Lecture 9

Question 1

What are Consensus crimes:

Answer 1

Illegal and thought of as extremely harmful to society.
● Produce a high level of public agreement regarding their
seriousness.
● Come with serious punishments

Question 2

What are White-collar crimes?

Answer 2

Have high social costs and a negative impact on society.

● Often occur in a work setting and are motivated by greed for
monetary gain.

● Involve intentional acts of violence and are small or large in scale
depending on the amount of money stolen

Question 3

Crime rates trend:

Answer 3

Has risen in everyway but Homicide

Why? - Harms ppl the most -Media exaggerates the crime (cuz ppl are interested in it - Palatable (netflix series about it)

Question 4

Which races are incarcerated at a higher rate?

Answer 4

Black and Indigenous people

Question 5

How can we explain higher crime in US?

Answer 5

Gun ownership

Less social mobility

Institutional racism

Question 6

What is the Penological perspective?

vs

Philosophical Pesrpective

on punishment?

Answer 6

Penological: punishment as a technique of crime control
“What Works”

Philosophical: punishment as a moral category
● What is just ?

Question 7

What is the Sociological Perspective on crime control?

Answer 7

● Punishment is interconnected with other social institutions

● Penal measures and institutions have social determinants that at time not directly related to law and order,

● Their social effects expand beyond crime control,

● Their symbolic significance that routinely engages a wide population of non criminals

● A moralizing mechanism,

● A component of class rule,

● An exercise of power,

● An enacted cultural form

Question 8

Durkheim’s view on Punishment:

Answer 8

“Punishment transforms a threat to social order into a triumph of social
solidarity”

Question 9

Punishment - A component of class rule
Marxist view:

Answer 9

Institutions such as law and punishment not merely reflect rules and laws , they shape them

Punishment as hegemonic control

Question 10

Why does U.S.A move from being a leader in progressive justice to ‘zero tolerance’ policing, ‘three strikes and you’re out’ and
massive incarceration?

Answer 10

Loïc Wacquant

Was progressive in 50’s and 60’s
- No rise in crime (that would have caused incarceration)

Because of white insecurity
- After Jim Crow, white ppl lost power
- All that caused them to feel insecure
- Caused more crime

Question 11

What is ‘Workfare?

Answer 11

categorical programs of support to the poor (the unemployed, single mothers’) for
which the aid received is conditional on orienting oneself towards the labour market

Question 12

What is ‘Prisonfare’?

Answer 12

programs of penalization based on the preferential targeting and aggressive
deployment of the police, courts and prison, criminal justice data banks and surveillance

Question 13

Explain the Prison–industrial complex as a buisness?

Answer 13

Expansion of US inmates increases profits

Incarceration subsidizes construction companies ,

companies that produce surveillance theologies,

corporations that contract cheap prison labour

Question 14

What is a Panopticon prison?

Answer 14

The inmates need to feel that they are under constant surveillance

The inspector sees the inmates but they cannot see the inspector

Question 15

What is Normalization?

Answer 15

Discipline-body is docile, obedient and
useful

● Assessment of performance in relation for
the desired standard by experts

No punishment in isolation (always institutionally related)

Question 16

What is Inequality?

Answer 16

● A system by which society categorizes people and ranks them in hierarchy

● Uneven distribution of valuable resources
● money, power, and status

● Inequality exists in every contemporary society

● Levels of inequality differ from one society to another

Question 17

What are Functions of inequality? (Functionalist perspective)

Answer 17

Social stratification - a device by which societies insure that the most important
positions are filled by the most qualified persons. (Ex. medical doctors, we provide resources, prestige, money to those we think deserve it)

● People need incentives to work hard and to take economic risks and invest

Question 18

Why do we have certification in every society (functionalist)?

Answer 18

Proving you deserve the scarce resources (but note: scarcity is money, and we need it to be scarce to get ppl to do these hard / unwanted jobs)

1. People need to do the jobs well
2. Need most qualified ppl to do the job

Question 19

How does Inequality broadly manifest?

Answer 19

can manifest in life chances and outcomes of the individual

Question 20

Where is Canada on Inequality?

Answer 20

Around Middle

Question 21

What do most Canadians think their class is?

Answer 21

Middle class (70%)

Question 22

Explain (Again) Karl Marx and Class struggles:

Answer 22

Class struggles are defined by the battle over surplus value, or
the excess value produced by workers.

Capitalists want to keep wages low and increase their take of
the surplus value while workers want to increase their wages.

Class struggles exist because classes want different things and
have different interests.

Question 23

What is Meritocracy?

Answer 23

Meritocracy - Social mobility is
based on personal merits and
individual talent

Question 24

What is Hegemony?

Answer 24

Dominant Ideas “Common sense”
- Social class is apart of this

Antonio Gramsci (coined)
-strategies that dominant groups use to make their view of the world seem like “common sense” to the rest of the population

Ex. Leaders of car industry make u think “freedom” rather then “dangerous”

Question 25

What is hegemony and

1. “Spontaneous” consent?
2. Misconception
3. Flexible appropriation

Answer 25

1. Students consent to belief of university and testing because the belief promises its in their best interest (even if don’t think exams are the best way to mark understanding)
2. Distract from whats important
   
   • Focus on issues not fundamental to ppls material conditions
     ex. American and Canadian political parties often use cultural, value-
     centered debates (conservative or liberal ) on abortion, immigration, and
     cultural and religious symbols to distract voters’ attention from the material
     concerns that unite them.
3. If resist spontaneous consent:
   - Absorb challenging belief and integrate them into norm

Ex. Was protest for organic groceries (wanted to restructure how we consume food)
Grocery stores took that and just added an organic food section