MT2 - Social distribution of crime

Question 1

Three sources of data

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Why e/m are more criminal + OCS are accurate

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Why e/m are not more criminal + OCS are inaccurate

Answer 3

Phillips and Bowling - CJS is racist

Hall - black muggers

Question 4

Explanations for low crime rates among asians

Answer 4

The strong influence of religion and close-knit communities prevents criminality through informal social control

Question 5

OCS on gender and crime

Answer 5

Women commit fewer crimes.

Women commit less serious, ‘victimless’, non-violent crimes.

Men are more likely to re-offend.

Question 6

Hall

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

New Right

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Lea and Young

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Phillips and Bowling

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Women are less criminal than men + OCS are accurate

Answer 10

patrichal society - Heidensohn

Functionalist sex theory - Parsons

A. Cohen

Question 11

Women are as criminal as men + OCS are inaccurate

Answer 11

Chivalary thesis - Pollack

Patrichary (Judges) - Carlen

Liberation theory - Adler

Question 12

Heidensohn

Answer 12

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

Question 13

A. Cohen

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Parsons

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Pollak

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Carlen

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Adler

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Explanations for leniency and absence of m/c crime from the OCS

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Why w/c are more criminal

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

Explanation of m/c crime

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Types of corporate crime

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

Reasons for under-representation of m/c crime in OCS:

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Reasons why young people commit more crime

Answer 23

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.