patterns and trends in offending (social class) Flashcards
crimes associated with senior positions
state crimes inside the government
crimes associated with upper middle class
coorporate crimes
crimes associated with middle class
white collar crimes like fraud
crimes assocaited with the working class
burglary and street crime
national unemployment rate
5%
Unemployment rate of prisoners before imprisonment
67% (social exclusion unit)
Omolade 2014
43% of prisoners had no academic qualifications, compared with 18% nationally
Williams 2012
Prisoners more likely to experience running away from home, violence, drug/alcohol misuse in the family, regular taunting, exclusion from school
Self report studies suggest that the differences in offending rates between w/c and middle class is……..
not as high as the prison population suggests
Cavadino and Dignan 2001
‘Somehow between the commission of offenses and the official responses of prosecution and punishment, the difference between the classes gets vastly magnified’
Why might w/c be overrepresented in prison?
- visible crimes
- cant afford lawyers
- w/c negatively stereotyped
social class intersection with gender
female offenders are more likely to be on benefits
social class interception with age
police focus -> street crimes (w/c) -> visibility of youth crime
social class intersection with ethnicity
labelling of w/c black youths and stop and search of black youths
Sunderlands definition of white collar crimes
crimes commited by persons of high social status and respectability in the course of their occupations
evaluation
we cannot be sure that w/c commit more crimes or more likely to be convicted -> dark figure of crime
The Islington Crime Survey found that
- poorer households are more likely to be burgled
- poorer communities are more likely to be vctims of crime
- poorer people more likely to suffer repeat victimisation
Chambliss 1975
‘The law of contradictory class locations’
- certain types of crime are more prevalent among different socio-economic groups
- w/c engage in crime in reponse to their socio-economic conditions
- direct crime at w/c
…..
Young and Kinsey
Victims are not all the same and the poor suffer more
CSEW
risk of being a victim of burglary and theft positively correlate with the level of unemployment in the victims community
