Patter Of Crime On Gender,Social Class and Ethnicity Minority

Question 1

4 patterns of crime in relation to gender?

Answer 1

1)Females are more likely to commit property offences (not burglary)
2)Males are more likely to commit violent or sexual crimes
3)Males are more likely to be repeated offenders
4)Men are 15% more likely to be convicted homocide than females

Question 2

Why are women less likely to to get caught of committing crime?

Answer 2

Women tend to commit less detectable crimes than men such as shoplifting -Even men shoplift but they tend to select bigger and detectable items than women so men are easier to be caught

Question 3

Two arguments put forward to suggest that statistics underestimate the amount of female crime?

Answer 3

1)Females crimes are less likely to be reported e.g. prostitution benefits men so they don’t report it
2)Females are less likely to be prosecuted for their crimes-Chivalry thesis

Question 4

Socialisation affect way women commit crime?

Answer 4

Women risk more by becoming criminals as they are seen as ‘double deviant’ meaning that they risk being cast out of their community and being arrested

Question 5

Pollack Chivalry thesis?

Answer 5

-Men hate to accuse women and thus send them to their punishments,police officers dislike to arrest them
-Pollack says it’s not that women commit less crime than men it’s that they are less likely to be caught committing the crime

Question 6

Evidence in which official statistics support the chivalry thesis?

Answer 6

1)Females are more likely than male to be released on bail
2)Females are more likely to be fined than sent to prison

Question 7

Evaluation for Chivalry thesis?

Answer 7

•women were NOT sentenced more leniently than men
•Department stores witnessed more male than women shoplift
•Young males are more likely than women to report that they have engaged in drinking,taking illegal drugs or being violent
•Box-women who commit more serious crimes are not treated better than men

Question 8

Reasons why women commit less crime than men?

Answer 8

•Sexual Role Theory (Functionalist)
•Patriarchal Control
•Class and Gender

Question 9

How does Sexual Role Theory make women commit crime less?

Answer 9

•Parsons:Males are often socialised as being tough, aggressive risk-taking so they may be more likely to commit acts of violence or take advantage of criminal opportunities when they were present.
-New Right argues that the absence of a male role model in matrifocal lone parent families leads to boys turning to criminal street gangs as a source of status
-Duncombe and Marsden:Women have less time time to commit crime due to triple shift

Question 10

How does Patriarchal Control make women commit crime less?

Answer 10

-Women commit less crime than men due to the amount of patriarchal control this can occur:
-Home:Women are controlled at home (domestic violence)
-Work:Women are controlled at work (sexual harassment)
-Public:Women are controlled in public (fear of abuse)
•Daughters are less likely to be allowed to come home late or to go out.They develop the ‘bedroomculture’=Socialising at home with friends rather than in public places

Question 11

How does Class and Gender make women commit crime less?

Answer 11

Carlen:women commit less crime because of the class deal and the gender deal
-Class deal-material rewards for being in paid work,which enables women purchase consumer goods
-Gender Deal-Conforming to traditional roles of wife and mother and gains emotional rewards and male support.Not all women are able to

Question 12

Criticisms of women commit less than men?

Answer 12

Liberation thesis-Alder as women have become more liberated from patriarchal control there will be an increase in the levels of female crime as well as an increase in the seriousness of those crime

Question 13

Why does Masculinity Theory make men commit more crime?

Answer 13

•Messerchmodt men commit crime in order to show their masculinity and prove that they are men
•Hegemonic masculinity is defined as a practice that legitimise men’s dominant position in society-this is stereotypical masculinity
•Subordinate masculinity is a form of masculinity in which a person lacks many qualities of hegemonic while expressing qualities opposite to hegemonic masculinity

Question 14

Postmodernity masculinity and crime?

Answer 14

•Winlow-The loss of traditional jobs means that men can no longer demonstrate their masculinity e.g. bouncers
•Bodily capital-Men are now able to use their physical features to display their masculinity and therefore other men do not ‘mess’ with them

Question 15

Evaluation of Masculinity and crime?

Answer 15

-Not all men commit crimes to accomplish masculinity it could be considered a description of an offender rather than an explanation
-Messerschmidt is in danger of a circular argument that masculinity explains male crimes because men commit them.

Question 16

Socialisation and Opportunity is another reason men commit more crime than men?

Answer 16

•Socialisation-Men often are stereotyped as being more violent than women which can lead to self fulfilling prophecy
•Opportunity-Men have more opportunity to commit crime both blue collar crime and white collar crime.

Question 17

Reasons why Ethnic minority causes crime?

Answer 17

•Demographic
•Triple Quandary
•Left Realist

Question 18

How does Demographic affect ethnicity?

Answer 18

Morris says young people compared to the white ethnicity majority, explain why there is higher ethnicity minority criminality as young people are more likely to commit crime

Question 19

Evaluation of Demographic?

Answer 19

Statistical illusion-it’s impossible to determine if it’s the age of the offenders that causes the higher rates or their ethnicity

Question 20

How does Triple Quandary affect ethnicity?

Answer 20

Sewell identifies 3 risk factors which could be responsible for the relatively high levels of crime amongst black boys:
1)Lack of a father figure
2)Negative experience of white
3)Media-Media influence of hip hop and rap stars believe that status can be achieved in two ways 1)Acquisition of status symbol designer clothing and jewellery 2) Construction of hyper masculinity based on violence and sexual consequence

Question 21

Evaluation of Triple Quandary?

Answer 21

Rise of positive black role models e.g Barack Obama.Black crime tends to victimise black people

Question 22

How does Left Realist affect ethnicity?

Answer 22

Lea and Young suggest ethnic minorities suffer from marginalisation and relative deprivation.This can lead to ethnic minorities forming subcultures which alleviate feelings of marginalisation but these can take deviant forms and lead to higher rates of criminality

Question 23

Evaluation Left realist?

Answer 23

Not all EM join subculture and not all are criminals in nature

Question 24

Ethnic minorities as victims not criminals?

Answer 24

•Police targeting
•Locality theory
•Racism
•Social and Cultural theory

Question 25

What is Police targeting?

Answer 25

•Philips and Browning-EM are “over- policed and under protected”
“Myth of Black Criminality”-stereotyping police focus on ethnic minority and therefore they are more likely to be stopped

Question 26

Evaluation of police targeting?

Answer 26

-Targeting could be caused by moral panics such as the Black Muggers in 1970’s and therefore based on actual criminality.Can cause a chicken and egg scenario where the targeting leads to higher ethnic minority criminality which leads to more targeting

Question 27

What is Locality theory?

Answer 27

certain areas are more densely populated with ethnic minorities which explains higher stops and search statistics. Additionally ethnic minorities tend to live in zone of transition where crime rates are much higher due to lack of social cohesion

Question 28

How does Racism make EM victims ?

Answer 28

Holdaway-Canteen culture-police officers themselves are not racists but when together they can reinforce stereotypes which are acted on duty
-Stephan Lawrence murder which highlighted racists policies within the police force

Question 29

Evaluations of Racism?

Answer 29

Police has been actively changing policies to deal with institutional racism and recruiting more officers from ethnic minorities.However the crime rate against ethnic minorities has not decreased

Question 30

What is social and Cultural theory?

Answer 30

Hirsch-Young people regardless of their ethnicity commit crime due to lack of social controls of attachment in their life.
-Asian families have stricter controls over young people which could explain the lower rates of criminality amongst Asian communities

Question 31

Trend in Social class and Crime?

Answer 31

•WC individuals are more likely to commit crime than MC individuals
-MC are more likely to commit crimes like fraud or tax envasion compared to with the greater likelihood of theft or violent crime by those with lower incomes

Question 32

Riceman wrote a book?

Answer 32

‘the richer got richer and the poor get prison’-they found that MC got away with crime than WC people.The criminal justice system is forgiving towards MC than WC and they get away with just a fine instead being sentenced

Question 33

What does Sutherland-‘White collar crime?

Answer 33

a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in course of occupation
-Sutherland aimed to challenge the stereotype that crime is purely a lower class phenomenon

Question 34

Criticism of ‘White collar’ definition?

Answer 34

•A further problem with this definition is that many of the harms caused by the powerful does not break the criminal law

Question 35

What is Pearce and Tombs-alternative definition of white collar crime?

Answer 35

Any illegal act that is the result of deliberate decisions or negligence by a legitimate that intends to benefit the business or company

Question 36

Edwin’s definition is criticised for failing to distinguish between two type of crime?

Answer 36

1)Occupational crime-Crime committed by employees for own personal gain. e.g. stealing from a company
2) Corporate crime-Crime committed by employees for their organisation in order for the organisation to gain e.g
Ponzi scheme,Johnson v Johnson

Question 37

The Scale and types of corporate crime?

Answer 37

•Financial crime-tax envasion
•Crime against employees-such as sexual or racial discrimination
•Crime against environment-illegal pollution of air,

Question 38

What does Carrabine et al say?

Answer 38

High professionals have our trust so people would trust the, finances,our health and our personal information.This means they have the opportunity to abuse their power