Sociology Lecture Review

Flashcards covering key vocabulary from lecture notes on crime, punishment, and social stratification.

Deterrent

A form of punishment or action that discourages or prevents someone from committing a crime, such as a fine or jail time.

Retribution

An approach to punishment focused on evening the playing field and getting things back on equal grounds, often involving compensation or restitution.

Incapacitation

An approach to punishment that seeks to protect society from criminals by imprisoning them.

Rehabilitation

Programs and practices within the justice system aimed at helping criminals become 'better people' and safer to re-enter society, sometimes by offering educational opportunities.

Privatized Prisons

Prisons not run by the state that often lack rehabilitation programs and may use prisoners for business labor.

Mass Incarceration

The disproportionate rates of people of color incarcerated in a country, with states like Louisiana investing heavily in prisons over schools.

Death Penalty

A form of capital punishment, with methods including legal injection and, in some states like Texas, 'the chair'.

Stratification

The hierarchical arrangement of people in society based on different criteria like race, class, and gender, leading to individuals operating in different spaces.

Inequality

The unequal distribution of wealth, power, or prestige among members of society, resulting in differing levels of access to resources.

Slavery

The most extreme form of social stratification, based on the legal ownership of people.

Caste System

A system of social stratification where individuals are born into a certain level, differentiated along religious, political, economic lines, or physical characteristics like skin color (e.g., India, South African Apartheid).

Intersectionality

The concept that individuals are a 'whole bunch of things' and unique, where all personal identifiers (e.g., race, gender, height) come together to make them who they are, influencing their interactions and experiences.