Midterm SOC

Nils Christie

A criminology professor (1928-2015) known for criticizing drug prohibition, industrial society, and prisons.

Mass incarceration

The major issue Christie first wrote about extensively.

Late modern social relations

Christie's main link in explaining mass incarceration.

United States

Country that leads in incarceration rates.

Incarceration after 1984

Increased sharply even while crime and homicide rates decreased.

Crime rates and incarceration

The mismatch suggests that crime rates do not directly determine incarceration rates.

Crime as socially constructed

Christie's view that crime exists within a legal and institutional framework.

Claiming harm is a crime

A process of sense-making within a social and legal context.

Power's role in crime definition

Powerful groups and institutions shape what counts as crime.

Conflicts have been stolen

CJS has taken conflicts away from victims and offenders, turning them into cases between offender and the state.

Ethical limits in crime control

They should define crime control instead of industrial or economic ones.

Truth in sentencing

Laws requiring offenders to serve most of their sentence before being eligible for release.

Charge stacking

Prosecutors piling multiple charges to pressure defendants into accepting plea bargains.

Probation

Non-custodial supervision in the community where an offender avoids prison but must comply with conditions.

Managerial ideology in justice

Encourages prioritizing efficiency and predictability over individual fairness.

Crime complex

A set of shared beliefs in late modern societies that crime is both inevitable and intolerable, leading to constant fear and demand for control.

Responsibilization strategy

The government shifts responsibility for crime prevention from the state to individuals, communities, and private sectors.

Victim-centered discourse

A focus on the experiences of victims in public crime narratives.

Correctionalism as grammar of crime control

An approach focused on rehabilitation as the central goal, assuming state capacity to reduce crime.

Garland's view of crime control

The shift from rehabilitative justice to punitive and risk-oriented strategies due to social changes.

Hobbesian Revolution

The philosophical and political rationale for a centralized state monopoly on justice.