Sociology Crime: Media And Conrtol,punishment And Victims Flashcards
Sociology crime: Media
Representations of crime
Dickinson
30% of newspapers devote space to crime
-exaggerates police success
-exaggerate the risk of being a victim
Sociology crime: Media
News values
Cohn
-news is manufactured
-news values is a criteria by which editors decide it’s newspaper worthy
These include:
Higher status, risk, violence,personalisation
Sociology crime: Media
Media as a cause of crime
Ways media might cause crime?
-imitation- copying deviant role modes
-Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
-glamourising offending
-desensitisation-repeated violence
Sociology crime: Media
Fear of crime
Tumber
-media exaggerate crime and exaggerate the risks to certain groups of people becoming victims
-found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime with heavy TV users expressing greater fear of becoming a victim
Sociology crime: Media
Fear of crime critique
-The correlations doesn’t prove that media viewing causes fear
-e.g it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV
Sociology crime: Media
Relative deprivation
Lea and Young
-left realists argue that mass media increases the sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised social groups
-poorest groups have media access this then presents everyone with imagines of materialistic goods as the norm which results in relative deprivation
-Merton says this pressure causes deviant behaviour when the oppertunity to achieve it legitimately is blocked
Sociology crime: Media
Cultural criminology
Young
-argue that the media turn crime itself into the commodity that people desire
-encouraging crime consumption
-‘mediascape’ blurring between the imagine and crime
E.g police record they’re work to use for reality Tv as a promo
Sociology crime: media
Moral panic and mods and rockers
Cohan
-press exaggerated and distorted events that began a moral panic
-this lead to police arresting more youths and courts harsher penalties
-this confirmed the truth of the media reaction and created more public concern
Sociology crime: Media
Deviance amplification spiral
Cohan
-media make it look like events are spreading and getting out of hand
-this leads to an increase control response from police
-the media further amplified the deviance by defining the groups which lead to youths adopting them and self fulfilling prophecy
Sociology crime: Media
Critique of moral panic
Thornton
-moral panics are now routine and have less impact
-harder for media to create moral panic due to not as much being regarded as universally deviant e.g in the past single motherhood
Sociology crime: Media
Cyber-crime
-new types of media is often met with a moral panic e.g horror comics, video games
-all accused of corrupting young
-same with the internet
-new crime using new tools
Wall said an example of cyber crime:
cyber-theft- includes identity theft or violation of intellectual property
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Situational crime prevention
Clarke
-aims to reduce opportunities for crime
-e.g ‘target hardening’ measures like locking doors and windows to increase effort a burglar needs to make
-this assumes criminals have rational choice and weight up costs and benefits
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Critique of situational crime prevention
Displacement
-Doesn’t reduce crime simply displaces it
-if criminals are rational they will simply more to softer targets
E.g
-target different victim
-tactical using different method
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Environment crime prevention
Broken windows
-lack of concern for disorder in neighbourhoods
-graffiti,littering
-police are only concerned with serious crime leading to respectable members leaving the community
-leads to spiral of decline
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Panopticon
Foucault
-design for a prison in which every cell is visible to the guards from a central tower but guards aren’t a visible to prisoners
-this lead to prisoners not knowing weather they’re being watched
-leads to self surveillance and becomes self discipline
-now operates every where not just in prisons
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Critique of Foucault
Norris
-reviews dozens of studies found that CCTV reduced crime in car parks but has little to no effect on other crime
-could cause displacement
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Synoptic surveillance
Mathiesen
-Panopticon can only allow the few to monitor the many
-where as with media it allows a top-down approach that allows surveillance from below
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Critique of synoptic surveillance
McCahill
-sometimes this bottom up won’t work due to anti terrorism laws, police have power to confiscate the cameras and phones of ‘citizen journalists’
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Justification for deterrence
-punishing the individual discourages them from future offending
-‘making an example’ of them may also act as a public deterrent
-Thatchers ‘short,sharp,shock’
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Justification for rehabilitation
-punishment can be used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend
-e.g training so they can earn an honest living
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Justification for Incapacitation
-removes the offenders capacity to offend again
-e.g imprisonment or cutting off hands
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Functionalist perspectives aims
Durkheim
-aim of punishment is to uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Restitutive justice
Durkheim
-crime is interdependent so it needs to be repaired
-e.g compensation
-it’s needed to return society to its equilibrium
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Marxism
-the function is to maintain social order
-as part of a repressive state apparatus
-defending ruling classes property against lower classes
-capitalism puts a price on workers time: so too prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crime against society
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Positivist victimology
Mires
-aims to identify what factors produce patterns in victimisation (what makes them more likely)
Von hentig
-found that females and the earldely are more likely to be victims due to some sense of invite being a victim
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Critique of positivist victimology
Amir
-claim that this can be seen as victim blaming
-claims that one in five rapes a victim precipitated is not very different to saying they asked for it
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Critical victimology
-Based on Marxism and feminism
-structural factors like patriarchy and poverty which powerless groups like women or the poor are at greater risk of victimisation
Whyte
-safety crimes where employers violate the law that leads to death or injury of workers are often explained as an accident prone worker
Sociology crime: control, punishment and victims
Critical victimology label
-state have the power to apply or deny the label victim
-the criminal justice system have the power to apply to the label and remove it
-e.g if the police decide to not press charges against a man for assaulting his Wife which removes his criminal status
