Crime and deviance definitions and methods Flashcards
What is crime?
A behavior or activity that is a legal wrong that is subject to change depending on the context and laws that can eventually lead to punishment
What is deviance?
Behaviour which is disapproved of by most people in a society or group that helps to form crimal law, which does not conform to norms and values but not necessarily be criminal
How can crime and deviance be relative?
- laws
- circumstance/social context
- time
- place
- the observer
What is social order?
The general conformity to the shared norms and values so that society is peaceful and predictable characterises modern societies. Sociologists don’t always agree about how and why it is achieved and whose interests it works in. However, it allows a sense of belonging to be formed in society through maintenance by the agencies of social control
What is social control?
When the agents of socialisation are used as mechanisms of social control as they control our behaviour through positive and negative sanctions.
What is formal social control?
Controlling citizens by authorised agencies or groups that give out written, formal sanctions to deter certain behaviours. Groups involved in formal social control include the police, courts, and the government. This social control occurs through laws passed and enforced to citizens. This is also true for education, that provides sanctions like detentions for behaviour that goes against the written school rules.
What is informal social control?
Controlling citizens in a more subtle way, by controlling their norms and values as opposed to their behaviours. Agencies of socialisation appear in the informal social control, such as: peer groups, family etc. Informal social control can be seen through means such as social exclusion, disappointed reactions, etc.
What is police recorded crime?
- a traditional source of crime data as it is official
- evidence from vicitms, witnesses and police officers observing
- shows the type of crime committed, the date, time and location, information about suspect, details about the victim(s) and any propert involved
- only entered by police officers
How do functionalists perceive police recorded crime?
- allows the identification of disruptive areas
- allows the comparision and tracking of crime trends
- addreses societal issues that may contribute to crime reducing social strain
- improves the allocation of resources
What do Marxists and Interactionists both question?
They question its validity seeing them as social constructs because the police decide what crimes to record and how seriously they investigate them due to factors like social status
What does Gill (1977) argue?
Working class victims received poorer treatment from the police compared to wealthier victims in a study of a working class community living on Luke Street in Liverpool
How does the Stephen Lawrence case and Marxism link?
- Stephen Lawrence was murderd in 1993 in a racially motivated attack in London. The metropolitan police were later criticised as they failed to capture the offenders and give punishments as institiutional rascism led to bias in police recording methods. Public outcry led to reforming towards more equitable treatment in investigation
- aligns with marxism as it implies the importance of power dynamics
What documentary shows institutional racism?
The secret police officers
What do marxists believe about police recorded crime?
- reflect the interest of the ruiling class as crimes threaten their domiance
- more likely to record and investigate crime in working class neighbourhoods upholding the stereotypical ctiminal diverting attention from white collar crime
- misses the root cause of crime in capitalism
- the police enforce social control for the rich
- laws themselves might be seen as tools to criminalise behaviours that threaten the ruiling class
-capitalism in crimogenic
What do left realists believe about police recorded crime?
- it under - reports crime due to a fear of retaliation, mistrust of the police and believing the crime is minor
- doesn’t address the root cause of crime
- identifying areas with high crime rates can effectively allocate resources, increased police presence or community - based programmes
- understanding the impect of the crime on the victim can create tailored victim support services and crime prevention strategies
What do right realists believe about police recorded crime?
- paints an accurate picture of serious crime trends
- allows the indentification of repeat offenders and high crime areas to focus law enforcement strategies
- they acknowledge under - reporting and want to challenge it through public awareness campaigns ad improved victim support services
- there could be misinterpretations
What do feminists believe about police recorded crime?
- it neglects crimes such as domestic violence, that dsproportionately affect women as it is under-represented due to fear of retaliation, shame and lack of trust
- ignores the emotional and psychological consequences
- the police are more likely to dismiss domestic violence or sexual harassment crimes leading to under-representation
- it leads to victim blaming creating a hostile environment for women seeking help
What are the benefits of official statistics?
- they cover the whole population so patterns and trends can be established
- standardised methodology
- up to date
- easy to access
- limited ethical problems
What are the limitations of police recorded crimes?
- They do not include unrecorded crime and don’t account for the dark figure of crime which can also include victimless crimes like drug taking where they are less likely to record a case
- They can be distorted by the police to create new crimes through political pressure
- Don’t provide the social class of the victim/offender
- People may only report crimes with a benefit such as knowing the police will do their job and potential insurance claims
- Victims may be embarrassed to report a crime due to thinking the police will do nothing about it, lack of awareness that a crime has been committed and getting the perpetrator into trouble
- Police discretion as in 2014, the UK parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee that the police don’t record record one in five crimes reported to them, which led to an exaggeration in declining crime rates. This does differ between areas as in Derbyshire, 43% of violent crimes were unreported compares to 4% in Kent in 2019
- Political pressures on the police increase discretion to improve their clear up rates and meet targets in reducing certain types of crimes
- Depends how the government count crimes as 3,600 offences were created under the labour government between 1997-2010
What are victim surveys?
- a complementary source of data to show crimes not reported to the police
- every year, 50,000 people are anonymously surveyed about their experiences of crime such as minor crimes, reluctance of victims to involve the police and crime that are difficult for the police to track like stalking
- can provide a more complete picture of crime levels
- completed by the CSEW focusing on victims’ experiences
What are the benefits of CSEW?
- a more accurate picture of crime trends as they have found that young males, in particular those who are unemployed or low-waged, have a higher chance of being victims of violence. The older a person gets, the less likely they are to be a victim of crime. Those from minority ethnic groups also reported more victimisation than white people.
- helps policymakers understand the true scope of crime and develop effective prevention strategies
- can be easily tailored to a local community
- they cover newly emerging crimes
- they can help to identify social groups most at risk of being victims of crimes
- it measures people’s attitudes towards the police force and their methods
- highly reliable as it is unaffected by changes in police recorded crime
What did Jones, McLean and Young who carried out the Islington Crime Survey (ICS) in 1986 find?
By asking victims living in inner-city London about serious crime such as sexual assault, domestic violence and racial attacks in a more in-depth way, using semi-structured interviews. This survey found that a third of households in poorer neighbourhoods had been affected by serious crime, and women, in particular, had realistic fears about being the victims of sexual crime.
What does Realist Young (1988) believe about CSEW surveys?
They are critical of the government’s application of victim surveys because the CSEW does not provide detailed information about particular places, and is largely quantitative rather than qualitative
What are the limitations of CSEW?
- victims may have issues recalling details about the crime leading to inconsistencies in the data
- they rely on the victim’s objective knowledge therefore they are partial
- victims may be reluctant to admit a crime due to embarrassment and shame leading to underestimates of certain crimes like stalking in data
- exclude victimless crimes such as carrying drugs
- non - response bias
- it may not be accessible for those in marginalised communities
- the results are ungeneralisable as the victims self-select themselves to respond to the survey limiting the representativeness
- there may be ambiguities due to difficulties interpreting responses
What does Ellington argue about CSEW surveys?
They don’t represent the whole population as owner - occupiers and 16 to 24-year-olds are generally over-represented whilst the unemployment, homeless and those in inner city areas are under-represented
What do Lea and Young argue about CSEW surveys?
They say very little about the day-to-day experience of living in high crime areas such as inner cities or problem council estates
What do Marxists Watts, Bessant, and Hil argue about victim surveys?
Victims identified in crime surveys are the victims, “that the state officially chooses to see or recognise,”
What are self - report studies?
- resarch studies where participants are asked to report on their own behaviours, attitudes or expriences
- use survey or questionaires to gather data anonymously
What did Campbell (1981) find about female criminality rates?
Teenage girls who responded to self-report surveys admitted to some kind of illegal activity, which confirms the dark figure of unreported and unrecorded crime. Self-reports indicate that females are just as likely to commit such crimes as working-class males. In particular, they have challenged the idea that females commit significantly less crime than males. They therefore challenge the validity of the official criminal statistics and especially the picture of the typical criminal as male and working class.
What did The 2003 Offending, Crime and Justice Survey find?
In self- report studies, 40% of white people admitted offences compared with just 28% of black people and 21% of Asian people.
What did Junger-Tas (1989) find?
Boys who have had more contact with the criminal justice system are less likely to cooperate with such surveys
What are the benefits of self - report studies?
- access to hidden behaviours like drug use
- large sample sizes
- in - depth data can be collected
- they challenge the validity of the stereotypical criminal presented in official crime statistics
What are the limitations of self - report studies?
- recalling past behaviours accurately can be difficult leading to distorted data
- question phrasing can influence responses, leading to bias
- mainly used for young people because they are easy to recruit to complete them
- limited validity
- people might under report negative behaviours or over report positive ones to appear socially desirable especially within males to create an impression of being tough
- some crimes may be under represented because it is impossible to include all criminal acts in a questionnaire
- limited representation of crime as they focus on petty offences
- aimed at young people which further limits the range
