MT2 - Social distribution of crime Flashcards
Three sources of data
OCS – data gathered by the government and published annually.
Victim surveys – self-completion questionnaires asking people if they’ve been victims of crime in the last 12 months, the type of crime it was and information about the perpetrator.
Self report surveys – self-completion questionnaires asking people if they’ve committed a crime in the last 12 months and the type of crime it was.
Why e/m are more criminal + OCS are accurate
Lea and Young - relative dep + marginalisation
New Right - Murray (lack of role of models) + e/m more likely to leave school with no qual = unemployment and stain theory
Influence of the mass media – particularly the influence of rap music’s emphasis on bling, violence, guns, gangs, sex and drugs may lead to criminality.
Why e/m are not more criminal + OCS are inaccurate
Phillips and Bowling - CJS is racist
Hall - black muggers
Explanations for low crime rates among asians
The strong influence of religion and close-knit communities prevents criminality through informal social control
OCS on gender and crime
Women commit fewer crimes.
Women commit less serious, ‘victimless’, non-violent crimes.
Men are more likely to re-offend.
Hall
Neo-Marxism - Hall: E/m are are blamed for crisis to serve capitalism exemplified: moral panic over black muggers in the 1970s - media and politicians created a moral panic over mugging by black men, when in fact there was no increase in robberies at the time so lack men were used as scapegoats – they were blamed for the current economic crisis.
New Right
New Right - Afro-Caribbean boys are more likely to leave school with no or little qualifications which affects employment crime is a means to survive. (+ Merton’s strain theory to achieve the American dreams) +C: ignore wider structural causes of crime e.g. poverty
Lea and Young
Crime is caused by relative deprivation, marginalisation and subcultures: E/m more likely to be unemployed so they suffer relative deprivation and respond by forming subcultures which lead to utilitarian crimes such as robbery and theft. Marginalisation leads to violence +C: black people have higher rates of criminalisation than asians, police arent racist
Phillips and Bowling
The UK criminal justice system is racist. because the police force is institutionally racist as well as employing individual police officers who hold stereotypical views on ethnic minorities
Women are less criminal than men + OCS are accurate
patrichal society - Heidensohn
Functionalist sex theory - Parsons
A. Cohen
Women are as criminal as men + OCS are inaccurate
Chivalary thesis - Pollack
Patrichary (Judges) - Carlen
Liberation theory - Adler
Heidensohn
women are less criminal than men because Society is patriarchal and it imposes greater control over women’s lives which prevents them from breaking the law e.g At women’s domestic role of housework and childcare confining them to the home which reduces their opportunities to offend.
+C Adler - Liberation theory : women are becoming liberated from patriarchy so commit crime as frequent/serious as men
A. Cohen
Fathers are much less involved in the upbringing of children thus the absence of a male role model at home leads boys to turn to all-male street gangs as a source of masculine identity. Such gangs promote toughness and risk taking which leads boys into crime.
Parsons
Gender socialisation in which boys reject anything feminie such as being gentle, tender and emotional in order to prove their masculity and engage compensatory compulsory masculinity through aggression and acts of delinquenc making them more criminal
Walklate criticises the sex role theory for basing its claims on biological differences between women, when these are, in fact, socially constructed.
Pollak
Chivalary thesis:men are socialised to be chivalrous and treat women as ladies so when dealing with women, male police officers are more lenient and more likely to offer cautions
C: Farrington and Morris – a study of sentencing of 408 theft offences of theft in a magistrate’s court found that women were not sentenced more leniently for the same offence than men.
Carlen
the justice sytem (judges): the judges treatment whether to convict females is influenced by traditional gender norms so their decision is not based on the offence but instead on the judge’s assessment of the woman as a wife/mother
C: Heidensohn - courts treat women more harshly as they hace deviated from gender norms.
Adler
Liberation theory: Adler – as women are becoming liberated from patriarchy so their crimes are becoming as frequent and as serious as that of men - women are now committing more ‘typically’ male crimes such as violence and white-collar crime.
C: The rise in female crime began in the 1950s, before the Feminist movement had any impact on women’s position therefore liberation is not a valid explanation for the rise in female criminality.
Explanations for leniency and absence of m/c crime from the OCS
Cultural capital - middle and upper classes have the cultural capital so know how to deal with the police in a conciliatory and deferential e.g. apologising for behaviour that is ‘out of character’,
Publicity- Employers tend not to prosecute their employees for fraud for fear of negative publicity or low public confidence.
Selective reinforcement - police expectations of delinquency do not fit upper class examples As middle class tend not to be labelled as ‘troublemakers’, even when they do something wrong the police deal with them differently
Why w/c are more criminal
Functionalism – Merton – strain to anomie - w/c ability to achieve the goals through legitimate means is blocked so they turn to crime to achieve the goals.
Traditional Marxism – w/c break the law because they are exploited which makes them poor, they also commit non-utilitarian crimes because they are frustrated.
C: Marxists argue there would be no crime in communist states, but these states committed crimes against their own people.
Right Realism – Murray – the underclass are unable to socialise their children properly so they become delinquent.
Explanation of m/c crime
Traditional Marxism – CC is a result of the normal functioning of capitalism
Differential association – individuals are socialised into criminality by those they associate with. So if you work in a company that normalises criminality to achieve profit goals, you will learn to act in that way.
Left Realism – Young – late modernity – relative deprivation is increasing and spreading to m/c which then leads to crime, e.g. fraud
Types of corporate crime
Financial fraud – tax evasion, bribery, money laundering and illegal accounting. Victims include other companies, shareholders, taxpayers and gov.
Crimes against employees – include sexual and racial discrimination, violation of wage laws, breaches of health and safety laws.
Crimes against the environment – polluting the environment through illegal disposal of waste, e.g. Bhopal.
Reasons for under-representation of m/c crime in OCS:
The media – give limited coverage to WCC and CC which reinforces the view that crime is a w/c phenomenon.
Lack of political will – politicians often promise to be tough on crime, but they focus this on street crimes.
Complexity of WCC and CC – which makes them difficult to investigate. For example, often, teams of expert investigators spend years trying to get to the bottom of large scale fraud.
Reasons why young people commit more crime
More likely to suffer relative deprivation and marginalisation
Status frustration
Peer group pressure
Police labelling - young people are not more criminal in adults and older people, but they fit the image (typification) of a typical criminal so are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police.
