unit two - ac4.1 sociological theories influencing policies

Question 1

merton and subcultural theories

Answer 1

• policies to tackle poverty: better welfare benefits, wages and job security would reduce crime by giving everyone a more equal chance of achieving success by legal means
• equal opportunities in school: treating working-class pupils equally would reduce their failure rate, making them less likely to suffer status frustration and join delinquent subcultures
• education in prison: half of uk prisoners have a reading age of 11, better education would help inmates gain skills to get a good job and go straight
• evidence shows that anti-poverty policies have a positive effect, societies that spend more on welfare jail fewer people

Question 2

labelling theory

Answer 2

• decriminalising minor offences such as possession of cannabis would mean many fewer young people would be labelled as criminals
• diversion policies, avoid labelling, informal such as when police use their discretion not to charge someone, formal such as requiring an offender to attend an anger management programme to avoid prosecution
• disintegrative shaming, both crime and criminal are labelled as bad and offender is excluded from society
• reintegrative shaming, labels act but not the actor, avoids stigmatising the offender as evil
• evidence shows crime control policies based on labelling theory can deal successfully with minor offences and young offenders

Question 3

Right Realism - situational crime prevention

Answer 3

• aim to reduce opportunities for crime by increasing the risks or difficulties of commiting the crime and reducing the rewards
• includes ‘target hardening’ measures (locking cars,employing security guards)
• one problem is displacement, criminals are rational actors, will look for a softer target if one is too hard
• may commit crime at a different time/place, different method or different target

Question 4

Right Realism - environmental crime prevention

Answer 4

• environmental improvement strategy, all signs of disorder must be tackled promptly, graffiti removed
• a zero tolerance policing strategy, taking tough, ‘zero tolerance’ stance towards all crime, even the most trivial
• crime fell after ZTP introduced in New York in 1990s, may have been due to other factors
• Males and Mcallair found that ZTP curfews can increase juvenile crime, by removing law-abiding youths from the streets, they leave then emptier and favourable to crime
• ZTP can lead to targeting of ethnic minorites due to police racism and to confrontations due to heavy-handed ‘military policing’
• ZTP and SCP fail to tackle structural cases of crime such as inequality

Question 5

Right realism - penal populism and imprisonment

Answer 5

• ‘prison works’ from the 1990s governments began to take the view that tougher penalties were needed
• incapacitation, criminals become incapable of harming the public - jail takes them ‘out of circulation’
• deterrence, criminals think twice before offending when they see tough punishments handed out
• politicians believed tough penalties were popular with the public, became to be known as ‘penal populism’
• crime act: automatic life sentences for a second serious sexual or violent offence, minimum of seven years for a third class A drug trafficking conviction, minimum of three years for a third domestic burglary conviction
• penal populism has led to rising numbers in jail from 45,000 in 1993 to 80,000 by 2021
• England and Wales imprison a bigger proportion of their population than any other Western European country
• 2020, 76 suicides, five homicides, 65,000 incidents of self-harm and 9,800 assaults on staff

Question 6

Right realism - is prison effective?

Answer 6

• incapacitation, prison might be said to ‘work’ temporarily-offenders cant commit crimes against the public while in jail, can commit crimes against other inmates
• rehabilitation, overcrowding and budget cuts mean many prisoners lack access to education, skills training or treatment programmes that would help them become law-abiding citizens
• recidivism, imprisonment is ineffective in preventing repeat offending (48% of adults are re-convicted within a year of release)
• detterence, right realists argue that the risk of jail deters would be criminals, who make rational choices about offending, studies show that imprisonment doesn’t deter offenders enough to affect overall crime rates

Question 7

Left Realism - policies to reduce inequality

Answer 7

• call for major structural changes to tackle discrimination, inequality of opportunity and unfairness of rewards, and to provide good jobs and housing for all - woukd reduce relative deprivation, main cause of crime

Question 8

Left Realism - democratic policing

Answer 8

• police losing support, especially in poorer areas, flow of info dries up and they have to rely on ‘military policing’ (stop searches)
• to win black support police must involve local communities in deciding their priorities
• neighbourhood policing and police community support officers have been introduced to build better relationships with communities
• many forces now make cannabis possession a low priority crime
• domestic violence and hate crime are now a higher priority

Question 9

Left realism - multi-agency approach

Answer 9

• argue that crime control must involve many other agencies apart from the police: schools, youth services, housing departments, social services, the probation service and NHS
• local councils can improve facilities for young people

Question 10

Left realism - new labour policies

Answer 10

• some policies advocated by left realists reflect the approach of the New Labour governments from 1997 to 2010 which aimed to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’

Question 11

surveillance theories - CCTV

Answer 11

• modern form of panopticon; surveillance system in which prison guards can observe inmates without the prisoners knowing whether they were being watched
• CCTV depends on criminals believing they are being watched and being deterred by this, Gill and Loveday found that very few criminals were put off by CCTV, Norris found that CCTV has little effect other than displacement
• has had some successes, identification of David Copeland (right-wing terrorist convicted of a nail-bombing campaign, however cameras rarely catch someone ‘in the act’, critics suggest the real function may be to reassure the public, even though it makes little differences to their security
• stereotyping, Norris and Armstrong found CCTV operators using racist stereotypes, singling out black youths for surveillance
• ‘surveillance creep’ where technology introduced for one purpose gets extended to another

Question 12

surveillance theories - profiling

Answer 12

• involves using data to draw up a statistical picture of likely offenders, often using official crime stats to do so
• individuals can be profiled according to specific characteristics to decide what degree of risk they pose
• airport security screening checks are based on offender ‘risk factors’ using information gathered about passengers (age,sex,nationality) they can be given a risk score, anyone scoring above a green level can be stopped, questioned and searched etc
• profiling can be discriminatory
• police act on the profile by stopping Black youths more than other groups
• any black youths who are actually offending are more likely to be caught than offenders from other groups
• black youths thus continue to be over-represented in the statistics and this will seem to confirm the profile, police will continue to target black youths - vicious cycle.