youth subculture to deal with loss of community.
Clarke - Youth Subculture
Actions of Skinheads are symbolic of the resistance of the breakdown of East London community.
Appearance developed into the traditional w/c man to revitalise the culture.
Actions of skinheads were to perpetuate the class system.
Lea and Young - New Left
Relative Deprivation - A group feels they are worse off than others in society so leads to resentment and deviance.
Subculture - RDed people recognise their shared situation so create subculture
Marginalisation - RDed people recognise no one cares about their plight so feel marginalised.
Kinsey et Al - New Left
Police need to stop relying on heavy handed methods like stop and search as it creates alienation.
Brixton Riots - law-abiding members of society recognised police as the enemy as they couldnt distinguish deviants from civilians
Led to conflict
Perry Pre-School Project - New Left (Crime Prevention)
58 children omitted to Highscope and progress was measured into their adult lives.
27-40 y/o adults who participated did not commit crime.
Wilson - New Right
Taxes needed to be lowered - minority of poor people committed crime so wealth was not the issue - personal choice.
Offenders consider if they will get caught.
Adoption of 0 tolerance policing would make criminals think twice before committing crime.
Coleman - New Right
Correlation between Family structure and crime.
Absence of strong family relationship meant males were inadequately socialised so dont see delinquency as wrong
Painter - Applied Right
Streetlights in Stoke
Wilson and Kelling - Applied Right
Broken Window theory - neighbourhood’s negligence leads to lower community morale and they accept vandalism.
Police should fix this to prevent crime occuring.
Foucault - Surveillance
Panopticon design meant criminals in prison never knew when wardens were watching them.
Newburn and Haymen - Surveillance
Kilburn Experiment - granted access to police station for 18 months
CCTV of police in prison intruded and protected their rights
Police said they liked it because it prevented the stigma of police mistreatment
Beer - Surveillance
Racial profiling - black man arrested for trying to get into his own house due to his race
Claimed that racial profiling was socialised
CCTV of black people were put under surveillance due to race
Durkheim - Punishment
When a member of society commits a crime it goes against value consensus.
Punishment signifies good behaviour and deters members from committing crime.
Gordon - Punishment
Bourgeoisie distorted the perception of law enforcement.
Person is caught and their actions are seen as a failure.
This prevents a proletarian revolution
S.Cohen - Punishment
ASBO anklets seen as a medal of honour in their subculture so didn’t stop crime.
Miers - Victims
Statistics outlined the most likely victims of crime
Demonstrated how relationships lead to crimes (dv)
Positivists assume victims bring crime onto themselves
Von Hentig - Victims
Post-WW2 showed that victims fell into 1 of 13 categories.
Perception of these groups was that they were soft so easy to be a victim
Victims were appeared responsible for the crime they receive
Stanko - Victims / Gender
Women’s lives controlled by the fear of being a victim
Women check their houses for intruders and dress conservatively to prevent harassment
Pollak - Gender
Women commit crimes that are hard to be punished for - shoplifting.
Women are good at hiding things due to their menstruation
Women receive more lenience from police due to gender so undeterred from committing crime again.
Heidensohn - Gender
Women commit less crime due to being supervised by men
Controlled at Home, Public and Work
Messerschmidt - Masculinity
Men are in a lifelong struggle to prove their masculinity and a way of doing this is crime
Men aspire to have hegemonic masculinity and those who don’t have subordinate masculinity.
Doctor by day and rugger bugger at night
Winlow - Masculinity
In the north east men used to prove their masculinity by manual labor but now its harder to receive full time employment due to women working.
Bouncers at nightclubs involved in drug deals and assaults to show masculinity
Hall et Al - Ethnicity
Moral panic in Ireland due to civil war.
Police created the perception of ‘black mugger’ to allow themselves to be more aggressive in their law enforcement.
Led to more discrimination of african americans.
Reiner - Ethnicity
Canteen culture meant police had racial bias against black people - driving while black
Police more likely to stop and search young black men because of this stigma
These males are labelled as a criminal so they decide to live up to the label.
Jewkes - Media
A lot of media content is connected with crime - sex crimes, violence crimes etc.
Creates perception that young w/c men are main crime committers
Skidmore - Media
Media manipulated by the police as their main source of crime news - child abuse
Police play down the extent of problem
Social workers became scapegoats for not acting quickly against crime in the family
McRobbie and Thornton - Media
Media have power to shape the view of who the folk devils are in society
View of crime was grey instead of black and white
No one agrees who the criminals are so link between media and crime is not definite.
Smart - Postmodern
All sociologists were incorrect about assuming one can identify causes and solution to crime.
Must look at every crime as a separate issue so cant apply knowledge to all crimes.
Criminologists should leave their work for providing bad information
Morrison - Postmodern
In modernity, all members of society needed to cooperate.
Postmodernity - rich less likely to help the poor
Say there is nothing wrong with victimising other members of society.
Leads to crime.
Castells - Globalisation
Global crimes like human trafficking happens in the east more than the west.
International criminal gangs spot opportunity to do crime
Cant tackle 1st world crime until we tackle 3rd world crime
Taylor - Globalisation
Historically each nation created jobs for people despite skill set
Level of crime was low
Now international influence of work meant less jobs for the unskilled
Led to criminal economy
Hobbs and Dunningham - Globalisation
Small scale gangs control territories instead of mafias controlling crime.
These small gangs rely on international crime to deal drugs
Beck - Green Crime
Global risk society - USA hold all he cards so when they fail every country fails
Uproar in crime
White - Green Crime
Harming the planet harms humans
Walters - Green Crime
Biopiracy - Destroying land to use for own purposes
Corporate engineering of nature - using technology like fracking to extract nature
The Scwhendingers - State Crime
Government has power to decide who is/isn’t a criminal.
New laws passed like holding someone for 28 days before they are charged
Human rights compromised
Kelman and Hamilton - State Crime
Authorisation - Denial of responsibility between orderer and committer
Routinisation - Herding people into gas chambers makes it seem less like murder
Dehumanisation - Victims betrayed as not human so less guilt
Kramer and Michalowksi - State Crime
State Initiated Corporate Crime - 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster was not needed because government knew rocket was faulty
State Facilitated Corporate Crime - Government do not enforce health and safety laws to ensure lives are not being put at risk
