Crime & Deviance First Midterm Flashcards
Definition of Crime
Demonstrated Harm to Other, when social harm occurs
Conceptual Difficulties: What are the definitions of crime and deviance hard?
Definitions vary across time and space
Depend on people’s definitions of situations
Marxists perception of deviance
liberating acts of rebellion against capitalism
Functionalist perception of deviance
institutional restraint as vital to social harmony
Deustchmann
one theory cannot explain all forms of deviance
Schur, Becker, and Szaz perceptions of Crime
All agree that state interference often leads to more deviance
What are the 4 minimums to demonstrate causality
1) variables should covary
2) temporal sequence
3) covariance should be nonspurious
4) research should be theoretically based
covariance
when variables are associated with one another
When researching crime and deviance, should always include age, SES, sex, and visible minority status
Examples of causality covariance correlations
As SES increases, # of crimes diminishes
Crime is more common in males
Temporal Sequence
suggests that cause must come before effect
independent variable (cause) must come before dependent variable (effect)
ex: age and violence
NonSpurious Relationships
When the relationship between 2 variables cannot be caused by a third variable
Reliability
findings should be easily replicated
Validity
refers to whether a research has practiced what they have examined
Double-Barreled Questions
Where there is two questions within one
Common issues with research Validity and Reliability
Double barreled questions, competent respondents, long questions, negative statements within questions, representativeness
Best way to be confident in your research
Triangulate the data but achieving the same result using numerous methods
Calhoun Research
1962, Calhoun performed an experiment with 60 rats investigating the relationship between population density and deviant behavior.
Came to some heavy conclusions about behavior… however his conclusions were very problematic…
-humans chose to live in cities, rats were put in cage
-high density is a relative concept (Tokyo vs Calgary)
-sex ratio: crime is a male behavior
Canadian Uniform Crime Reports
Stats analysis of all crime reported to police…
the statistic of violent crime has changed due to a change in the definition of violent crime
Crime Funnel
the recognition that all crime is much greater than the amount of people convicted of crime!! Variables occur I the detection, report, finding, and conviction
only 3% of crimes in 1998 resulted in a conviction
Examples of Observation Studies
John Howard Griffen, Black Like Me
Humphrey’s Tea Room Trade
Foucault’s view on punishment
the body was the side of arbitrary punishment
Damie was accused of attempting to kill the king of France:
The exorcist Movie
Loosely based on Robbie Manheim in the later 1940’s
David Berkowitz
Killed 6 people and wounded 7 others, claimed his actins were the result of demonic possession
seven deadly sins
SLAPEGG
sloth, lust, anger, pride, envy, gluttony, greed
“Lex Talionis”
Refers to the principle an eye for an eye
principle for exacting punishment on people but not very effective
Malleus Maleficarum
text written by two men in 1946 which was used to punish convicted witches
were identited via torture or birth marks or spectral evidence (ghostly form around them seen by people who were affected their spell!)
Generated mass hysteria! If you denied the existence of witches you could be suspected of being a witch!
Is Demonic Perspectives still present today?
Yes! People still do use religious beliefs to found choices/policies ex: President Bush said no to stem cell research
Reveals the seemingly arbitrary nature of defining deviance and implementing policies
Modern day examples of fear mongering/moral panics
The Holocaust, the red scare (communists in the US), satanic day care centres
The central results of the Demonic Perspective on the criminal justice system
arbitray, brutal and public punishment, deviants were partly responsible for their behavior, and very high crime rates
Mini-Max Theorem
People are rational, calculating actors who are hedonistic and self-interested therefor they make all life choices in maximizing units of pleasure and minimizing units of pain who adhere to a social contract in that they must buy into this to live in an honest, functioning society
Punishment in the classical approach
needs three basic elements:
1) swiftness: must be quick
2) certainty: you must have a guarantee of getting caught
3) severity: punishment must fit the crime (be one unit less pleasurable)
Benthem’s perspective on the Classical Approach
Laws could be created when deviant behavior created social harm
Foucault’s Classical Approach
pushed that effective control was based on swift, certain punishment that was slightly more severe than the pleasure derived from the act itself
Four keys to the Classical System of Justice
1) rationa punishment
2) legislative determination of law, judicial determination of guilt!
3) deterrence as the reason for social control
4) control of acts rather than actors
Western Justice Systems such as French Penal Code
based on classical thought; main reason for growth of prisons
Panopticon
Developed by Bentham with the intention for one person to watch all the prisoners
Problems with Classical Approrach
Humans are both rational and irrational
It is impossible to ascertain units of pain and pleasure
therefore rational punishment doesn’t quite exist
Variation in Definition of Deviance
Vary across time and space ex: homosexual marriage was allowed in 2005 but in Iran homosexual acts are punishable by death
Pfohl’s Suggestion of Deviance
As a violation of a social norm
Conformity vs Nonconformity
adherence to norms vs normative violations but without reaction ex picking nose
deviance vs crime
deviance: normative violation with a controlling mechanism
crime: violation of codified law
* not all deviance is crime, not all crimes are deviant
Epistemology
ways of knowing, different people use different approaches
ex: both demonic and classical perspectives are epistemologies
Lombroso
First to develop the pathological approach who believed the tendency towards deviance originated in the body and was evident in a persons physiology
Atavists
Believed that these people were born crimials who would revert to this state regardless of social factors
ex: all robbers have small eyes, twisted noses, and bushy eyebrows
Similarities of Pathology to Demonic Approach
Both focus on the body
Very arbitrary punishment as well
Problems with Pathology
1) empirical research was extremely flawed
2) measurements were sloppy
3) statistical techniques were not yet refined
4) many stigmata were simply social (ex: people w/ tattoos!)
Dugdale Study of The Jukes
he analyzed over 150 years of family information and found that crime was inherited!! It seemed intuitive that genetics must have an impact on deviance
no control group!… a later study found similar problems in more affluent families
Goddard Study of the Kallikaks
Examined the offspring of one man, one born in a respectable family the other not so much…he touched up photos and altered data and admitted he had difficulties obtaining unbiased family records
Freud’s 3 distinct components of personality
ID: Instinctual
Superego: inclination of societal norms
Ego: in between
*believed an overally strong id may lead to a life of crime; don’t have the ability to resist!
Freud’s Iceberg Analogy
Below the surface of the water is where the majority of personality lived; in the subconscious!
In our unconscious mind is where all of our desires lie suggesting that some people don’t know why they do what they do
Drug Research from Turner and Edgley (1983)
Claimed drugcraft has replaced witchcraft. we are prescribing meds without a biological basis
there was a big push on how brain chemistry does cause behavior
Low SES and marital status is related to behavior
therefore flawed, subjective research creates a racist, sexist, classist framework!
epigenetics
how behavior can change biology
