Sociology: Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key sociological concepts, perspectives, theorists, and empirical studies of crime, deviance, and social control.

Coercion

A form of social control where compliance is forced upon individuals.

Legitimation

A form of social control where individuals are trained and socialised to accept rules.

Internalisation

A form of social control where societal rules become an integrated part of an individual's personal identity.

Formal Social Control

Explicit laws and rules enforced by formal agencies where individuals who break them receive formal punishments.

Informal Social Control

Unwritten rules, norms, and values that regulate behaviour through informal reactions such as being ostracised.

Collective Conscience

Durkheim's concept of the universal shared beliefs, values, and norms of a society that are represented by the law.

Police Efficiency Fallacy

The media misrepresentation that the police typically catch the perpetrator ('gets his man'), when in reality most crime goes unsolved.

Dramatic Fallacy

The media tendency to focus heavily on rare, dramatic crimes such as murder and rape, which are usually impulsive outcomes of fights rather than typical crimes.

Ingenuity Fallacy

The false impression created by media that criminals are clever masterminds who carefully plan offences, when most crime is opportunistic and impulsive.

Deviancy Amplification

A spiral described by Stan Cohen where media sensationalism creates a moral panic, casts offenders as 'folk devils', and provokes a police crackdown, leading to more arrests and deviance.

Macpherson Report

An inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence that found the Metropolitan Police to be institutionally racist, supporting the view that racial abuse often goes unreported due to distrust in police action.

Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

A large annual victimisation survey interviewing approximately 35,000 adults and 3,000 children to measure experienced crime independently of police recording practices.

Boundary Maintenance

Durkheim's concept that society's collective condemnation and punishment of criminals reinforces shared norms, values, and social solidarity.

Safety Valve (Functionalism)

The functionalist idea that certain minor or deviant acts (such as prostitution or pornography, as cited by Polsky and Davis) release social tension and prevent larger threats to social order.

Strain Theory (Merton)

The theory that deviance occurs when there is a structural disconnect between culturally encouraged goals (e.g., the American Dream) and the legitimate means available to achieve them.

Innovation (Merton)

An adaptation to strain where an individual accepts cultural goals of monetary success but uses illegitimate, new methods to achieve them.

Ritualism (Merton)

An adaptation to strain where an individual abandons societal goals of success but rigidly conforms to legitimate rules and routines.

Retreatism (Merton)

An adaptation to strain where an individual rejects both cultural goals and legitimate means, dropping out of mainstream society.

Rebellion (Merton)

An adaptation to strain where an individual rejects existing societal goals and means, substituting them with new alternatives to bring about social transformation.

Status Frustration (Cohen)

The personal conflict experienced by working-class boys who cannot achieve success and status through conventional education, leading to the formation of delinquent subcultures.

Alternative Status Hierarchy

A subcultural structure formed by delinquent youths where mainstream societal values are inverted, awarding status for non-utilitarian, deviant behaviours.

Focal Concerns (Miller)

Core values within working-class youth culture—including toughness, street cred, autonomy, fatalism, trouble, and excitement—that directly encourage delinquent behavior.

Edgework (Lyng)

Impulsive, voluntary risk-taking behaviour where individuals experience a 'buzz' by exploring boundaries and living on the edge.

Criminal Subcultures (Cloward and Ohlin)

Subcultures that emerge in areas with established adult criminal networks, providing young people an illegitimate apprenticeship in utilitarian crime.

Conflict Subcultures (Cloward and Ohlin)

Street gang subcultures that arise in disorganized areas lacking criminal networks, where youths use violence and turf wars to vent frustration and earn respect.

Retreatist Subcultures (Cloward and Ohlin)

Subcultures comprised of 'double failures' who could not succeed in either legitimate or illegitimate opportunity structures, often revolving around illegal drug use.

Drift Theory (Matza)

The theory that delinquents do not hold fundamentally opposed values to society, but rather drift periodically into subterranean values through techniques of neutralisation.

Criminogenic Capitalism (Bonger)

The Marxist view that capitalism is inherently crime-producing because it promotes egoism, ruthless competition, greed, and consumerist advertising while generating poverty and alienation.

Selective Law Enforcement

The Marxist concept that the criminal justice system disproportionately targets and prosecutes working-class offences while treating white-collar and corporate crimes leniently.

Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser)

Institutions such as education, the media, and religion that manipulate ideas and control working-class thoughts to prevent revolt against capitalist inequality.

Repressive State Apparatus (Althusser)

Agencies of physical coercion—such as the police, the courts, and armed forces—used to suppress working-class uprisings when ideological control fails.

Critical Criminology

A neo-Marxist approach that views lawbreaking as a potentially conscious political act of resistance against capitalist oppression and the ruling class.

Myth of Black Criminality (Gilroy)

The neo-Marxist argument that statistical ethnic disparities in crime reflect police stereotyping and racist labelling rather than actual differences in criminal behaviour.

Relative Deprivation (Lea and Young)

A Left Realist cause of crime describing the subjective feeling of being economically deprived in comparison to others, intensified by media messages of consumerism.

Marginalisation (Lea and Young)

The condition of powerless groups (like unemployed youth) who lack clear representation, political voice, or trade unions, leading them to express frustration via violence and riots.

Routine Activity Theory (Felson)

A Right Realist perspective stating that crime requires three elements to occur: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of a capable guardian.

The Underclass (Murray)

A group created by state welfare dependency characterised by fatherless households, inadequate socialisation of young boys, and alternative delinquent values.

Rational Choice Theory (Clarke)

A Right Realist approach proposing that offenders rationally weigh up the expected risks and benefits before committing a crime.

Broken Windows Thesis (Wilson and Kelling)

The theory that tolerating minor disorder, like graffiti or broken windows, signals a breakdown in community control and invites serious criminal activity.

Zero Tolerance Policing

A strict law enforcement approach that vigorously prosecutes minor infractions and first-time offenders to prevent the onset of serious crime.

Communitarianism (Etzioni)

The principle that local communities must reclaim social control and take active responsibility for self-policing instead of entirely relying on the state and police.

Primary Deviance (Lemert)

Deviant acts that are mostly unrecognised, uncaught, or rationalised, leaving no lasting impact on the individual's social identity or self-concept.

Secondary Deviance (Lemert)

Deviance that results from the societal reaction and public labelling of an initial offence, causing the deviant label to become the individual's master status.

Control Theory (Heidensohn)

A feminist theory explaining low female crime rates through the patriarchal surveillance and control exercised over women across the home, public spaces, and the workplace.

Class Deal and Gender Deal (Carlen)

The twin social contracts that keep working-class women conformist: material rewards from labour (class deal) and emotional/financial support for fulfilling domestic roles (gender deal).

Chivalry Thesis (Pollak)

The argument that women commit substantial crime but are treated leniently and gallantly by the predominantly male criminal justice system.

Harm of Reduction (Henry and Milovanovic)

A postmodernist category of social harm occurring when an individual directly experiences immediate personal loss, property deprivation, or bodily injury.

Harm of Repression (Henry and Milovanovic)

A postmodernist category of social harm occurring when power structures restrict human potential and personal growth (e.g., hate crimes, systematic oppression, sexual abuse).

Panopticon (Foucault)

A circular prison design by Bentham used by Foucault to show how constant visibility induces invisible disciplinary power, transforming external policing into internalised self-surveillance.

Redistributive Justice (De Haan)

A restorative justice model that prioritises repairing victim harm through voluntary mediation sessions between victims and offenders over inflicting punitive injury on the offender.