unit 4: sociological positivism Flashcards
sociological perspective
- social structure and social learning that contributes to criminal behavior
- social pathology
pathology
- behaviors that are habitual, maladaptive and compulsive
3 key periods:
- the rise of sociology as academic discipline. mid 19th to early 20th century
- professional sociology (early 1920s- WWII)
- postwar (mid 1940s 1950s)
first period: 1800s to 1920s
- the rise
- consensus over values and norms
- constructed of broad categorization of societal types (pre-industrial and industrial)
Emile Durkheim
- egoism prevention, but must prevent Anomie first
- structured {divisions of labour}
{divisions of labor}
- mechanical solidarity: MS preindustrial society where individuals are all equals, and share the same skills, tasks and beliefs
- organic solidarity: OS industrial society that are heterogeneous, all different
what will happen if deviance occurs in those divisions
MS: removing that individuals from the community
OS: use of restitutive sanctions, restore social disruption
second period: early 1920s- WWII
- professionalism emerges
- they looked at the waves of migration and how that impacted crime
the chicago school
- impact of lifestyle, urban growth and social change
- {social disorganization theory}
{social disorganization theory}
- Clifford Shawn and Henry McKay
- poverty root of crime
- they looked at different cities and their shared characteristics, poverty, decaying buildings… and the difference between better maintained neighborhoods
- [5 concentric circles]
[concentric circles]
- central business district
- transitional zone (factories, recent immigration groups….)
- working-class zone(single family tenements)
- residential zone(single family home, yards garages)
- commuter zone(suburbs)
- the closest to the center the highest chance of crime rate
third period: postwar-1950s
- economic boom growth
- how to explain persistent crime rates despite good socio-economic conditions
; examining the distribution of opportunity thru the community
Robert K. Merton’s
- mal-integration:: disjuncture between cultural goals and institutional means
- everyone shared the same goal but had different means getting to it
- abstract typology (deviant typology) 5 ways
- conformism: accept, accept; need good schooling for a good financial stable job
- innovation: accept, reject, accepts the goal but lacks to get the mean to get the goal
- ritualism: reject, accept; expect culturally defined goals but know they cant attain them. staying in the same job knowing you aren’t moving up
- retreatism: reject, reject; using drugs, giving up on life
- rebellion: new goals, new means, have their own little world, hippie lifestyle
abstract typology of Merton’s
basic concepts: of sociological positivism
- rehabilitation
- criminal behavior is learned (social learning theory and subcultural theory)
differential association
- Sutherland and Cressy
- describes process criminal behavior is associated with people that carry that criminal norms
- hunters situation which his bad friends
- argued that certain subcultures emerge as an new cultural system because of class conflict and blocked opportunities
- respect rather than financial support
Albert Cohen
- argued crime is collective (learned from peers)
- due to a sense of injustice, legitimate opportunities are absent
Cloward and Ohlin
Oscar Newman
- environmental criminal theory
- the impact of architecture and environments on crime
- [defensible space]
[defensible space]
“end” crime by increasing the levels of surveillance an creating spaces that discourage crime
life course criminology
- longitudinal study
- connect social history and structure to human lives
- two important concepts:
1. Trajectory: path of development over life representing patterns of behavior
2. Transitions: life events - relies on these two and their impact on a youngling life
lussier and Mathesius in caNDA
- they did the study on sex offenders ow how much likely will that person do that again or not
- not all sex offenders are juvenile offenders
risk and resilience
- looking ate negative factors(poverty) as well as “productive” or “resilience factors”(family cohesion) on emerge of criminal behavior
- to stop it we need more positive adaptation in the conditions some youth are at risk
what are some theories of causes a crime that the sociological positivims looks at
- life course criminiolgy
- routine activity and life-course theory
- differential association
critiques
- only focus on working-class
- its presumption of consensus about the goal and lifestyle
- fails to account the structural inequalities
- people who value status quo are labelled criminal
- oversimplifying link between crime and opportunity
