class1: Counting and Constructing Crime

what counts as a crime?

• violence is also structural

• much violence perpetrated by powerful

• much violence goes unmeasured

• disparate enforcement of law on the books

what counts as a crime? examples

• criminalization of weed and opioids targeting specific minority groups

• fights in high school → lower economic schools call police more than richer schools

Crime reflects

Power (wanting to keep status quo)

why does karakatsanis argue we think we create these definitions of crime and enforce them in these ways?

• benefits the most powerful

• protecting property and maintaining current power relations

examples of definitions of crime?

• camden police department coverage: media reflects unwillingness to challenge the status quo; small reform preserve it

• police enforce evictions, trespassing law, theft; do not attend to violent harm perpetrated by corporation

constructing crime

social construction of reality (symbolic interactionism) → berger and luckman (1966: knowledge and beliefs of what reality is become embedded in the fabric of society)

something that exists because

people behave as if it exists, so much that rules (formal and informal) come to exist in association

Constructing crime example

School to prison pipeline

crime is “created” (richard quinney (1970):

• definition of behavior conferred on some persons by others to serve political interests

• varies by space and time

• power matter

uniform crime reports (UCR)

• reported crime stats (proceeded by police departments)

• participation not required by law

UCR is

• Underreported

• Participation is not required by law (low staffing, not objective, underreported rural areas, doing a poor job they wont)

the national crime victimization survey (NCVS)

come from surveys of the population

• sampling

crime is

socially constructed

trends in rates of crimes are difficult to measure empirically + conceptually

• UCR: PD records. In theory more comprehensive, but participation is option and only measures reported crime.

• NCVS: based on sampled surveys of people’s experiences of surveys

why does this matter?

• The malleability of crime means that elite messaging, media, etc. matter a lot in perceptions of what’s happening with “crime”

• BUT- Trends in rates of crime are difficult to measure, empirically + conceptually

what is ethnography?

qualitative mode of research where investigator immerses themselves in the daily lives of people, groups, organizations, and institutions under study

the researcher is inherently part of the

data collection process

reuben miller

the “gift of proximity”

crime does not equal punishment: the amount we punish is subject to many facts

• Politics and legislation (state and federal, but mostly state)

• Media and public perceptions

• Bureaucratic and institutional capacity