crime and deviance - definitions/measurements Flashcards
how are crime and deviance defined and measured?
what is the definition of crime?
an act or omission which constitutes an offense and is punishable by law.
give 3 example of a crime
- theft
- murder
- assualt
what is the definition of deviance?
the fact or state of diverging from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behaviour.deviant behaviour doesn’t have to be against the law and can even be for good.
give 3 examples of deviance
- talking to a tree
- murder
- saving someones life at the cost of your own.
what creates social order?
beliefs around crime, deviance, right and wrong. however social order is not universal - culturally relative.
what are crime and deviance the products of?
social expectations and processes rather than inherent badness/evil which is why it is considered socially constructed.
what are the official crime statistics?
police, court, and prison records plus data from the CSEW (crime survey for England and Wales) which asks people about their experience of crime.
- all data is collected by the home office and published by ONS
- from 43 police forces across England and wales
what is the dark figure?
this is unrecorded crime like gang crime, sexual assult, corporate crime, green crimes.
what are victim surveys?
these are face to face structured interviews that are carried out annually, respondents are interviewed in their own homes, the data collected shows crime is much higher than police recorded crime - sometimes 4x higher.
what are some limitations to victim surveys?
- doesnt include victimless crime
- not all child victims picked up; trends are an estimation, may not be representative
- response rate is not 100% - 75% - 68%
what did Campbell find out about self report studies
found that rather then feamles commiting less crime, male and female crime and deviance rates were much closer than suggested by recorded figures.
