CRIME AND DEVIANCE - PATTERNS AND TRENDS

Question 1

What key names are there for class differences in offending?

Answer 1

Sutherland, The Social Exclusion Unit, Williams et al, Cavadino and Dignan

Question 2

What did Sutherland argue about class offending?

Answer 2

Pointed out that ‘criminal statistics show unequivocally that crime, as popularly understood and officially measured, has a high incidence in the lower socio-economic class and low incidence in the upper sociology-economic class’

Question 3

What did the Social Exclusion Report show about class offending?

Answer 3

reported that many prisoners have a history of social exclusion, being more likely to have grown up in care, poverty and to have had a family member convicted

Question 4

What statistic is there about class offending?

Answer 4

Despite a rate of unemployment of 5% in the general population, research showed that 67% of the prison population had been unemployed, 32% homeless (0.9% in the general population)

Question 5

What did Williams et al find about class offending?

Answer 5

found other factors found more frequently in the prison population included having run away from home, experience of violence and/or drug and alcohol misuse, being excluded from school and having no qualifications (norms of lower classes)

Question 6

What did Cavadino and Dignan find about class offending?

Answer 6

point out that ‘somehow between the commission of offences and official responses of prosecution and punishment, the difference between the classes gets vastly magnified’

Question 7

What are the key points and names for class victimisation?

Answer 7

The British Crime Survey 2010-2011 showed that young households, lone parents and unemployed are all more than twice as likely to be burgled as the average household (lower class)
Young discussed the ‘myth of the equal victim’ suggesting that certain groups (eg lower classes) are hit much harder when they become a victim of a crime compared to other groups (eg upper classes)
Supported by Kinsey’s findings in the Merseyside crime survey where the poor suffered more than the wealthy from crime

Question 8

What key points and names are there for gender offending?

Answer 8

Police recorded crime figures consistently show that males commit around 80% of all recorded offences, and women represent about 5% of those held in custody
Ministry of Justice
Official crime data
Gender may intersect with social class, as in 2010 female offenders were more likely than male offenders to be on benefits (suggests that deprivation may have more of an impact on women’s criminality than men’s)
HOWEVER challenged by the ‘chivalry thesis’ which argues that women get treated more leniently by the police and the courts

Question 9

What did the Ministry of Justice find about gender offending?

Answer 9

shows that females accounted for only 18% of arrests and 25% of convictions in 2013

Question 10

What did Official Crime Data find about gender offending?

Answer 10

suggests that the peak age for female offending is 15, which is younger than the peak age for males which is 18

Question 11

What are the key names for gender victimisation?

Answer 11

The CSEW, Young, Walklate, Hanmer and Saunders, Stanko
The types of crime men and women are victims of differ, men are victims of violence more but the perpetrator is more likely to be a stranger, however women are 2x as likely to have reported non-sexual partner abuse and 7x as likely to report sexual assault
Males account for 7/10 homicide victims and are more likely to be killed by a stranger or an acquaintance, yet over 50% of female homicide victims were killed by a husband or partner

Question 12

What did the CSEW find about gender victimisation?

Answer 12

shown each year since 1982 that fewer women are victims of crime than men yet levels of victimisation for men have decreased over the past 5 years

Question 13

What did Young argue about gender victimisation?

Answer 13

points out that the same crime doesn’t have the same meaning or seriousness in all cases, as the ‘meaning of a punch’ depends on the power relationship between the perpetrator and the victim

Question 14

What did Walklate argue about gender victimisation?

Answer 14

considered repeat victimisation and how women stay in abusive relationships due to being trapped and scared

Question 15

What did Hanmer and Saunders, and Stanko, argue about gender victimisation?

Answer 15

Hanmer and Saunders carried out unstructured interviews and found that 20% of women in Leeds had been sexually assaulted and not reported it
Stanko found that over one 24 hours droid, an incidence of domestic violence is reported every second

Question 16

What are the key points and key names for age offending?

Answer 16

Evidence from police recorded crime figures suggests that young people are more to offend than adults
Although young people aged 10-17 are responsible for a minority of police recorded crime (23% from 2009-2010), they only make up 10% of the population
Gender differences can be seen in youth offending: males aged 10-17 make up 20% of police recorded crime in 2009 yet women were responsible for 4%
McVie, The Home Office

Question 17

What did McVie argue about age offending?

Answer 17

argues that in reality, the relationship between age and offending isn’t quite so clear cut as data is often grouped into age bands which could mask the precise trends
Eg The Home Office often group everyone above 21 together

Question 18

What are key points and key names for age victimisation?

Answer 18

Older people are more likely to fear crime but youths are more like to be victims
Young argued that such fears are not as disproportionate or irrational as they seem as in terms of 45+, The Islington Crime Survey found that they were less likely to be victims, yet more likely to be injured and lose time off work, and to have an attack involving severe violence and weapons, and they have a greater effect

Question 19

What are the key points and key names for ethnic offending?

Answer 19

Statistics suggest that proportionally more people from black and Asian backgrounds are stopped and searched, arrested and charged, sentenced to imprisonment, compared to their white counterparts
The overall number of arrests decreased by 3% from 2005-2010, but arrests of black people rose by 5% and Asian people by 13%
During the last 15 years, whilst immigration has increased, the overall crime rate has fallen steadily
The Ministry of Justice, Bowling and Phillips, The Association of Chief Police Officers

Question 20

What did The Ministry of Justice find about ethnic offending?

Answer 20

black people were stopped and searched 7 times more than white people (in 2013, black people comprised 3.1% of the population but 14.2% of stop and searches)

Question 21

What did Bowling and Phillips find about ethnic offending?

Answer 21

point out that the Crown Prosecution Service is more likely to drop cases put forward by the police involving black suspects, suggesting the police charge black people more frequently based on inadequate evidence

Question 22

What did The Association of Chief Police Officers find about ethnic offending?

Answer 22

in 2008 found that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offends rates among mainly Polish, Romanian, and Bulgarian communities were in line with the rate of offending in the general population

Question 23

What are the key points for ethnic victimisation?

Answer 23

The 2012-2013 CSEW shows that adults from mixed, black and Asian ethnic groups were more at risk of being a victim of personal crime than adults from the white ethnic group
Home Office evidence from 2005 suggests that black people are 5 times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts in England and Wales
Police records indicate than in about ⅓ of gun murders, both the victim and suspects were black

Question 24

What is global crime?

Answer 24

this includes cross border crime and organised crime (eg human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms trading)
The UN definition of organised crime is ‘a structured group of three or more persons existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a material benefit’
It is difficult to provide estimates of global crime as it is difficult to define it due to only a fraction of the crimes becoming known to law enforcement

Question 25

Why has the international response to global crime been slow?

Answer 25

hampered by various factors:
The diversity of groups and range of activities involved
Difficulties relating to international co-operation
Border issues and lack of common definitions
The increased trends towards state regulation
The lack of global attention at the expense of the threat of terrorism

Question 26

What did Gastrow argue about organised crime?

Answer 26

argued that the popular perceptions of organised crime are out of date (eg stereotypical Mafia drug cartel) and today’s global criminal enterprises ‘turn over billions of dollars and prey on every aspect of todays global society, fuelling conflict, destroying the environment, distorting markets, corrupting governments and draining huge resources from both’
A key problem is that state borders are irrelevant to the global criminal organisations which make them difficult to track and pursue

Question 27

What did Castells argue about organised crime?

Answer 27

sees organised crime groups as resembling business networks, which take the opportunity afforded by globalisation to link up with criminal groups in other countries
For example, to minimise risk and maximise profit, they make co-operate by basing their management and production in low risk areas which lack regulation, whilst targeting their markets in more affluent areas

Question 28

What did Robertson argue about global crime?

Answer 28

refers to the intertwining of the global and the local, and the way in which local conditions impact on global phenomena as ‘glocalisation’
For example, though drugs trade is a global criminal enterprise, the way it is organised in individual countries varies based on the political contact, local demographics and culture, law enforcement issues etc

Question 29

What are the key names for organised crime?

Answer 29

Gastrow, Castells, Robertson

Question 30

What is green crime?

Answer 30

criminal activity which affects the environment in some way
Examples include dumping toxic waste, fly tipping, and the poaching and trafficking of endangered species
Some of these offences are committed on a global scale so there can be a link between global and green crime

Question 31

What does Aas argue about green crime?

Answer 31

points out that, like organised crime, green crime demonstrates the intersection of the local and the global, as local environmental harm is often the product of a chain of geographically dispersed events and activities

Question 32

What does Potter argue about green crime?

Answer 32

argues that activities which are illegal often affect the environment indirectly
They give the example of food riots across the world as agricultural production has been replaced by biofuel production leading to protests
Competition for natural resources can lead to public unrest, and it’s the poorest people who are affected the most

Question 33

What do green crime criminologists argue about green crime?

Answer 33

argue that crime should be considered in terms of ‘harm’ rather than in terms of the activities which those in power have defined as criminal
Even putting aside the ‘harm’ to the planet itself, the activities addressed by green criminology often cause much human harm

Question 34

What does Carrabine argue about green crime?

Answer 34

classifies green crime into two distinct types:
Primary green crime are those crimes which directly inflict harm on the environment and, by extension, on people because of the damage to the environment
Secondary green crime which refers to actions committed as a response to the commissioning of primary green crime, such as attempts to cover it up by breaking environmental regulations or by dealing aggressively with protestors

Question 35

What are the key names for green crime?

Answer 35

Aas, Potter, Carrabine (green crime criminologists)