The Social Construction of Crime Flashcards
Deviance is _______
In the eye of the beholder
Moral entrepreneurs
People who want to influence the ideas of what is right and wrong
Moral crusades
Attempt to change the law
What effects result from the Moral Entrepreneurs campaign to change law?
The creation of a new group of outsiders - deviants who break the law
The expansion of a social control agency to enforce new laws and impose labels on offenders
Who argued ‘Juvenile delinquency’
Platt
What does Becker note that social control agencies campaign for?
Changes in the law to increase their power
Piliavin and Briar found that the police’s decision to arrest a youth was based on:
Manners/dress
Gender
Class
Ethnicity
Time
Place
Cicourel’s typifications
Prejudices and stereotypes about what a typical criminal looks and behaves like
What did officers typifications lead to?
Officers concentrating on certain types of individual. Results in law enforcement showing a class bias, leading to more arrests and confirming their stereotypes
CIcourel study of agents of social control?
Probation officers held the view that delinquency was caused by broken homes & poverty. They saw these youths as more likely to re-offend so less likely to support non-custodial sentences for them
What does Cicourel argue about official crime statistics?
They don’t give us a valid picture of the patterns of crime and can’t be used as a resource to show facts about crime
What do interactionists see crime statistics as?
Socially constructed
What do interactionists believe crime statistics do?
Shows us the activities of the agents of social control. At each stage of the CJS, they make choices about whether to proceed, outcome depends on the label
Dark figure of crime
Crimes that go undetected, unreported and unrecorded
