SOC 368 study guide/test prep

Crime as fascination & entertainment

• conversation topic in everyday life

• plentiful imagery in mass media (books, film & TV, internet

• college enrollment numbers (still not sure how this one is connected)

Knowledge of crime

• omnipresent imagery

  • opinions and knowledge

• Is what we know correct?

  • Street (conventional, interpersonal) vs Suite (people at higher statuses committing crime) crime

  • Rape: Blitz (someone you don’t know) vs. Acquaintance

  • conventional crime: mostly violent?

Mass Media Trends

• key source of knowledge for many

• Bias

  • What is shown

  • what is NOT shown

• WHO and WHAT is/are represented

Understanding Representation

• media may accurately reflect reality - or distort it

  • which crimes are committed

  • by whom

  • who is victimized?

• Representative depictions correspond to reality (1:1)

• Un-representative depictions do not “line up” w/ reality (1:1 is distorted in some way)

Over-representation

• amount depicted is larger than reality (violent crime)

• murder and violent (interpersonal) crime

• Inter-racial victimization

• African American & Latinx folks as drug dealers

• Strangers as perpetrators

Under-representation

• the amount depicted is smaller than reality (property crime)

• crime vs females & children by non-strangers

• White collar offenses

• African American & Latinx folks as victims

• Accurate Patterns: family violence & sexual assault

• Hate crimes

“Crime” is socially relative

• acts are not inherently ‘criminal’

• ‘crime’ is an attributed quality

• The meaning of ‘crime’ varies

Forms of Social variation

1. Historical

• Variation in a society across time

2. Cross-cultural

• difference(s) between 2 cultures

3. Intra-social/political (power) (can die for country but can’t have legal drink

• variation w/i a society at 1 point in time

Crime & related phenomena are social

• collective Reponses

• crime waves and moral panics

• social patterns (race, class, gender, sexuality

  • Offending

  • Victimization

  • Community and government responses

  • fear of crime

Crime as a sociological problem

• “explain how patterns of crime arise from the interplay political, economic, social, and cultural forces

The unholy trinity

• “one of criminology’s most important tasks is to examine the relationships in this triangle”

Fear of crime

• experienced by individuals…but socially patterned

  • who has high rates?

  • what inc. fear of crime? (tv news consumption, % of African Americans in a neighborhood

Fear of crime affects communities

• High f of C → low community participation & solidarity

Fear of crime as a social resource

• campaign strategy

• Scapegoating

• support for harsh penalties & more surveillance

• distraction

  • revenue stream & jobs (exacerbate crime to bring in more money)

Criminology

• knowledge about study of crime

The big 3 of crimnology

• law breaking

• Reponses(s)

• law making

Criminilization process

• defining acts as a criminal

• surveilling the behavior

• If detected: Reponses to behavior

1 ongoing debate

• CCP has contributed to a more rational and humane society OR CP operates to defend the interest of some at the expense of others

Politics

• struggles over power

Definitions of Crime Shape the discipline

• do we take the criminalization process for granted or do we problematize it

The Paradigms (n=2)

• Legal

  • law defines what ‘crime’ is

  • very clear, easy to understand

  • overly narrow

  • ignore the politics of definition

Sociological approaches: goes beyond legal definitions

• broader approach

• uses criteria other than legal definitions

• explores the policies of definitions

Stats are social constructions

• data are produced by people

• social dynamics shape data

• Theory & concepts — including how we define crime - shape data

Research is scientific

• well-established standardized techniques

• research is a public endeavor

• result? “objective” control over assertion

Critical consumption

• all measures have strengths and weaknesses

• Triangulation (use complimentary measures, multiple angles)

• Findings are provisional (subject to revision)

Incidence vs. rate

• rate is like a ratio (comparison is really easy and nice

• incidence is

reliability and Validity

• reliable is repeatable

• validity is harder to determine, but it’s the truth value of a measure (Are you measuring what you think you’re measuring)

Reportability

• likelihood of being reported to LE

• crime-specific

• Murder = the “gold standard”

Criminal Event(proto-criminal action)

• events and action lack inherent meaning

• multiple factors influence ‘event’ → ‘crime’

  • is LE aware of the event

  • Does LE “agree’

  • Legally defined crime

Follow the numbers

• criminology & LE use multiple ‘kinds” of numbers

  • TRC (True rate of crime)

  • CKP (Crimes known to police)

  • Dark Figure (aka Dark number)

  • CCA (crimes Cleared by arrest)

  • Prosecutions

  • Convictions

• know what they are & how they’re related

Official vs unofficial

• this distinction is not about rigor, quality, or the relative import of the data

• collected by government authority or not

Method & data type

• quantitative and qualitative data

• unofficial measures are more diverse

Method examples

• victimization surveys

• offender self-report

• life course (longitudinal "‘following people across their lives”)

• life history

• Social observation

• interviews

• comparative-historical

Official Data

• Police based: UCR, NIBRS

• Victim-based: NCVS

National Crime Victimization Survey

• produced by the BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics-1972)

• victim-based measure

• sample survey interviews

• probability sample (people are asked randomly)

• many people, many households

Mens Rea

• criminal mind (intent)

Actus reus

• voluntary act (includes failure to act when one has a duty to act)

Culpability

• legal blameworthiness

Legal consequence (Criminal)

Legal consequence (civil)