Crime And Deviance Flashcards
What is crime?
Actions that break the law as they are disturbing to citizens and disruptive to society.
What is deviance?
Behaviour that goes against social norms and values and are seen as inappropriate and unacceptable.
What is social order?
When citizens follow shared norms and values and are well integrated in society.
What is social control?
Regulating the behaviour of citizens in society so they conform to laws and rules. They could be formal or informal.
What is police recorded crime?
These are crime statistics collected in England and Wales from over 43 police forces, collated by the Home Office. It includes crime reported by the public then recorded to give an official account of the volume of of crime. There has been a 7% increase in police recorded crime from December 2014-2015 and an 11% increase in homicides recorded by the police in December 2015.
What is the dark figure of crime?
This is unreported or unrecorded crime that do not appear in police recorded crime so it doesn’t represent the full volume of crime. Crimes need to be serious enough to gain attention. They can’t be too trivial and there needs to be enough evidence. Different police forces have different police officers with a different outlook on things. This may lead to cuffing, coughing, skewing and police discretion.
What is coughing?
This is when the offender is made to confess for a lesser sentence.
What is cuffing?
These are crimes reported but then removed because of corruption or errors.
What is skewing?
This is when police forces put resources in some areas but not others.
What is police discretion?
This is corruption like not recording data, stereotyping, misrecording or prioritising other things.
Advantages of police recorded crime. (2)
- cheap
- quantitative
- it is cheap, readily available, reported annually, immense, large and up to date.
- quantitative data is easily compared and patterns and trends can be identified over time.
Disadvantage of police recorded crime. (1)
- victims
- victims may not want to record their crime. The station may be too far, they may want to take the law into their own hands, they may feel the police won’t do anything or they may find it embarrassing.
What is the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)?
This doesn’t include some crimes like theft from businesses and shops, fraud, possession of drugs, sexual crimes, prostitution and murder. It focuses on victim profiling, the circumstances of the incident, the behaviour of the offender to estimate the extent to domestic violence, stalking and sexual attacks. It suggests that crime depends on gender, age, geographical location and social activities. For example, young males, living in poor areas, who go out more than 3 times a week are more likely to be a victim of a violent offender. It has also found that 50% of females who have been raped states that it was done by someone they knew extremely well and 29% said it was someone they knew relatively well. 50% of all rape incidents are repeat offences by the same attacker. Repeat victimisation does occur. Multiple victimisation also occurs where one person experiences more than one crime within previous years.
Advantage of the CSEW. (1)
- 75%
- there is a 75% response rate so the sociologist can get a full picture of victimisation
Disadvantages of the CSEW. (2)
- types
- telescoping
- not all types of crime are included like murder, white collar crimes, corporate crime, rape and victimless crimes like shoplifting. Therefore it is unrepresentative.
- it relies on memory. Telescoping is when crimes are remembered as happening soon than they actually did.
What is the Islington Crime Survey by Lea and Young?
Victims had to state whether they had been a victim of crime, reported they crime or had fears about the crime. The first one was conducted in 1986 in inner city London and the second in 1990 in Islington and Kinsey. Sympathetically conducted interviews found a high rate of female victims. They found that crime had shaped people’s lives. 25% of people avoided going out after dark, 28% felt unsafe in their homes, and elderly white females have a high chance of being robbed. It was also found that high rates of females don’t report sexual or domestic offences to the police.
Advantage of the Islington Crime Survey. (1)
- qualitative
- qualitative data is rich and detailed and has verstehen.
Disadvantages of the Islington Crime Survey. (2)
- desirability
- unrepresentative
- it is low in reliability because of the use of qualitative data and social desirability bias.
- it is unrepresentative because it was only conducted in certain areas.
What is the Feminist Crime Survey?
They collect qualitative data on female victims about crimes committed by males. They use unstructured, in depth interviews to focus on domestic violence and sexual attacks. They are against structured interviews as researcher have an active role and interviewees play a passive role. This gives a distorted and invalid picture of events. It found that most women stayed with their abusers because they relied on them for resources.
Advantage of Feminist Surveys. (1)
- unstructured
- unstructured interviews collect qualitative data which is very detailed and valid
Disadvantages of Feminist Crime Surveys. (2)
- males
- desirability
- men are ignored even though they may nor report crimes for reasons similar to this.
- they may find it difficult to remember ideas, social desirability may affect results and they may have repressed their traumatic memories.
What are self report studies?
They reveal social characteristics and offender profiling and pick up what police recorded crime fails to. They use quantitative questionnaires, which list petty crimes of which offenders have to pick which they have successfully committed and then these are counted. Qualitative unstructured interviews are also used to gain insight. Some are longitudinal. They stress the importance of ethics but age and gender are asked to build profiles. They have found that street crime is usually committed by working class males, males and females do admit to committing crimes and social class doesn’t matter for British males.
Advantage of self report studies. (1)
- 80%
- 80% of offenders tell the truth so these are more reliable than other forms of official statistics.
Disadvantages of self report studies. (2)
- retrospective
- types
- it relies on memory so is retrospective data
- not all types of crime are included in the lists like rape and white collar crimes.
What is the Farrington and West study?
They looked at self reports to plot the amounts and types of offended. They noted variables and factors. These looked at 400 males born from 1951-1964 and 90% of them had been convicted of at least one offence. As males matured, the offended more. The take off age was 14 and crime decreased by 23. They found that theft, burglary and criminal damage declined by their 20s but others like drug offences, fraud and assault didn’t. The average age of their first convictions were at 17. This predicted low family income, poor housing, and large family sizes.
Advantage of Farrington and West. (1)
- longitudinal
- this was a longitudinal research so patterns and trends over time were examined.
Disadvantages of Farrington and West. (2)
- longitudinal
- desirability
- longitudinal research has a high dropout rate making the sample smaller and less representative
- this relies on the offender telling the truth
What is the Newburn and Hagel study?
This was commissioned by the Home Office Planning Unit. 531 participants ged 10-16 from London and the Midlands were involved. They had been arrested at least 3 times. 74 were also interviews to investigate reoffending. It was found that they didn’t specialise with crimes. 75% had committed the crime with other people they knew well, 60% has committed the crimes whilst on bail and 33% had committed violent crimes. They also found that drugs were very under recorded by the police too as drugs were used greatly among these participants.
Advantage of Newburn and Hagel.(2)
- pluralism
- quantitative and qualitative data was collected so there is methodological pluralism
Disadvantages of Newburn and Hagel. (2)
- unrepresentative
- collar
- it is unrepresentative as it was only conducted in London and the Midlands
- white collar crime is ignored.
What is the Saints and Roughnecks study by Chambliss?
He studied 2 high school gangs of boys for two years. The Saints were 8 young white men from the upper class. They were truant from school, drinking, vandalising but none were arrested. They used their status and reputation to get out of lessons and cheat or gain grades. The Roughnecks were 6 boys from the lower class. They were in constant trouble with the police and community and were arrested on several occasions. This suggests that poor, non mobile, tough males are more noticed and arrested but bright males, with a good reputation and discipline are invisible.
Advantage of the Saints and Roughnecks. (1)
- longitudinal
- this is a longitudinal study so patterns and trends can be identified over time.
Disadvantages of the Saints and Roughnecks. (2)
- unrepresentative
- girls
- two gangs form the same school were studied so it is unrepresentative.
- Feminists would argue that girls are ignored.
What is white collar crime by Croall?
These are committed by people in managerial, high status or respectability jobs who are part of the upper middle class. People may use their financial power to escape prison or conviction. Invisible victims are involved, which are the companies, so they feel confident stealing from them and less guilty. This is usually hard to detect so is unlikely to be reported or recorded. They are usually recorded in victim surveys as companies usually don’t want to publicise these crimes so the public dont realise they are being misled. These do not reach the prosecution stage because these companies have large resources and skilled lawyers and they settle or delay court cases. This is all to avoid companies gaining bad publicity. It is usually caused by greed or a low social status to gain more recognition.
Disadvantages of white collar crime by Croall. (3)
- complex
- serious
- powerful
- this type of crime is very complex and technical so the public can not understand it
- Realists believe there is no blood on the streets so it is not a serious crime
- powerful people can define crime so they can change laws easily.
What is the Underclass and Murray?
He blames the underclass for a high proportion of crime. They are lazy and cannot hold down jobs. They become dependent on welfare. Single mothers raise young boys without fathers or male role models so they cannot hold down jobs and turn to crime. They have poor impulse control so they become sexual predators. This is because of the over generosity of the welfare state because they rely on them. This also leads to gangs.
Disadvantages of Murray and the Underclass. (3)
- exist
- Sweden
- evidence
- Underclass may not exist at all
- Tham compared welfare policies and crime policies in Britain and Sweden. In Sweden there is less inequality, imprisonment and more generous welfare, and there is less crime.
- there is no evidence that single parent families lead to crime but there is evidence of poverty.
What is the liberation thesis by Simon and Adler?
There is now an increased opportunity for women to work and commit crimes because of their changing self concept and identity. They looked at international studies from the 60s and found female involvement in traditionally male crimes in USA. There were similar trends in Europe, New Zealand and India. They took on mLe social roles. Equality leads to more crimes being committed as females are becoming more similar to males. They are leaving the domestic sphere and working, leading to more crimes like fraud. They commit more property crimes and less violent crimes because they have less frustrations.
Disadvantages of the liberation thesis. (3)
- gap
- Marxists
- poverty
- statistics disagree that equality has been achieved because the gender pay gap still exists.
- Marxists would agree with the mention of white collar crime
- a study on female offenders in 1970 found that there was no link between liberation and criminality but there was a link between poverty and marginalisation and crime.
What is the Sex Role Theory by Sunderland?
Males and females are socialised differently. Girls are closely supervised, stay at home and have no opportunity to commit crime. Their mothers are their role models and they stay home and are passive, caring and calm. Men are less controlled, take more risks, are tough, aggressive and have more opportunity to go out as their parents allow them the freedom. Fathers are the role models, they go to work and their mother socialise the boys. If there is a lack of a male role model then this leads to a crisis of identity. This may lead them to joking a street gang. They may reject the femininity of their mothers and pursue the masculinity and become tough and aggressive. So they turn to crime.
