Deviance and Crime Flashcards
Deviance
Occurs when someone departs from a norm and evokes a negative reaction from others
Crime
Deviance that breaks the law
Law
A norm stipulated and enforced by government bodies
Informal Punishment
Involves a mild sanction that is imposed during face- to-face interaction, not by the judicial system (e.g. timeout, no iPad)
Formal Punishment
Takes place when the judicial system or any kind of formal institution penalizes someone for breaking a law
What are the Three Criteria in which deviance and crime vary?
- Severity of social response
- Perceived harmfulness
- Degree of public agreement
What are the three ways of reporting crime?
Uniform crime stats, self-reports, and victimization reports
What is the main source of crime statistics?
Uniform crime reports
What are the two main shortcomings of police-reported crimes?
- Much crime is not reported by the police (especially with victimless crimes)
- Authorities and the wider public decide which criminal acts to report and which to ignore
Victimless Crime
Crime committed by one or two people where basically no one is being victimized, but a law is still being broken
Self-Report Survey
Respondents are asked to report their involvement in criminal activities, either as PERPETRATORS or sometimes as victims
Victimization Survey
Surveys in which people are asked whether they have been victims of a crime
What are the Reasons for Declining crime rates?
▪ Better trained police forces
▪ Smaller young male population
▪ Good economies
▪ Legal abortion?
What gender is more likely to commit crime?
Male, especially young males
What is there an over representation of in Canadian Prisons?
Indigenous peoples, black people
Factors in over representation
- Poverty
- Tend to commit more visible Street Crimes
- Discrimination by criminal justice system
- Weakened social control over community members due to Western culture’s disruption of social life in Indigenous communities
What is the Symbolic Interactionist approach to deviance and crime?
People learn and label deviant and criminal behaviour when they interact with others
Labelling Theory
Deviant and criminal role not automatically applied, only when others in a group label it such
What is the Functionalist Explanation for deviance and crime?
That Social dysfunction leads to criminal behavior
What did Durkheim claim?
That crime is beneficial to society.
Gives people a chance to react, further knowing what deviance looks like, thus making society better
Strain Theory
People turn to deviance because society lets them down
How does Strain result?
When a culture teaches people the value of material success and society fails to provide enough legitimate opportunities for everyone to succeed
Conformity
Acceptance of Cultural goals and the institutionalized means of achieving them
Innovation
Acceptance of the cultural goal, but rejecting the institutionalized means
Ritualism
Rejecting the cultural goals, but accepting the institutionalized means
Retreatism
Rejecting both the cultural goals and the institutionalized means
Rebellion
New goals and new means of doing such
What do deviant subcultures have?
Strong internal norms and are strict conformists of their own subculture
What do Criminal subcultures do?
Shift blame for deviance
(deny personal responsibility, the wrongfulness of the act, denouncing others..)
How does the relationship between race and crime differ despite what functionalists claim?
That the relationship between race and crime weaker. Functionalists and official statistics exaggerate the connection between crime and class
Conflict Theory Approach to deviance and crime
Power and privilege maintained by the rich and powerful defining deviance, and using their power to avoid being called a criminal
Control Theory
Crime can pay in ample rewards, so people only refrain because of social controls
Control theory of crime: Four Types of social control
- Social attachments to respectable role models.
- Legitimate opportunities for education and a good job.
- Involvements in conventional institutions.
- Beliefs in traditional values and morality
Social Control
Ways in which a social system attempts to regulate people’s thoughts, feelings, appearance and behaviour
Internal Social Control
Regulates people through socialization and shapes people’s minds so they come to regard deviant actions as undesirable
External Social Control
Regulates people by imposing punishments and offering rewards
Panopticon
If you think you are being observed, you will enforce the rules on yourself, obeying the social norms out of fear of punishment.
Total surveillance of society = passive control of society
The Medicalization of Deviance
Growth in the number of behaviors described as mental disorders. What used to be defined as wilful deviance is now regarded as involuntary; normal part of being human
How are Prisons Agents of socialization?
Prisoners learn to be more criminal in prison from other, more experienced criminals
What are the rationales of incarceration?
- Opportunity for rehabilitation
- Deterrence
- Revenge for illegal acts
- Incapacitation
Moral Panics
Overreaction to events in society. Can lead to a CRACKDOWN or INCREASE in the SEVERITY of punishment
Distortion of crime by the media
- Level of coverage (exaggeration of criminal activity)
- Type of Coverage (more than half of crime stories relate to violent offences, which is several times the actual prevalence
- Nature of Coverage (gives the opposite impression of certain types of crimes)
What does imprisonment lead to?
Higher rates of recidivism - the rate of criminals reoffending and returning to prison
Two main reforms to our current prison regime:
- Lower recidivism rates
- Attempt to reduce rather than increase the number of incarcerated offenders
