Social Distribution of Crime

Question 1

Police recorded crime

Answer 1

• All crimes reported to and recorded by the police
• Forces around the country record crime in categories that are outlined in the Home Office counting rules
• Eg violence against the person, sexual offences, robber, burglary, theft, handling stolen goods, fraud etc etc
• Dark Figure of Crime: crimes that do not appear in the official statistics
  ↳ at least 50% of all crimes do not end up in the police statistics
• Crime is Socially Constructed: lack validity and are the result of ‘social processes’

Question 2

Official Crime Statistics

Answer 2

• Crime recorded by the police and processes through the CJS
• Key source of information in relation to trends and patterns in criminality and victimisation

Strengths

• Measures acts deemed as criminal and are not reliant upon the victims interpretation of whether it was a crime
• Complied by official government agencies each year and can be compared with previous years
• Help decide policing budgets by predicting the level of crime that the police will have to deal with in the coming year

Weaknesses

• Subject to the changing priorities of government agencies and some crimes may not be considered worthy of investigation
• May be manipulated to show falling levels of crime to meet government targets
• Not all crimes are reported to the police, nor are all crimes reported to the police recorded as offences

Question 3

Crime Survey

Answer 3

• A yearly survey which aims to gain a better picture of levels of criminality in the UK than that offered by official police stats
• Primarily a victim survey in which a representative sample of the public are asked about crimes they have been victims of in the proceeding 12 months

Strengths

• Captures the ‘dark figure of crime’
• Higher validity as it relies upon first-hand information from those that have been victims of crime
• Gives a more complex picture of crime in England and Wales and can be used to create initiatives and lead to policy reforms
• Representative: uses a large sample
• Repeated annually so can compare the amounts of crime per year
• Collects data on people’s perceptions of crime which is useful in policy formation

Weaknesses

• Fails to capture victimless crime such as prostitution and drug use
• Estimate of the amount of crime in the UK
• Relies upon subjective interpretation of individuals as to whether a crime has been committed
• Relies of people remembering the last 12 months and whether they have been the victims of a crime
• Respondents may not be aware they have been a victim of crime eg fraud

Question 4

Self-Report Studies

Answer 4

• Measurement or crime where people are asked to talk about the crimes they have committed
• Produces useful data about anti-social behaviour and petty crime but it is unlikely to reveal much more about more serious crimes

Strengths

• Uncovers hidden figures of crime
• Can find out about victimless crime
• Talks directly to offenders, giving more detail than what would be given in a police report
• Simple, cost effective
• Good validity
• Useful for trying to determine if there is a systematic bias in the CJS that might result in certain types of offenders being more likely to be processed as categorised as criminals

Weaknesses

• Peer pressure affects validity/social desirability
• Exaggeration/Lie
• Mainly carried out on young people so they may be biased
• Unlikely to admit committing serious crimes
• Questions may be misunderstood

Question 5

Linking to Theory and Methods

Answer 5

• Positivists: early sociological theories were based on an unethical acceptance of the accuracy of official crime statistics
• Interpretivists: the labelling view reflects the accuracy of crime statistics and concentrates on the understanding the way they they are socially constructed
• Marxist: law and it’s enforcement rejects the interests of the ruling class as the crimes of the poor are strictly enforced and the immoral activities of the rich are ignored/not defined as criminal
  ↳ statistics will reflect these inequalities and scapegoating
• Feminists: crime statistics do not reflect the amount of crime against women (eg sexual attacks and DV)
  ↳ these often occur in a private domestic setting in which the police are reluctant to get involved and many women do not feel they can report these offences
• Left Realist: crime is a genuine problem, especially for poorer groups in society
  ↳ crime statistics cannot simply be reflected as inaccurate
  ↳ favour detailed victims surveys in local areas and these can reveal the basis for many peoples genuine fear of crime

Question 6

Victimology

Answer 6

• Study of victims of crimes
• Important because they play an essential role in the criminal justice process
• They detect crimes, offenders and act as witnesses and have an impact on how punishments are given
• Victim = those who have suffered harm (mental/physical/emotional) economic loss or impairment of the their basic rights
• The term victim is often a social construct, the media and CJS paint a certain picture of the victim
• Miers (Positivist): mainly concerned with factors affecting rates or victimisation measured in statistical studies
  ↳ victimisation surveys like the CSEW supplement official statistics in understanding victims in a number of ways

Key features of positivist victimology

• Identifying factors that produce patterns on victimisation: especially the those making some individuals or groups more prone to being victims
• Focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence
• Aims to identify victims and ho have contributed to their own victimisation

Question 7

Social Class and Crime

Answer 7

• Class background is correlated with both the amount and type of offending
• Social class = a system of stratification; division of a society based on social and economic status
• Murray - Underclass: long term unemployed, the welfare dependent, work shy group at the bottom who were prone to criminality and poorly socialised their children
  ↳ said to blame the worst off in society, downplaying other factors and confusing poverty with criminality
  ↳ David Cameron - Troubled Families Programme: aimed to turn around the lives of 120k of the worst families because they were causing ‘trouble’ and they are the source of a large proportion of the problems in society (drug addiction, alcohol abuse, crime)

Question 8

Statistics on Social Class and Crime

Answer 8

Deprivation, Class and Prison Statistics

• Prisoners: 43% had no educational qualifications, only 6% had a degree or equivalent, 36% had been unemployed when sentenced, 60% had been claiming benefits
• 67% were unemployed prior to imprisonment, 32% were homeless, 27% had been bought up in care

Self-Report Studies

• 2003-2006: found that the social class of the family, based on the occupation of the chief wage earner, was not significantly associated with the likelihood of offending and drug use
• It was not social class, but individual circumstances that seemed more important
• Self-reported offending was found to be statistically associated with single parent families, having a parent living with a new partner, inconsistent parental discipline, attending a poorly disciplined school or having a friend/sibling who had been in trouble with the law
  ↳ suggested factors relating to social control influence whether young people are likely to commit offences, whereas social class has a stronger influence on whether you’re criminalised in the CJS

Question 9

Consensus theories - Social Class and Crime

Answer 9

Merton’s Strain Theory

• Saw crime as resulting from anomie: an over-emphasis on sticking to the legitimate, accepted and legal means of achieving these goals
• The working class had restricted opportunities to succeed in American society and were therefore likely to turn to illegitimate ways to achieving those goals

Albert Cohen - Status Frustration

• Most crime from delinquent boys was non-utilitarian; it was not about money or success but was often destructive and apparently pointless (eg vandalism/joyriding)
• Crime took place in groups/subcultures as they seemed to thrive off encouragement from their friends
• ’Status Deprivation’: lack in prestige/respect - the boys were looked down on by teachers and others and failed to achieve academic success
  ↳ in order to get status, they got together with others in a similar situation and they gave each other status for breaking the norms of society

Cloward and Ohlin

• Illegitimate opportunity structures: opportunities to succeed where there was organised crime but using illegitimate means, leading to the development of criminal subcultures in some working class areas
• In other areas, there was little organised crime so there was more use of violence to achieve status in conflict subcultures
• Double failures, who had not found success in the conflict/criminal subcultures became retreatists

Hirschi - Bond of Attachment

• Attachment, commitment, involvement, belief
• 22% of people claiming out of work benefits had a criminal record

Question 10

Limitations of consensus theories in explaining the higher rates of offending by working classes

Answer 10

• Postmodernists: nature of subcultures has changed as they are much more common today than they were in the 1960s
  ↳ in society today, deviance and subcultures are ‘normal’ which renders the whole of subcultural theory irrelevant in helping us to understand crime and deviance
• David Matea - Subterranean Values: deviant values that encourage us to go against social norms
  ↳ these are usually held under control, but sometimes emerge at peak leisure times
  ↳ difference between a persistent offender and a law abiding citizen is simply how often and in what circumstances that these subterranean value’s emerge

Question 11

Interactionism - Social Class and Crime

Answer 11

• Interactionist would point to the social construction of crime
• Question the validity of crime statistics in relation to the labels that may be applied to different situations
• Cicourel: police and juvenile officers

Question 12

Marxism - Social class and crime

Answer 12

• Capitalism is crimogenic
• Capitalism encourages individuals to pursue self-interest before everything else
• Capitalism encourages individuals to be materialistic consumers, making us aspire to an unrealistic and often unattainable lifestyle
• Capitalism generates massive inequality and poverty which are correlated with higher crime rates
• Crimes of the elite are more costly than street crime (white collar & corporate crime) - Bernie Madoff
• David Gordon: capitalist societies are dog eat dog societies
• David Rothkopf: superclass at the very top
• Zygmunt Bauman: the super wealthy have effectively segregated themselves from the wealthy leading to economic and violent street crime
• William Chambliss: drug dealers see themselves and entrepreneurs
• Lauren Snider: many people die from industrial accidents, unsafe and usually illegal consumer products, occupationally induced diseases and hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths by legal and illegal environmental pollution
• Tombs and Dr Whyte: Britains construction industry is one of the most dangerous and in the last 25 years, over 2800 people have died from injuries they received as a result of construction work

Question 13

Right Realist - Social Class and Crime

Answer 13

• Working class/underclass as being responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in society
• Murray - Underclass: people defined by deviant behaviour and fail to socialise their children properly so they fail to learn self-control and the difference between right and wrong
  ↳ increasing welfare dependency, lone mothers are ineffective agents of socialisation
  ↳ NEETS: would cost the country £15 billion by the time they died prematurely in 2060
  ↳ Limitations: people may first be targeted by labelling, overly concerned with street crime (ignoring crimes of the elite/ones which are costly and harmful)
• Wilson and Kelling - Broken Windows Theory: leaving broken windows unrepaired, tolerating aggressive behaviour etc sends a signal no one cares
  ↳ absence of both formal social control and informal social control & so the area becomes a magnet for deviance

Question 14

Left Realist - Social Class and Crime

Answer 14

Lea and Young

• Relative deprivation
• Marginalisation
• Subculture

Limitations

• Should tackle structural issues as the causes of crime that primarily lie in the unequal structure of society
  ↳ major structural changes are needed to reduce levels of offending
• Young et al: we need to deal with the social inequalities of society such as the unfairness of rewards and the inequality of opportunity
  ↳ eg provide decent housing and jobs

Question 15

Ethnicity and Crime

Answer 15

• Both Black and Asian people are more likely to be stopped and searched than Whites
• Black people are 3x as likely to be sent to prison compared to whites
• Whites report the highest overall levels of offending compared to all other ethnic minority groups
• Different levels of victimisation amongst various ethnic groups
• Just over half of adults arrested in London were from minority ethnic groups
• Two-thirds of children arrested in London were from minority ethnic groups
• Minority ethnic groups are over represented at many stages throughout the CJS compared with the White ethnic group
• Black people are 9x more likely to be stopped and searched, 2x more likely to be arrested and 3x more likely to be sent to jail

Question 16

Role of Cultural Factors

Answer 16

Tony Sewell

• lack of black father figures and mums not disciplining their children enough
  ↳ so they follow the ‘hyper-masculine’ role models often shown in rap music videos on MTV which helps them to create a ‘gangsta’ indenture where they achieve status amongst their peer group for being deviant
  ↳ leads to deviant/criminal peer groups and subcultures
• Evaluation - Driver & Reynolds: Caribbean single mothers are well connected/not isolated and often in long term relationships with a man who plays an active role in children’s lives

Evaluating Cultural Factors

• Might be accused of explaining crimes by drawing on stereotypes
• Official statistics only collect very basic stats on ethnicity and so there is no real way to evaluate the above theories
• Difficult to separate our cultural from material factors such as unemployment and poverty, which are emphasised by Left Realists

Question 17

Perspectives on Explaining Variations in offending by ethnic groups

Answer 17

• Family structure/differing value systems
• Left Realism: explains ethnic differences in offending through the different amounts of relative deprivation and marginalisation experiences by different ethnic groups
• Gilroy - Political resistance to racism: there is a myth of black criminality and that criminality from ethnic minorities is a response to racism in wider society and other historical factors
• Neo-Marxism: media and the authorities exaggerate crimes of ethnic minorities in order to create scapegoats for social problems which are really caused by the failings of the capitalist system
• Reiner - Institutional Racism: racist and sexist canteen culture exists among the police and the concepts of systemic racism and institutional racism embedded in the CJS

Question 18

Neo-Marxism - Stuart Hall: Policing the crisis

Answer 18

• Examined the moral panic that developed over mugging in the 1970
• It was actually growing more slowly than in the previous decade and argued that a moral panic over black criminality at the time created a diversion away from the wider economic crisis
• Focused on how capitalism caused crime and on the reaction of the criminalised black youth
• Publics attention is firmly focused on the problem of black criminality rather than the deeper problems of the capitalist system

Question 19

Paul Gilroy - Political Resistance to Racism

Answer 19

• Ethnic minority crime was a form of political resistance to racism in British society
• When early migrants came to Britain they faced discrimination and hostility and drew upon the tradition of anti-colonial struggle to develop cultures of resistance against white dominated
  authorities and police forces
  ↳ crimes such as rioting and other forms of civil unrest in black communities could be explained as a reaction against multiple forms of racism in society
• ’Myth of Black Criminality’: attributed statistical differences in recorded criminality between ethnic groups as being due to police stereotyping and racism

Evaluations

• Criticised by Lea and Young
  ↳ first generation immigrants were very law-abiding citizens
  ↳ most crime is against other people of the same ethnic group and so cannot been seen as resistance to racism
  ↳ criticises Gilroy for romanticising the criminals as somehow revolutionary
  ↳ marginalised and the relatively deprived are more likely to be victims as well as criminal and so solutions must be found to tackle the root causes - most crime is reported to police not uncovered by them so it is difficult to suggest racism within the police itself

Question 20

Criminal Justice, Ethnicity and Racism

Answer 20

• Paul Gilroy & Stuart Hall: crime statistics are social constructed and these statistics do not reflect underlying differences in crime rates
  ↳ variations in stop and search rates and imprisonment rates by ethnicity show a higher proportion of black and Asian criminals are caught and prosecuted compared to white criminals
• Graham and Bowling: 43% of blacks and 44% of whites had similar/almost identical rates of crime - Asians had lower rates
• Bowling and Phillips: ethnic minority cases are more likely to be dropped that whites, and blacks and Asians are less likely to be found guilty
  ↳ never enough evidence to prosecute as it is mainly based on racist stereotypes
• Jail sentences are more likely to be given to blacks (68%) compared to whites (55%) or Asians (59%) whereas whites and Asians were more likely to receive community sentences
  ↳ Hood: black men were 5x more likely to be jailed and given a sentence which is 3 months longer than whites

Question 21

History of race relations with the police

Answer 21

• From the 1970s there was breakdown in relations with the police and ethnic minority communities
• In 1999 the Macpherson report branded the police force ‘institutionally racist’
• Reiner: there is a racist and sexist canteen culture that pervades the police force today

Stephen Lawrence

• Killed in 1993 at a bus stop when he was 18 by a gang of racist teens
• Dobson & Norris we’re found guilty in 2012 19 years on with life sentences
• Police immediately assumed his murder was related to him being in a gang and the police knew about the Acourt brothers as they had already killed multiple people
• The MacPherson enquiry was established to look into the Stephen Lawrence case and 6 years after his murder it found that the Metropolitan police were institutionally racist
  ↳ racism was an important factor in the failure of the police investigation into Lawrence’s murder and made 70 recommendations to show zero tolerance for racism in society
  ↳ the investigation and been disrupted by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership
  ↳ abolition of the double jeopardy rule lead to the conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris in 2012

2011 London Riots

• Started due to the murder of Mark Duggan: an unarmed black man police shot
• Started as a peaceful protest but escalated but police made very limited attempts to talk to demonstrators, so tensions where high
• £227,000 worth of damage done to Tottenham & £250m worth of damage done to shops and businesses in London alone
• 11 of the 54 black defendants it dealt with for public disorder or weapons offences to prison, as compared to 5 to 73 white defendants
• 17 of 107 black defendants went to jail versus 21 of 237 who were white meaning that black defendants were 79% more likely to be jailed - Black offenders rights were dismissed, bail applications routinely refused for first time offenders and disproportionate sentences handed out down by an almost all white judiciary

Black Lives Matter Movement

• Police murdered George Floyd by pinning him down by a knee to his neck
  ↳ Floyd called out multiple times he couldn’t breathe yet police still pinned him down even after showing no signs of life
• 2013: BLM used on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman after he shot Travyon Martin
  ↳ Zimmerman remained free for weeks and was only arrested following demonstrations demanding his prosecution: he was then charged in April 2012 for second degree murder
• Systemic racism: policies and practices that exist throughout society/organisations ions that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race
• Various instances of police brutality

Question 22

Gender and Crime

Answer 22

• Majority of court proceedings and convictions are made up of males, with 75% being male in 2013
• Females appear to be substantially underrepresented throughout the CJS compared with males
  ↳ 85% of arrests continue to be accounted for by males in 2019/2020
• 2019: the average custodial sentence length for male offenders was 19.7 months compared to 11.3 months for female offenders
  ↳ female offenders typically receive shorter sentences
• 95% of the prison population were male
• The proportion of females experience domestic abuse in 2019/2020 was 7.3% doubles that of males
  ↳ in homicides where the principal suspect was known to the victim, 67% of cases were with female victims

Question 23

Explaining female conformity and criminality - Biological Theories

Answer 23

• Explain higher rates of crime in terms of biological differences between males and females
• Men have higher testosterone levels and so have higher levels of aggression which is related to higher levels of violent crime
• High testosterone levels links to higher rates of male offending and more serious crimes of male offenders compared to women
• Generally, men are much more aggressive than women
• Dabbs: picture among the high testosterone men is one of delinquency, substance abuse and a tendency towards excess
  ↳ found that high testosterone levels were associated with more violent crimes, parole board decisions against release and more prison rule violations
  ↳ even in women high testosterone levels were related to crimes of unprovoked violence, increased numbers of prior charges and decisions against parole
• Dabbs et al: inmates who had committed sex and violent crimes had higher testosterone levels than images who were incarcerated for property crimes or drug abuse and they violated more rules in prison

Question 24

Explaining Female Conformity and Criminality - Sex Role Theory

Answer 24

• Explains gendered differences in offending in terms of the differences in gender socialisation, gender roles and gender identities
• The norms and values associated with traditional femininity are not conducive to crime while the norms and values associated with traditional masculinity are more likely to lead to crime

Parsons - Female socialisation, traditional female roles and low female crime rates

• females carry out the ‘expressive role’ in the family which involves them caring for their children and looking after the emotional needs of their husbands
• The child caring role also means women are effectively more attached to their families and wider communities than men and so are less likely to commit crime
• Because traditional female gender roles involve women being busier than men (due to dual burden/triple shift) in recent decades, this reduced the opportunities for women to commit crime

Masculinity and high male crime rate

• Early socialisation of boys into traditional masculine identities is at least partially responsible for the higher male crime rate
• Sutherland: boys are taught to be ‘rough and tough’ which makes them more likely to become delinquent
• Parsons: masculinity was then internalised during adolescence which led to boys engaging in more delinquent behaviour than girls
• Cloward and Ohlin: proposed that in gangs, younger members learn through contact with older males that traits such as toughness and dominance are necessary in order to assert a strong masculine reputation

Question 25

Explaining Female Conformity and Criminality - Adler: ‘Liberationist Perspective’

Answer 25

• the emancipation of women and increased economic opportunities for women lead to an increase in the female crime rate
• As women attain social positions similar to men and as the employment patterns become similar, so do their crimes
• Claimed to have found a cross national correlation between levels of women’s economic freedoms and their crime levels

Evaluations of Adler

• Heidensohn: convicted criminals tended to score highly on feminist characteristics on psychology tests and working class women were more prone to criminality and less likely to have been ‘liberated’
  ↳ therefore there is an interplay of class and gender
• Heidensohn and Silvresti: women are not necessarily more criminal but are becoming more criminalised due to the media sensationalisation of violence
  ↳ it is still the vast majority of men who commit the majority of recorded offences
• The Marginalisation Thesis: women’s liberation has indeed led to increased job opportunities for women, but women are much more likely to be employed in part time and/or low paid jobs which are unrewarding and insecure

Question 26

Feminist Perspectives on Women and Crime

Answer 26

• Radical Feminism: Heidensohn’s Control Theory of female conformity
• Marxist Feminism: Pat Carlen theory of female conformity and crime

Heidensohn’s Control Theory

• women were subject to greater social control than men both within the family and in society in general
• Links to sex role theory but she puts more emphasis on the role of men controlling women in society more broadly
  ↳ women, being subject to greater social control, have fewer opportunities for crime

Examples

• In the domestic sphere : women usually have responsibilities which curtail outside activities
  ↳ DV pacifies women
  ↳ men have financial dominance in the home and girls are often more strictlycontrolled with curfews etc
• Women are controlled in public by the fear of rape: they are taught that public spaces have greater danger and difficulty for women than for men and thus are less likely to want to go out into these areas
• Control at work: women tend to engage in occupations where crime is less possible
  ↳ they are much less likely to be employed higher up the management structure where white collar crime is possible
  ↳ they are less likely to hold positions of responsibility

Evaluations

• Hagan: females being subjected to greater social control than males in a study on child raising patterns
• Liberal Feminists: this work is dated and women are less subjected to such levels of social control

Question 27

Explaining Male Crime - Male Roles and Masculinity

Answer 27

West and Zimmerman - ‘Doing Gender’

• Instead of seeing masculinity as something that just happens to men or is done to men, masculinity is seen as something that men do
• Masculinity must be performed and presented recurrently in any situation: constant self-presentation occurs throughout every social interaction in which a man is involved
  ↳ the underlying goal of this performance is the assertion of power an dominance
• The leap to violent activity is not difficult to make: male violence can be used to support and maintain status in the male group and nurture a sense of male identity
  ↳ the use of aggressive and violent acts can allow men to maintain status in their male group