crime and deviance mocks Flashcards
1
Q
2017 : applying material from item B and your knowledge evaluate sociological contributions to our understanding of crime prevention and control (30 marks)
A
- “simple prevention strategies”.
situational crime prevention - focused on opportunities to commit crime (Clarke 1992).
Example - target hardening - measures such as window locks, shutters, CCTV etc
Example- designing out - areas redesigned to prevent crimes like sloping benches (stop vagrants) anti-homeless spikes (stops possible vandals and vagrants)
AO3 - measures popular with businesses/councils as they can be effective and low cost (compared to hiring guards).
AO3 - based on police evidence specific crimes reduced by improved security features
AO3 - Displacement, crimes may occur to different targets, at different times, or at another location to combat these improvements.
AO3 - Bauman, measures turning contemporary cities into fortress cities where people are controlled and fear travelling far from their ‘fortresses’
AO3 - some methods prevent activities that may not be considered criminal (rough sleeping) - “tough punishments”
Environmental crime prevention - stresses social control to prevent criminal situations.
Example - zero tolerance policing - low-level crime should not be tolerated and severe penalties should be in place for anti-social behaviour and minor crimes in order to deter more serious crime
AO2 - Liverpool - a relatively high-crime rate city in 2005 overall recorded crime fell by 25.7% in the three years to 2008 with violent crime falling by 38%.
AO3 - Displacement still an issue e.g. crime moving to other cities
AO3- focusing on retribution rather than justice/rehabilitation, people serving long sentences for very minor misdemeanours .
AO3 - impacted heavily on minority ethnic groups, poor black people get arrested for public drunkness but white students doing the same are tolerated - “One important type of crime control today is surveillance”
surveillance - focused, systematic, and routine monitoring of behavior
Foucault, formal/external surveillance is an increasing feature of contemporary society with the use of CCTV. We are so conscious we monitor ourselves through internalised surveillance (behave in a socially-desirable way for fear of reprimand from formal agencies). Our consciousness makes us conform in order to avoid being labelled deviant.
AO3 - not effective, people can cover their faces, are desensitised etc so they will still commit crime
AO3 - People have not generally consented to be watched and recorded and have no control over the future use of the footage
AO3 - cost of CCTV means it is often not recording or poor quality footage making it useless in identifying criminals - “profiling people in terms of their gender, nationality or other characteristics to determine what level of risk they pose.”
social and community crime prevention - identifying individuals and groups who are most at risk of committing crime and intervening.
AO2 - troubled families programme - sought to turn around a significant number of identified troubled families to reduce crime.
AO3 - profiling is unethical
AO3 - only tackles working-class crime not green crime or white-collar crime
AO3 - marxists would argue such programmes have yielded limited improvements in social conditions as it doesn’t tackle structural inequality
2
Q
2018 : Applying material from Item B and you knowledge, evaluate sociological contributions to our understanding of the relationship between crime and the media.
A
- “media offer a distorted portrayal of crime”
News Values - Immediancy, Dramatisation, Personalisation, Higher-status, simplification, novelty and unexpectedness, risk, and violence. These decide if crimes are newsworthy.
underlying structures and causes of crime are never explained or examined
AO2 - in rape cases offender is dehumanised before context is given but many sexual crimes are commited by previous victims
AO3 - it’s not the media’s job to explain structures and causes
AO3 - not always the case - “media are also often seen as causing crime”
People can learn criminal techniques through the media by simply watching TV shows or communicating or searching. This can lead to some viewers of media attempting to imitate crimes they see (copycat crimes)
A02 - Bandura Bobo doll - children who had viewed role models playing agressively with bobo doll also independently played violently with bobo doll.
AO3 - not everyone does this
AO3 - media violence may be cathartic
AO3 - media violence may sensitise the audience to the consequences of violence - ” causing moral panics.”
Media identify a group as folk devils/threat to societal values. Media present group negatively, stereotypical fashion and exaggerate the scale of the problem. Moral entrepreneurs, editors, politicians etc condemn group.
Cohen argues media’s portrayal of events produced a deviancy amplification spiral this made the problem seem like it was out of control causing marginalisation and stigmatisation of groups
AO3 - not all recipients are passive to media
AO3 - some societal reaction isnt overexaggerated - “The new media”
Development of new media (internet/social media) has led to a whole new category of crime (cyber crime). New media facilitates : identity theft, cyber-bullying, fraud, terrorism.
AO3 - things like cyber bullying and fraud can be easily avoided through safe internet usage
AO3 - development of internet/social media has allowed for people to access education/help much easier than ever before
3
Q
2019 : Applying material from Item B any your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of levels of female offending
A
- “their position in patriarchal society”
Heidensohn - women are controlled by men leaving them with fewer oppurtunities to commit crime. patriarchy enforces certain expectations onto women such as being controlled by fathers then husbands where they have to return home to do housework reducing opportunities of criminal activity, lose freedom to conform to societal norms of women being ‘respectable.
AO3 - some may argue this is an outdated concept, Adler suggests that women today have much more freedom
AO3 - not all women confom or have a husband (e.g. political lesbians) to reduce criminal opportunities - “weakening of patriarchy has led to an increase in female offending”
Adler (liberation thesis) - women are now becoming much more equal in society with men thus now have similar opportunities to commit crime.
Equality promotes breakdown of traditional social roles where women spend majority of time at home.
Equality in jobs allows for women to commit white collar crime such as tax fraud, green crime
AO3 - equality can be seen in education (WISE programme), division of labour
AO3 - feminists would argue women still do majority of housework still not equal, less opportunity to commit crime than men - “ways in which the police and courts treat females”
Pollak (chivalry thesis) - Women treated much more lienently by police and courts who are mainly made up of men who’ve been socialised to be chivalrous to women.
Men socialised to view women of being incapable of commiting many crimes through social roles learnt in childhood.
AO3 - Police force becoming increasingly diverse, more female judges, lawyers, police officers who don’t feel the need to be chivalrous to female sex
AO3 - statistics support this 4/5 convicted offenders in England and Wales are men - “impact of media stereotypes of female offending”
Factors like media lead to female crimes being perceives as non-violent (shoplifting) thus less likely to be reported or noticed compared to violent/sexual crimes.
This prevents accurate measurement of levels of female offending.
AO3 - Sexual crimes aren’t typically reported because of embarrassment/stigma
AO3 - some women do commit violent/sexual crimes such as domestic violence/rape
4
Q
2020 : Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of the relationship between social class and offending
A
- “selective law creation and enforcement”
selective enforcement - within justice system there is a selected bias when applying the law. This means that police are likely to target working-class are more likely to be criminalised than middle-class.
selective law creation chambliss -
AO3 - police force would argue they have professionalism thus apply the law to everyone equally regardless of class
AO3 - official statistics aren’t always reliable, unreported crime etc - “Crimes of the powerful are less likely to appear in the statistics.”
snider - capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities are businesses and threaten their profability.
AO3 - powerful people’s crimes are still prosecuted e.g. shakira,lindsay lohan, donald trump etc
AO3 - postmodernists would argue we are in a post class society thus making this idea outdated and no longer relevant - “working class
having fewer opportunities to achieve mainstream goals”
cohen status frustration - working-class boys in school fail to succeed in middle-class environment ending up at bottom of social hierarchy. Boys then likely to join delinquent subcultures which do not share middle class values. Within the subculture they have more chance in succeeding within the delinquent hierarchy.
AO3 - explains non-utilitarian crime
AO3 - feminists, only focuses on boys
AO3 - supported by Willis learning to labour, subculture of working-class boys born out of frustration - ” majority of convicted offenders come from deprived areas”
labelling theory
may not be because working class are more criminal in nature but because of labelling.
Becker - A deviant is an individual who has been successfully labelled and deviant behaviour is any behaviour that’s labelled as deviant.
Secondary deviance (lemert) - once an individual has been labelled people only perceive them as their master status leading to a deviant career as they cannot find employment.
AO3 - programmes in place to assist convicts in finding employment
AO3 - business would argue they have professionalism and therefore don’t stop people from being employed because of a socially constructed label
5
Q
2021 : Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that
differences in crime rates between ethnic groups are mainly the result of the way
the criminal justice system operates.
A
- “criminal justice system labels and criminalises some minority ethnic groups”
Labelling theory
Cicourel - officers typifications of ‘typical’ criminals lead to them concentrating on types of people that they believe are more likely to offend. In this instance they are stereotyping ethnic minorities .This could occur through increased stop and searches or patrolling in places that are densely populated by ethnic minorities.
AO2 - Young, study of marijuana users in Notting Hill police perceived them as dirty and lazy drug addicts leading police to take action against them.
This means those outside of minority will not be as heavily monitored therefore not as often prosecuted leading to ethnic differences in crime rates because of CJS.
AO3 - CJS have professionalism
AO3 - labelling theory fails to explain causes of primary deviances
AO3 - those with criminal labels don’t always commit crime - “people from some minority ethnic groups are more likely to be arrested”
Marxist
Laws are made by bourgeoisie to control the proletariat. Some minority-ethnic groups are much more likely to be working-class than not therefore the same arguments for social class apply to ethnicity. such as chambliss.
Stuart Hall suggested black people were forced into the informal economy (therefore potential crime activity) by being a reserve army of labour only required to do “white man’s shit work”
AO3 - not all laws benefit bourgeoisie such as minimum wage which prevents employees being exploited by employers - “Left Realists highlight issues such as relative
deprivation”
Lea and Young - difference in statistics are a result of real differences in offending. Black people are discriminated against in wider society. Utilitarian crime is a response to material deprivation and non-utilitarian crime is due to their frustration. They believed police racism isn’t the main cause because 90% of crimes are reported by the public. Also believed police would be selectively racist against black people.
AO3 - support covid increased racism against Asian community supports that public report crimes because of racism
AO3 - living standards have risen since the 1950s, so the level of deprivation has fallen, but the crime rate is much higher today than it was in the 1950s - “Right Realists argue there is a lack of social control in some groups”
African-Caribbean families are statistically more likely to be matrifocal lone-parent families. New Right sociologists argue that children from single parent families are more likely to commit crime because of the lack of a make role model but also because of creation of a workless welfare-dependent culture
AO3 - not all children from single parent families lack a positive male role model
AO3 - not all African-Caribbean lone parent families become unemployed and dependent on welfare state
6
Q
Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that crime
and deviance are inevitable and have benefits for individuals and for society.
A
- “Many sociologists argue that crime and deviance are inevitable.”
Matza - subterranean values and drift
we all share delinquent values that lead some people to criminal and deviant behaviour but that most of us are able to suppress them. Thus people aren’t conformist nor deviant instead people are able to drift between them. Suggests proof of subterranean values comes from neutralisation of deviant acts e.g. denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of victim, condemnation of condemners and appeal to higher loyalties
AO3 - neutralisation = excuses to avoid punishment rather than drifting back into mainstream values
AO3 - people such as politicians may be delinquents when young and then go on to lead respectable adult lives
2.”crime exists in all societies and has many benefits”
Durkheim
safety valve - crime can release stresses in society e.g. mass riots = outlet for expression and avoids more serious acts of crime
warning device - crime e.g. high rates of suicide/drug addiction can warn society of underlying social problems that need solving before more serious threats develop
Davis - prostitution allows men to express sexual frustration without threatening nuclear family
AO3 - Durkheim suggests crime is beneficial but not how much crime
AO3 - prostitution promotes breakdown of nuclear family
- “powerful groups create the law and criminalise the actions of less powerful groups”
chambliss - ruling class have power to prevent introduction of laws that threaten their interests
Snider - capitalistic state is reluctant to pass laws which regulate activities of business and threaten profitability
Pearce - Laws give capitalism a caring face and divides the working-class by encouraging workers to blame criminals for their problems rather than capitalism
AO3 - feminists would argue they are ignoring other important social factors such as the patriarchy
AO3 - postmodernists would argue we live in a post class society thus this is an outdated and irrelevant concept by todays standards
AO3 - CJS has professionalism - “However, other sociologists are critical of the view that crime and deviance has benefits for all
individuals”
Sutherland - white collar crime is a crime commited by a person of respectability and high social status in the scourse of his occupation
occupational crime - crime commited by employees for personal gain which is often crime against the organisation they work for
corporate crime - crime commited by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goal
there is a lack of will to tackle it, media pay little attention to it, it is not heavily labelled as criminal, it is under-reported
marxists would argue it only benefits ruling class not society as a whole
AO3 - media does report corporate crime and it is dramatised to be profitable
AO3 - there are victims of corporate crime which do report it
AO3 - some companies are still prosecuted
7
Q
A
