Wk: 3 Crime and Deviance Flashcards
What is Deviance?
Norm- or rule-breaking behaviour
that is usually subject to negative social
sanctions
What are Sanctions?
Forms of control intended to encourage or enforce conformity to the rules or social norms that prevail within a society or social group. May be formal or informal.
Sanctions in a federal political system (i.e., Australia) can be problematic when some behaviours are criminalised in some
states but not others (e.g., prostitution)
What is Crime?
Behaviour that is forbidden and punishable by the law. What is crime is political as it is the state that defines criminality.
The state decides what type of sanction should be applied and sometimes this can be rather controversial
Why are nationwide statistics on crime
hard to establish?
- The dark figure of crime –
undetected and/or unreported
crime - Changing definitions of crime
- Changing resources of law and
order - The influence of discretionary
decisions within the criminal
justice system
What The Dark Figure of
Crime?
- Definition: The number of criminal acts that are not reported to the police and therefore do not appear in official recorded crime rates.
Why?
* Lack of detection: Your computer may have been hacked before and your home entered without you knowing.
* Lack of reporting: Property crime and crimes against the person including all violent crimes, excluding homicide,
tend to be underreported. Sexual assault is one of the least frequently reported crimes.
What is reported?
* Motor vehicle theft (95%)
* Break-in (72%)
Why don’t people report crime?
* Perception that prosecution is unlikely (e.g.,
sexual abuse)
* Intimidation by other parties including the
offender (e.g., child abuse)
* Perception of what has occurred as a private
matter (e.g., domestic violence)
* Crimes as individually lacking impact but
collectively damaging to society (e.g., fraud, tax
evasion and software piracy).
* The reporting authority does not always agree a crime has been committed due to a lack of evidence.
Are crime and deviance socially constructed?
Crime and deviance are socially constructed as
criminal justice statistics are the result of
social processes. Crime statistics are not a
direct reflection of what has truly occurred in
society.
Biological & Psychological theory on crime
Crime is the result of personality
or biochemical defect
* Deviant behaviour is characterised
as abnormal
* Bowlby (1946) argues that
deprivation of maternal love in
early childhood can result in the
development of psychopathic
personalities
Criticisms:
Determinism
* We have no choice but to partake in
criminal behaviour if we have a
particular personality trait or chemical
imbalance.
* Biological and psychological factors
tend to interact with the environment.
* You may be genetically predisposed
to psychopathy but you received
affection, care and were provided for
as a child but here you are, studying
1014HSV and wanting to work in
health.
Crime as narrowly defined/circular
understanding
* Crime is understood as innate to
individuals.
* If we ignore that social class, for
example, interacts with our
genetic predisposition then we
may as well conclude that
people of the lower class are
biologically (or psychologically)
more criminal.
Deviance as it relates to functionalism
Deviance (and crime) are the result of
not integrating into society and from
not attaching to mainstream culture.
- There are two main schools of
functionalism in regard to deviance:
traditionalists and anomie theorists.
Traditionalist view on deviance as it relates to functionalism
Deviance is not only normal by
serves a function in defining the
difference between what we
consider right and wrong.
The Function of Deviance
1. Crime and deviance serve a boundary maintenance function (social reactions are warnings)
2. Crime and deviance are an important source of social change (Deviance becomes normal)
3. Crime strengthens social solidarity through the reinforcement of collective sentiments (outrage strengthens social ties) – for e.g., the societal reaction to the murder of Hannah Clarke
The Function of Deviance according to Durkheim 1938
Excessively high levels of crime and deviance
indicate a weak culture wherein order and stability
are threatened
* A harmonious society means people have a firm
sense of their place within it – socially, morally
and psychologically.
* Anomie: A cultural condition described by
Durkheim in which morals and customary
constraints on behaviour were weak.
* High levels of crime indicate anomie and risk of
the breakdown of society
What is Anomie Theory (functionalism)?
Also known as strain theory as deviance results from tension between dysfunctional social arrangements thus straining relationships between different social groups and people(e.g., Indigenous and non- indigenous people)
Anomie is seen as the result of a discrepancy
between cultural goals and means of achievement.
For example, people are socialised into the American dream of excessive material success and the means to do so but not provided with those means
Cultural goal/expectation of
being a good citizen:
Mansions, fast cars, fashion,
technology – money to waste.
* Means to do so: Not provided
to all people equally
* Pressure to achieve these goals
leads to the usage of criminal
means.
* Merton calls this problem
structural dysfunction.
What is structural dysfunction?
Cultural expectation of being a good citizen is to have expensive things. Theres a pressure to achieve these goals that can lead to the usage of criminal means.
Merton coined this as structural dysfunction
What are criminal and non-criminal responses to anomie?
Conformity- Acceptance of society’s demands and a
lifetime engaged in a futile struggle to
achieve material success
Innovation- The creation of novel ways of achieving
material success, including criminal ones
Ritual - The superficial acceptance of society’s
goals but no genuine effort to achieve
them (e.g. bureaucrats blindly following
rules)
Retreat - The rejection of material success and little
effort to achieve it (Merton regarded
substance users as retreatists)
Rebellion - Resistance to both the goals and their
means of attainment, and efforts to
change the rules of engagement (Merton
regarded revolutionaries and eco-warriors
as rebels)
What is the Chicago school of thought?
A social ecological model of crime
* Crime and deviance is concentrated
geographical areas
* Focused on urban social processes with a
subcultural one that focused on the local
environment and the subjective experiences
of the deviant.
* Deviance is a result of rural environments
shifting to urban environments where controls
such as the family and church are lost.
* Industrialisation, urbanization and
immigration lessened social control facilitated
by the family, community and the Church.
* The challenging of traditional norms =
Deviance
What are some criticisms of the Chicago school of thought?
- Overemphasis on Social
Disorganisation: Limits focus on
criminal subcultures - Incomplete: Neither comprehensive or
thorough explanation for the causes of
crime. - Scientific terminology as misleading:
Social relationships are portrayed as
natural and thus inevitable. Does not
explain that differences of power can
explain social arrangements (e.g., the
effect of policy on low income and
high unemployment).
What is Social Control Theory?
- Crime explained in terms of an inverse
relationship between the strength or
weakness of social control and low or high
levels of crime. - A pure focus on socialisation in explaining
deviance. - Asks why people conform
- Norms and values lead to social control
- Social control limits deviance.
