exam 3 Flashcards
What are the fundamental assumptions of Labeling Theory?
- agencies of social control (think broadly) type and categorize people according to race, class, and demeanor and then focus attention on them
- through this process of differential selection these agencies unintentionally create, intensify, or perpetuate secondary deviance
What book did Frank Tannenbaum write?
Crime in Community (1938)
What book did Edwin Lemert write?
Social Pathology (1951)
What is the book “crime in community” about?
- dramatization of evil theory
- all youth engage in normal youthful misbehavior
- ex. people playing baseball in the street and hit a women’s window to her home repeatedly until she calls the police
- if you’re receiving negative cues by authority figures/people in general, at what point do those negative cues reach a saturation point and become dramatized and the subject comes to see the cues as their label?
what are Lemert’s findings as written in “social pathology”?
- our theories are always going to be limited/incomplete due to lack of research evidence
- his solution: since statistics only provide a partial measurement to crime, we can never theorize about all crime (primary deviance) we can only measure secondary deviance
- secondary deviance: occurs after the subject has taken on a deviant self identity (they see themselves as a deviant and no longer a law-abiding citizen) therefore they will act in a way that is consistent with an identity that is deviant
what caused labeling theory to take hold in the 1960’s?
-social upheaval
-turbulence
-riots
-war
-questioning of american institutions
What was Lyndon B. Johnson’s idea to combat rising crime rates?
- he wanted to take science to try and solve the rising crime rates
- he put together a group of leading criminologists and scientists and enacted a series of presidential crime commissions
What were the findings of the presidential crime commissions?
- they found that not only was our criminal justice system NOT effective but it was doing more harm than good
- by arresting, labeling, and incarcerating people it was actually intensifying crime rather than reducing it
what did the presidential crime commissions suggest the government does to make the CJS more effective?
- decentralization
- 3 D’s : diversion, decriminalization, and deinstitutionalization
- diversion= exploded, biggest of the 3, wanted to minimize contact with the CJS
- decriminalization= rethink the laws
- deinstitutionalization= discharge (a long-term inmate) from an institution, replacing long term stays at psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health services
- 3 D’s : diversion, decriminalization, and deinstitutionalization
How did Pres. Johnson go about accomplishing decentralization?
by enacting:
- the safe streets act
- the omnibus crime bill
what theory did the presidential crime commissions embrace?
labeling theory
prior to the 1960’s what was the belief concerning the CJS? how did the 1960’s change that?
1) the CJS operated with disinterested professionalism (the system did its job the way it was supposed to)
2) the 1960’s made people critical of the CJS and more aware of what was actually going on
What were the negative effects of diversion?
- contributed to overcrowding aka net widening
- disrupted families
- drew kids and parents into the CJS that shouldn’t have been there
what did Blomberg’s study on North County focus on?
the efficacy of the diversion program they created
what were the four major components of North County’s diversion program?
- youth house
- drug abuse unit
- community outreach centers
- family intervention unit (major component)
Youth House (part of North County’s diversion program)
- detention is a very criminogenic environment (hard to deal with)
- intended to be in a neighborhood close to where they lived so they could still be able to go to their school
- intention was that they would only be there until they could reach a solution with family to put an end to their presence in the court/prison system
Drug Abuse Unit (part of North County’s diversion program)
- primary function was NOT direct services, it was meant to be educational and would assist with referrals for drug treatment specialists
- documents of referral
- if parents thought their kids were doing drugs this place would help find out
community outreach centers (part of North County’s diversion program)
- targeted in high crime areas
- provided all kinds of services for youth
- they envisioned that rather than being arrested, an officer would issue the child a citation to go to an outreach center and if they were to comply they would have no record
- most that went were self-referrals
- kids saw that the centers would host fun events so they wanted to be apart of that whilst getting help
-they wanted to help kids plan their future
- kids saw that the centers would host fun events so they wanted to be apart of that whilst getting help
family intervention unit (part of North County’s diversion program)
- came to typify diversion
- to be eligible: the youth and the parents needed to agree to participate in 5 whole family counseling sessions
- these sessions would take place between 60-90 days
- consisted of various state intervention into family matters that often did not have good outcomes (did more harm than good)
- units were modeled after the work of Virginia Satir
- her book was “conjoint family therapy”
- imagery: a family unit is like a combustible engine, it has multiple parts and if one-part stops working then the whole engine will
- she stated that you must do whole family counseling
what form of criminology does FSU use today?
translational criminology
what is translational criminology?
- taking research and using it to change things for the better/ change policies, etc
- expands criminology’s traditional scientific purpose on causality to the dimension of applied
- from one goal to two goals (dual focus between causality and evidence based policy)
what are two examples of translational criminology within FSU’s criminology dept?
- Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program (JJEEP) by blomberg and pesta
- financial exploitation of older adults (65+) by julie brancale
what was the purpose of the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program (JJEEP) and what did they do?
- go into florida’s commitment institutions and detention centers and assess their education programs (they called it quality assurance)
- ex. site visits, go into classrooms & observe, look at the curriculum, and interview students/teachers/principals
- they wanted to look at best practice standards to see how consistent their practices were with these standards
- if there were deficiencies, they would work with then to help overcome those problems (technical assistance)
- they also tracked kids and their educational achievement while incarcerated and then their performance in school outside of juvie
findings of the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program (JJEEP)
- if there is a best practice in education it is the teachers (high quality teachers are important)
- these children were disproportionally failing in schools and they were disproportionally suspended/expelled
- age to grade level was 3-7 years behind what they should be
- they didn’t have an explanation as to why they are delinquents or why they are failing in public school BUT they can target the problem which is low school performance
- when kids achievements increase (do well in school) the recidivism rate drops significantly
- teachers need to provide individualized instruction/education
Study of the extent of financial exploitation among older adults (65+)
- case study of one place (the villages, largest retirement community in america)
- question to answer: Many fell victim to fraud and many did not BUT they were all targeted, why?
findings of case study on the financial exploitation of older adults
- all of the residents that they talked to (town hall, focus groups) had been targeted for fraud
- as you age you go through normative aging transitions whether they fell victim to fraud or not (retirement, suffer from diminished cognition, fixed income, become a caregiver)
- the ones that fell victim: reached a point when they dont know how to deal with things because they are overly trusting of people, some also stated that they would be more careful now after becoming a victim
- when they do fall victim they become embarrassed and wont tell their kids because they don’t want to be put in assisted living due to their kids feeling like they can’t take care of themselves
- the ones that don’t fall victim: they are able to make decisions confidently, they also may not have fell victim because it happened to someone they know so they’ll be more careful
how can we help the elderly not fall victim and what does it cause?
- develop a risk assessment tool to see when they will become a risk to themselves (ex. field test instrument at mayo clinic), after that you can find a strategy to help them
- effect: causes elderly to lose a sense of self and their quality of life decreases
belief in the 80s
-we need to reverse course because all decentralization efforts (diversion, decriminalization, deinstitutionalization) aren’t working as they should be
-we need radical change
80’s characteristics
-midst of the vietnam war
- iran hostage crisis
- 3 mile island nuclear accident
-high unemployment
-high inflation
- grim times/little to no optimism
who was the agent of change in the 1980’s?
ronald reagan
what did ronald reagan want to do/do concerning crime in the 1980’s?
- zero-tolerance policy / tough on crime
- reduce government size
- reduce taxes
- reduce business regulation
- greater privatization (explosion of private prisons and policing)
- reduction or elimination of welfare
- increase military might
was the crime rate stable, increasing, or decreasing between 1973-1983?
remained stable including the murder rate form 1976-1993
early 1980’s rehabilitation competing ideologies
- nothing works
- everything works to some degree
- some things work for some people
consequences of law and order binge
- much of the focus was upon low level drug dealers and street criminals
- everything (jail [199%], probation [165%], etc) was increasing A LOT
- unprecedented net-widening (not in response to a crime epidemic but to an ideology)
- cost of everything became critical
describe Reagan and Bush’s war on crime
- much different from LBJ’s war on crime
- extensive, expensive, and punitive
- death penalty embraced
- “if we have enough punishment and incarceration, crime will reduce”
describe the state of the social classes in 1990’s
- more than 100,000 multi-millionaires
- number of billionaires increased significantly
- poor were getting poorer
- rich were getting richer
what happened in 2000?
- evidence based policy movement
- american society of criminology
american society of criminology
- happened in 2000
- joined ranks with the academy of criminal justice sciences
- lobbied congress to take steps to embrace evidence in their reforms
- many said this was a turning point
post modern society
a concept used to explain contemporary society, it implies a break from the modern era
characteristics of the 1990’s-2000’s
-push towards integration
-theories: life course, bio social, & nurture
-rise of supermax prison and sex offenders
-became more concerned with offender re-entry
age/crime curve
-arrest rates for violent offenses spike before the age 24 and then decline
-prisons were built for young male offenders
-more than half of the people in prisons are ages 18-27
incarcerated women/girls
-female only facilities
-questions regarding pregnancy/raising children while incarcerated
- how long should they be able to spend time with the baby?
- should she have LEGAL custody?
-questions regarding abortion
- funding?
- where will it be performed?
children of incarcerated parents
-questions regarding having LEGAL custody of the child
-visitation can put a burden on the prison
-possible collateral consequences
- how will it affect the upbringing of the child?
- will it be detrimental to their mental health?
incarcerated elderly population
- fastest growing segment
- facing long segments
- becomes very expensive
- medication costs
- declining health
incarcerated whilst mentally ill
- decentralization efforts of the 60s-70s led to the closing of state mental hospitals throughout the country
- transinstitutionalization
- broken windows theory
- less likely to be released pre-trial
- relationship between restrictive housing and mental illness
- solitary confinement can be very expensive
- 60% of inmates have some form of mental illness
infectious diseases in prisons
- hiv
- tuberculosis (TB)
- hepatitis
- covid
framework of correctional organizations
- correctional organizations are formal organizations with bureaucratic characteristics
- they came about due to organizational transformation
- these organizations operate under conditions of conflicting goals (treatment, control, or punish)
- characteristics (resource scarcity, not enough time/money/information, open system)
what is the result of correctional organizations?
operational uncertainty
- predisposed to implement various reforms that you think will reduce your uncertainty
- causes you to worry about your phenomenon
what are similar characteristics throughout the course of corrections in the U.S.?
- three part approach/assessment (nature of the community/society at the time, ideology of the time, and the result)
- net-widening (correctional reforms being implemented as supplements when they were supposed to be alternatives)
- history of corrections = the history of one alternative after another
- pattern of reform but not change
what type of society do we now live in?
a carceral society (translational crim, evidence first, democratic society)
