criminal justice - societies

Clearance rate

The percentage of cases closed (or ‘cleared’) per year through arrest, charging or referral

Recidivism

Habitual relapse into crime

Pyrrhic defeat theory

A military victory purchased at such a cost that it is essentially a defeat

Agency

The freedom individuals have to choose and to act

Anomie

The loss of direction felt in a society when social control of individual behavior has become ineffective

Applied Sociology

The use of the discipline of sociology with the specific intent of yielding practical applications for human behavior and organizations.

 

Conflict perspective

a sociological approach that assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of tension between groups over power or the allocation of resources, including housing, money, access to services, and political representation

Functionalist perspective

a sociological approach that emphasizes the way in which the parts of a society are structures to maintain its stability

Private trouble

Obstacles that individuals face as individuals rather than as a consequence of their social position

public issues

obstacles that individiuals in similar positions face; also referred to by sociologists as “social problems.”

sociological imagination

an awareness of the relationship between who wed are as individuals and the social forces that shape our lives

sociology

the systematic study of the relationship between the individual and society and of the consequences of difference