Crime and Deviance Flashcards

Flashcards from Crime and Deviance Lecture Notes.

Deviance

A behaviour, belief, or condition that violates the norms of a given society.

Crime

An act that breaks criminal law.

Boundary Maintenance

Serves to clarify boundaries between what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Functional Rebels

Help to change the collective conscious by defying laws that in time become outdated, thus changing society.

Anomie

A sense of normlessness, confusion, and uncertainty over social norms.

Egoism

When the collective conscious becomes too weak to restrain the selfish desires of individuals so crime prevails.

Strain

In capitalist societies, the emphasis is on the goal of having goods/wealth, creating strain when people can't achieve it legitimately.

Conformity

Following the norms and values of society, behaving in the same way as the majority of people.

Innovation

A response to strain where society’s goals are accepted, but crime may be used to achieve them.

Ritualism

Behavior that occurs where people reject society’s goals, but continue with the means.

Retreatism

A response to strain where goals and means are rejected, and the individual ‘drops out'.

Rebellion

A response to strain where goals and means are rejected and the individual may attempt to impose their own goals on society.

Delinquency Drift

Individuals may drift in and out of subcultures and different types of delinquency.

White-Collar Crimes

Financially motivated non-violent crime committed by individuals in the course of their work and for their own benefit.

Corporate Crime

Crimes committed by large organizations or their employees to benefit the organization (not the individual).

Criminogenic Capitalism

Crime is the expected outcome for capitalist society as it promotes individual competition and greed alongside consumption.

Moral Panic

Creating public anxiety in response to a problem regarded as threatening to society, often media-driven.

State Agencies

Organizations or institutions that often have a clear hierarchy with the government in the position of control, with a specific function.

Labeling

The view of deviance according to which being labeled as a ‘deviant’ leads a person to engage in deviant behavior.

Deviancy Amplification

Increased deviance as a result of a moral panic created by the media, leading groups to act in the way expected of them.

Typification

Interrogation and negotiation are used to decide between delinquents and non-delinquents based on the image of the ‘typical delinquent'.

Zero Tolerance Policing

It is effective to clamp down on the first sign that an area is deteriorating to discourage more serious crimes.

Relative Deprivation

The feeling of being deprived relative to others; individuals are not rewarded as highly as they feel they should be.

Victimization

The process by which someone becomes the victim of crime.

The Chivalry Thesis

States that women are treated more leniently than men by the criminal justice system.

Glocal System

A loose global network with local links.

Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)

The method by which organizations spread or transmit ideology, especially the ruling class ideology.

Repressive State Apparatus

A form of power that controls the working class by means of violence, consisting of the army, police, judiciary, and prison system.

Desensitized

Becoming less likely to feel shock or distress at scenes of cruelty or suffering by overexposure to such images.

Zemiology

The study of social harms; actions should be dealt with in terms of the harm caused rather than the law.

Situational Crime

Crime that is opportunistic in nature, occurring because the opportunity presented itself.

Target Hardening

Making the targets of crime less accessible or less attractive, for example, improving home/business security.

Restorative Justice

Involves ‘righting’ the wronged party, for example, returning stolen goods, meeting with victims.

Victimology

The study of victims of crime, including their characteristics and their relationships with offenders and the criminal justice system.

Durkheim (Functionalist)

Society has the laws and punishments that they have as a result of what suits the collective conscience; change may occur during times of uncertainty.

Merton's Strain Theory

Deviance is a response to disenchantment when people feel unable to achieve goals through acceptable means.

A.K. Cohen

Boys from lower classes can get ‘status frustration’ as they do not have the means to achieve success, leading to the rejection of acceptable behavior.

Cloward and Ohlin

Certain subcultures provide illegal means of obtaining societies' goals of power, wealth, and status.

Miller

The working class has its own subculture which has focal concerns such as smartness, toughness, and excitement.

Matza

People use techniques of neutralisation to justify their deviant actions, suggesting they are not fully committed to subcultural values.

Snider

The interests of large corporations are protected by making it more difficult to prosecute for certain types of crime.

Chambliss

Laws are created and passed by those with money and power and protect their interests.

Gordon

Crime is the expected outcome for capitalist societies as it promotes values based upon competition, selfishness and greed.

Taylor, Walton and Young

Focus on certain subcultures to remove focus from real/wider causes of crime; expose crimes of the rich and state agencies.

Becker

Crime is socially constructed by the application of labels; criminal labels become the master status of an individual.

Lemert

Secondary deviance is the consequence of the response of others to the initial rule breaking.

S. Cohen

Whole groups can become demonised leading to a ‘moral panic’, the result being that these groups become more deviant.

Cicourel

Delinquents tend to be from a working class background because they fit the typification of a delinquent.

Murray

The growing social underclass fuels criminal activity due to a lack of male role models and an over generous welfare state.

Wilson

Crime is linked to a breakdown in social order in some communities, leading to the development of an underclass.

Wilson and Kelling

Maintaining urban environments to prevent small crimes helps create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes.

Young

A major reason for rising crime rates is the problem of relative deprivation and the ‘Bulimic Society.'

Bowling and Phillips

A relatively high proportion of minority ethnic groups live in inner cities where victimisation rates are generally higher.

Gilroy

There is a ‘myth of black criminality’ which is over-recorded due to police stereotyping and racist labelling.

Hall

Powerful ruling groups use force against threats to their dominance and the capitalist system, scapegoating certain groups.

Heidensohn

Females are subject to being a ‘double deviant’ when they break the norms of society and norms suggesting how it is appropriate for a female to behave.

Pollack

Women are more skilled in deception, underreported or treated more leniently for committing certain crimes.

Walklate

The criminal justice system is harder on females, and most rapists are found not guilty, so domestic violence is not taken seriously enough.

Carlen

Crimes are committed by rational choice due to being unrewarded in the family or the workplace, being ‘crimes of the powerless.’

Sutherland

Introduced the idea of white-collar crime and corporate crime to describe the offences committed by more affluent people in society.

Pearce

White collar and corporate crimes are ‘crimes of the powerful’ with vast amounts of money and human misery involved.

Held

The increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders and the spread of transnational organised crime.

Castells

A supply and demand chain exists: Third world countries supply to the West’s demands. Global crime harms the world and is linked with government corruption.

Taylor

Globalisation has led to greater inequality and rising crime, corporations produce poverty by taking jobs to countries demanding lower wages.

Hobbs and Dunninghan

Criminals act as ‘hub’ around which a loose-knit network forms, often linking legitimate and illegitimate activities, a ‘glocal’ system.

S. Cohen

The media creates moral panics and plays a crucial role in the development of crime and deviance; public labelling leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

McRobbie & Thornton

Moral panics have less impact in today’s modern world as we are all used to 'shock, horror’ stories and so don’t react.

Lea & Young

The mass media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation; the pressure to conform to the norm can cause deviant behavior.

Jewkes

The internet has brought new and old ways of committing crime to half of the world’s population.

Wall

Cyber-trespass, cyber-deception, cyber-pornography and cyber-violence.

South

Air and water pollution, deforestation and species decline should be illegal and environmental crimes should be enforced more rigorously.

Beck

We have replaced risks from nature with those such as toxins in the environment, creating a Global Risk Society.

Sutton

Wealthier people can afford to live in the areas of the world least affected by risk, meaning that there is a class divide in terms of risk.

White

Advocates an eco-centric approach that includes the consideration that damage to the environment is also damage for humans.

H & J Schwendinger

It is the duty of sociology to support human rights and expose abuses by the state, even where this goes against the laws of the countries.

Stanley Cohen

State crimes go against international and national laws. States often follow a three stage ‘spiral of denial.'

Felson

Crime tends to occur when a likely offender and a likely target come together when there is no ‘capable guardian.'

Garland

Target hardening ignores the underlying causes of crime as it merely limits the extent and impact of it as it assumes all crime is rational.

Chaiken

A crackdown on subway robberies only leads to crime above the surface.

Wilson & Kelling

Environmental crime prevention includes asserting the policy ideas from the Broken windows theory.

Durkheim (on punishment)

Punishments reinforce exactly what is acceptable and unacceptable in a particular society at a particular time.

Rusche & Kirchheimer

Different systems of punishment were used in three eras, each created by the ruling class to serve their interests of the time.

Christie

Victims are stereotyped as being weak and virtuous which is not always the case.

Miers

Researched factors affecting rates of victimisation as measured in statistical studies (positivist victimology).

Mawby & Walklate

Reject the use of crime surveys to explain the role of the victim (critical victimology).

Tombs & Whyte

Emphasise that many people are victims of corporate crime, often without even realising it (critical victimology).

Foucault

Control and punishment has changed from ‘sovereign power’ to ‘disciplinary power’ through monitoring or surveillance.

Garland

There has been an attitude shift away from rehabilitation towards punishments.

S. Cohen

Social control mechanisms have become diffused and do not just involve the criminal justice system.

Crime

The term used to describe behavior that is against the criminal law.

Deviance

Rule-breaking behavior of some kind, which fails to conform to the norms and expectations of a particular society or social group.

Official Crime Statistics

Police recorded crime (PRC) and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).

Victim Surveys

Ask the public whether they have been victims of crime and whether they have reported it to the police.

Self-Report Studies

Questionnaires that ask people to ‘own up’ to their offending and therefore allow researchers to understand what offences they have committed.

Functionalist Explanations

Crime is inevitable in all societies and serves a function.

Strain Theory

Societies have shared values and C&D show strain due to not being able to achieve the shared goals.

A.K. Cohen

Non-utilitarian crime focus, boys from lower class get status frustration and form subcultures.

Criminal Subcultural Types

Subcultures offer different rewards, some subcultures provide illegal ways to obtain the shared goals, others use violence.

Miller

Lower w/c males have their own values that encourage C&D.

Matza

Groups do share subterranean values that are mostly controlled but can be influential.