Sociological crime control policies

Question 1

What theories are used to influence social crime control policies?

Answer 1

Strain theory
Labelling theory
right realism
left realism

Question 2

What are 3 ways that Mertons strain theory can be used to make society more equal?

Answer 2

Policies to tackle poverty
Equal opportunities in school
Education in prison

Question 3

What is policies to tackle poverty?

Answer 3

better welfare benefits, wages and job security would reduce crime by giving everyone a more equal chance of achieving success by legal means.

Question 4

What is equal opportunities in school?

Answer 4

treating working-class pupils equally would reduce their failure rate, making them less likely to suffer status frustration and joining delinquent subcultures.

Question 5

What is education in prison?

Answer 5

half of UK prisoners have a reading age of 11. Better education in prisons would help inmates gain skills to get a good job and go straight.

Question 6

Have these been effective?

Answer 6

Societies that spend more on welfare jail fewer people. Those with greater inequality, like the USA, have higher crime rates.

Question 7

What policy developments has labelling theory influenced?

Answer 7

Decriminalisation
Diversion policies
Reintegrative shaming

Question 8

What is decriminalisation?

Answer 8

Decriminalisation takes away the status of criminal law from those acts to which it is applied.
Decriminalising minor offences such as possession of cannabis would mean fewer young people are labelled as criminals.
A criminal record can prevent them from getting a job and lead to secondary deviance.

Question 9

What are Diversion policies?

Answer 9

aim to keep an offender out of the justice system so that we can avoid labelling them as criminals.

Question 10

What are the different diversion policies?

Answer 10

Some diversion policies are informal, like when police use their discretion not to charge someone.

Other diversion policies are formal, such as requiring an offender to attend an anger management programme to avoid prosecution.

Question 11

What is Reintegrative shaming theory?

Answer 11

Reintegrative shaming theory emphasises the importance of shame in criminal punishment.

Question 12

What are the two types of shaming Braithwaite identified?

Answer 12

Disintegrative shaming
Reintegrative shaming

Question 13

What is Disintegrative shaming?

Answer 13

both the crime and the criminal are labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society, pushing them into secondary deviance.

Question 14

What is Reintegrative shaming?

Answer 14

labels the act but not the actor, avoiding stigmatising the offender as evil whilst still encouraging them to repent and encouraging others to admit them back into society.

Question 15

What is an example of Reintegrative shaming?

Answer 15

the offender was charged with stealing letters from several mailboxes. He plead guilty and was sentenced to two months in jail and three years of probation.
As part of reintegrative shaming and his parole conditions, he was ordered to stand outside the post office with a signboard reading ‘‘I stole mail, this is my punishment’’ for eight hours.

Question 16

Are these labelling theory policies effective?

Answer 16

By avoiding labelling people as criminals and keeping them out of the criminal justice system, they avoid pushing individuals into a deviant career.

Question 17

What are the three crime control policies influenced by right realism?

Answer 17

Situational crime prevention
Environmental crime prevention
Penal populism and imprisonment

Question 18

What is situational crime prevention (SCP)?

Answer 18

Clarke (1992) describes situational crime prevention as something that reduces the opportunities for crime by increasing the risks and reducing the rewards.

SCP includes ‘target hardening’ measures such as locking cars and re-shaping the environment to ‘design crime out’ of an area.

For example, barriers were placed on Westminster Bridge following a terrorist attack when a car mounted the pavement, killing six people.

Question 19

Is SCP effective?

Answer 19

burglar alarms, CCTV and improved car security features all have a significant impact on reducing specific crimes.

Question 20

What is Environmental crime prevention?

Answer 20

based on Wilson and Kelling’s ‘broken windows’ theory, which argues that a disorderly neighbourhood sends out the message that nobody cares.
This attracts offenders, who calculate that their activities there will not be investigated. Serious crime will increase and law-abiding citizens will move out if they can.

Question 21

What are the responding consequences to the ‘broken window’ theory?

Answer 21

An environmental improvement strategy
A zero tolerance policing (ZTP) strategy

Question 22

What is An environmental improvement strategy?

Answer 22

all signs of disorder must be tackled promptly e.g., graffiti removed, broken windows repaired etc.

Question 23

What is A zero tolerance policing (ZTP) strategy?

Answer 23

taking a tough, ‘zero tolerance’ stand towards all crime, even the most trivial.

Question 24

What is an example of ZTP?

Answer 24

New York city mayor employed Bill Bratton with one task, Bratton’s job was to reduce crime, drastically.
Bratton introduced his broken windows-based “quality of life initiative.” This initiative cracked down on public drinking, street prostitution, and unsolicited windshield washing.
When Bratton resigned in 1996, felonies were down almost 40% in New York, and the homicide rate had been halved.

Question 25

Is ZTP effective?

Answer 25

ZTP can lead to targeting of ethnic minorities due to police racism, and to confrontations due to heavy-handed ‘military policing’.
ZTP focuses on low-level street crime, ignoring the crimes of the powerful: white collar and state crime.

Question 26

What is penal populism and imprisonment?

Answer 26

This refers to the government attempting to introduce laws that aim to punish criminals, that will be popular with the general public.
Political parties argue that it is necessary to be ‘tough on crime’, and as a result, sentences get harsher, and the prison population grows.

Question 27

What are the four aims of custodial sentencing (imprisonment)?

Answer 27

Incapacitation: to protect other people

Rehabilitation: using education and treatment programmes to change offender behaviour

Retribution: to show society and the victim’s family that the offender has been forced to pay for their actions

Deterrence: to prevent the offender re-offending and demonstrate to society the consequences of similar actions