CRM 330 Exam 2

Sociological Positivist Theories

Theories created by scholars using scientific methods (i.e., observation, measurement, and empirical verification)

Determinism

The concept that factors outside of the conscious control of individuals, chiefly the social organization of society and/or the environment, influence or determine behavior.

Understand Anomie Theory

Dukrheim's theory that proposes that rapid social change often results in a state of normlessness that results in the deregulation of people and their behavior.

- How the society is structured and how that structure impacts our ability to follow social norms

- When people go against norms, often in the form of deviance or delinquency, it is typically because they are experiencing forces in their social world leading them to do so

Consensus Theorist

A theorist who assumes that society is based upon consensus and that laws generally reflect agreed-upon societal expectations, share a basic sense of right and wrong and that laws and other rules reflect the values that we share.

Collective Conscience

Society's shared moral sense or sense of right and wrong according to Durkheim, makes people depend on one another to get anything done.

Social Facts

Dimensions of social life that are external to the individual and that restrain individuals values, cultural norms, and social structures. Durkheim looked at social facts related to SUICIDE!

Understand Merton's Strain Theory

Merton's idea of what happens when social norms of conventional success (American Dream) are not accompanied by equally strong or avaliable legitimate means of achieving that success; strain can often lead to delinquency and/or deviance.

- Unregulated desires

- Gap between the cultural goal of monetary success and the limited opportunities to achieve that goal that causes strain

5 Adaptations to Strain

Ways in which people adjust to the strain created by the societal goals and the legitimate means to achieve

1. Conformity - Most COMMON, nondeviant. Accepted both the American Dream and the socially legitimate ways of trying to obtain it.

2. Innovation - Occurs when people do not accept the legitimate route to obtain the cultural goal, either blocked from accessing means or do not believe they should be limited to those ways of obtaining a goal.

3. Ritualism - People who have abandoned the American Dream but continue to go through the motions of doing what most of society rewards, "playing the game" and go through the motions.

4. Retreatism - Rejected the cultural goal of material success and have also rejected the legitimate means of getting the goal, "dropped out" of society.

5. Rebellion - Not only reject the cultural goals of monetary success but also reject the legit means, want to replace the system with a new set of goals and means. "New Social Order"

Understand Differential Opportunity Theory

How a person's illegitimate means affects the shape of his or her adaptations to anomie and strain, not equal access to illegitimate means of obtaining cultural goals.

3 Types of Subcultures in the Face of Limited Legitimate Opportunities

1. Criminal Delinquent Subculture: A subculture in which youth commit acts of delinquency as a means to an end -- usually to obtain something material or monetary to gain status in the group. Gangs, limited legit means, long-standing criminality, theft and organized crime, older role models.

2. Conflict Delinquent Subculture: A subculture in which youth oppose the mainstream through violence, underground economies, and/or gang activity because of a lack of opportunities to succeed. Frustration in youth, gain respect through force and intimidation, few successful mentors.

3. Retreatist Delinquent Subculture: A subculture of youth who join together after failing to find a place in either the criminal or conflict subculture.

Understand Subcultural Theory of Delinquency

The theory that involvement in small groups of youth in marginalized neighborhoods or social groups arises in the face of limited legit opportunities. "Reaction formation", turn middle-class values on their head, cause of crime is the difference of values that they feel they can achieve.

Understand Anomie Theories of Delinquency and Race, Class, and Gender Intersections

Race: Not much research on race, but black adults were very committed to the American Dream. Also more likely to have lower-paying jobs or be unemployed, yet they did not experience strain that led to crime. Whites feel more frustrated!

Gender: Usually not many differences are found in terms of rates of delinquency of boys and girls related to measures of strain. MIXED findings!

Class: Adolescents are more likely to report delinquency if they feel their access to legit means is not the same as those around them.

Understand Social Disorganization Theory

Society is always in the midst of a cycle of change that shifts from social disorganization to reorganization and back again. Places get so disorganized that they must adapt by engaging in deviant behavior. Neighborhood and geographical region level of study!

Social Ecology

Study of the relationships between individuals, social groups and their environments.

Symbiosis

A state of interdependence that social disorganization theorists state characterizes the social world. Give and take in order to survive. Major changes in society include: immigration, urbanization, and the rise of tech which disrupt social balance.

Heterogeneity

Difference and diversity; in a neighborhood context heterogeneity often reduces informal social control, lack of shared norms.

Informal Social Control

The means by which ordinary people exert control over others' behavior through enforcing traditions or norms and by informally punishing those who break such norms through the use of gossip, stigmatization, and disapproval. Less in heterogeneric neighborhoods!

Concentric Zone Model

A model used by social disorganization theorists in which they map an urban area and measure the degree of social disorganization in each.

Zone 1: The Central Business Zone

2: Transition Zone

3: Multifamily Housing

4: Single Fam Housing

5: Commuter Zone

Zone of Transition

The area right outside of the central business district of a city that experiences the most negative effects of the forces of social change and the highest rate of street delinquency.

Understand Sampson and Groves' Model of Social Disorganization

Social disorganization leads to sparse local friendship networks, unsupervised teenage peer groups, and low organizational participation which facilitate crime and delinquency.

Intervening Variables

Variables that change the relationships between other variables because of their existence, intermediate steps between social disorganization and its expression in the form of delinquency.

Collective Efficacy

Social cohesion among neighbors that is characterized by efforts to make positive changes in their neighborhoods, might be a factor in lessening the effects of social disorganization in a community.

Social Disorganization Theories of Delinquency and Race, Class, and Gender Intersections

Race: Youth of color who are growing up with socially disorganized neighborhoods that bear the burdens of imprisonment.

Class: Low socioeconomic class can be a sign of disorganization which can tend to lead to higher rates of delinquency and crime.

Gender: Very little attention has been paid to gender, girls may be more protected due to less freedom but not necessarily proven. Less collective efficacy actually showed more delinquency in girls.

Understand main premise of Critical Theories of Delinquency

Interest in social power, benefits and burdens of our economic and class system influencing our definitions of delinquency and work to either encourage or discourage delinquency. Social INEQUALITIES

Power and Social Inequities

Power: The ability to make things happen and to exert your will or wishes upon others.

Social Inequities: A concept that refers to unfair distributions of power and social control.

Understand Labeling Theory

The process of first calling a particular act a delinquent one and then using that label to justify a particular means of punishing or reacting to the person who has been labeled.

Power Differentials

The ability of some groups to dominate other groups in a society and decide what is criminal, how people in power use laws to benefit themselves and harm others.

Primary Deviance

The initial act of deviance or delinquency that a person engages

Secondary Deviance

An act of deviance or delinquency that follows the labeling of a person as a delinquent or troublemaker, result of other people's negative responses to an individual's original act.

Stigmatization

the process by which a person is marked or labeled as a deviant or a disgrace, which can spoil a person's normal identity and reduce his or her life chances.

Spoiled Identity

Goffman's term for what happens when a person has been labeled as delinquent, criminal, or deviant, and the negative identity sticks, leaving him or her in a perpetual state of stigmatization. May become hard for the labeled person to hang out with others who are considered normal if the labeling process is widespread enough.

Master Status

A status or label that comes to be held as more powerful than the others, "gang member". Status degradation ceremonies are processes in which the juveniles are shamed and lose status in the eyes of the community along the way.

Becker's Typology of Deviant Behavior (Conformist, Pure Deviant, Falsely Accused, Secret Deviant)

Conformist: Following societal norm and is nor perceived as deviant.

Pure deviant: Breaking societal norms and is perceived as deviant.

Falsely Accused: Has not done anything deviant yet is perceived by others who observe him or her as deviant.

Secret Deviant: A person is doing something that would likely be perceived and labeled as deviant yet is not labeled.

Moral Entrepreneur

People who work to garner attention toward a social issue or group that they have decided amounts to a social problem, which is followed by negative labeling of the targeted behaviors and/or actors.

Moral Panic

Some moral entrepreneurs have launched crusades around moral panics, a heightened concern over an issue that is not line with its seriousness or frequency of occurrence in the world.

Self-concept

A concept that refers to the way in which a person views him or herself.

Social Exclusion

Youth who are negatively labeled as delinquents may later find themselves shut out or excluded from conventional or beneficial opportunities

Symbolic Interactionism

A framework that examines the way that people make meaning out of symbols, works, and other forms of communication.

Looking-glass Self

The idea that a person imagines how others perceives oneself and then internalizes that idea as a part of one's self-concept.

Cumulative Disadvantage

Disadvantage that a labeled delinquent youth experiences due to stigmatization in society's primary social institutions: family, school, peers, and the government run juvenile justice system.

Deviant Career

Delinquency, crime, or deviance that an individual pursues over the span of his or her life.

Understand Positive Labeling

Those kids who are seen as good to the parents and school, and use that positive label to get away with deviance. Process of manipulating the positive labeling process can be quite thrilling.

Understand Premise of Conflict Theorists

A theorist who assumes that society is based on class conflict and that laws tend to reflect the interests of power.

Origins of Class Conflict and Class Struggle

Karl Marx, Class Conflict caused by Capitalism and Class Struggle felt by Proletariat by Bourgeoisie

Class Conflict: The conflict between owners and workers that Marx and Engels stated was built into the workings of a capitalist economy.

Class Struggle: The outward manifestation of discontent that arises after workers realize that their class interests are being oppressed in a capitalist system.

Predatory Crimes and Personal or Violent Crimes

Predatory: Going along with the system of oppression at the heart of capitalism through robbery, drug dealing, and burglary. Get money and survive financially!

Personal/Violent: Assault, rape, and murder; typically aimed at others who are oppressed.

Understand Conflict Theorist View on Imprisonment

NOT GOOD, silences voices, increases delinquency or criminality, and stigmatizes and shuts people out.

Criminal Delinquent Subcultures

A group in which youth commit acts of delinquency to obtain something material or monetary to gain status.

Understand Feminist Theories

Analysis of the role of gender in delinquency, also committed to actively change the world to be a more just one, for girls and women, as well as boys and men.

Origins of Feminist Theories

Women's movement in late 1800s and early 1900s, but mainly in the 1960s and early 1970s in which a lot of social movement was happening. Not one single approach, Suffrage and Women's Movement.

3 waves of Feminist Theories

First: 1800s and early 1900s

Second: 1960s and early 1970s

Third: TODAY, modern times!

Feminist Views on Gender

1. Gender is not a natural fact but a complex product.

2. Gender and gender relations order social institutions in fundamental ways.

3. Gender relations and construct of masculinity and femininity are not symmetrical.

4. Systems of knowledge only show men's view.

5. Women should be at the center of intellectual inquiry.

Sexism, Heterosexism, and Intersectionality

Sexism: The systematic subordination of girls and women based on and maintained by stereotypes of inferiority.

Heterosexism: The institutionalized favoritism toward heterosexual people and bias against others.

Intersectionality: The ways in which race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexuality, and ability interact to shape a person's social experience.

Liberal Feminist Thinkers

Primarily focuses on effects of the different socialization and social treatment of boys and girl and men and women. Concerned with patriarchy and wanted to be involved in the system, wanted to use the court system to get the rights they wanted.

Marxist/Socialist Feminism

Focuses upon the role of economics and class issues in society. Agree with both, agree with class and gender. Patriarchy and Capitalism!

Radical Feminists

Primarily focuses upon the effect of the patriarchal society, or a society in which most power is held in the hands of men, on girls and women. Not going to wait around for courts!

Critical Race Feminists and Multicultural Feminists

Primarily focuses on race and its interaction with sexism. Where do we identify the fact that not every woman is a white, straight, middle-class woman?

Liberation Theory of Female Criminality

Coming out of Liberal Feminism, as women become more liberated and out of the house, there will be more opportunity to commit crime.

- Issue is it assumes men were the standard, and all groups crime rates were increasing at this time.

3 Gendered Pathways that Lead to Delinquency

Pathways to delinquency or incarceration of women.

1. Victimization/Abuse in the Home

2. Unhealthy, Intimate Relationships

3. Challenges in Trying to Live in a Society that has Gender Biases

Basic Trends in the Family--Marriage, Divorce, and Unmarried Birth Rates

Marriage: On the decline, never married or higher age.

Divorce: On the decline since its high in early 1980s, 1/2 of marriages end in divorce.

Unmarried Birth Rates: Have been increasing, age in a steady decline is girls aged 15 to 19.

Family Structure

The compositional makeup of the family, such as parental type (for example, single parent or stepparent) or number of children in the household.

Family Process and Delinquency

The interactions and social changes that happen in a family.

- Attachment, Supervision (2nd most, actions known) Conflict (unrest or bad feelings), and Discipline (punishment or wrongdoing)

Attachment

The degree to which juveniles feel close to a loved one such as a parent or a grandparent. Long been successfully linked to delinquency.

Family Conflict

Considered a family process in which there is unrest or bad feelings between either the juvenile in question and his or her parents or siblings, or the juvenile's parents

Egalitarian Household

A household in which both partners (for example, mother and father) have similar levels of power. Boys and girls have same level of delinquency in these households.

Child Maltreatment (Abuse and Neglect, Types of Abuse and Neglect)

Abuse: Overt aggression that can be categorized in three ways: emotional, physical, and/or sexual. (IN NOTES)

Neglect: The act of depriving or failing for a child's basic needs. (TYPES IN NOTES)

Relationship between Child Maltreatment and Delinquency, Including Running Away

Studies show they are related, but we must be careful of the conditions under which these relationships are more likely to exist. Earlier in life = Delinquency! Girls often run away more and are more likely to report sexual abuse.

Parents in Prison: Parental Rights, Impact on Children

The rights of a parent to have a say in a child's legal and physical custody.

- If the allegation of abuse is confirmed, the child may be placed in protective custody, meaning a short-term foster placement, a family member, or in juvenile detention centers for lack of places to put them

- Vast majority of the time a child is not removed from the family, termination of rights is rare.

- Most states statutes require that the court be notified "promptly or immediately if the child is removed"

Impact on children is guilt, trauma, withdrawal, etc. Also decline in school performance, concertation problems, and truancy.

Throwaways

The term used for youth whose parents have kicked them out of the house

Foster Care and Youth: Primary Issues with Care System

- Tracking youth is an issue

- Trauma of being added to the system

- Absent from school, disciplined

- 1/3 arrested in care

Diverse School Experience: Race, Class, Gender

School inequality is rampant!

- White over Black

- Girls often better at reading as time goes on, boys better at math as time goes on!

- Resource-rich communities get more taxes for funding schools!

Basic Components of Budgeting and Funding Education

- Budgeted at the STATE level

- Federal government 2% for education

- Taxes, wealthier communities have more property taxes that go to funding their school systems.

School Failure Relationship to Delinquency (4 ways)

1. Direct: Students who fail are more likely to engage in delinquency.

2. Direct: Students who are more delinquent are more likely to fail school.

3. Indirect: Failure has an indirect effect on likelihood to engage in delinquency by impacting a mediating event or experience for juveniles.

4. Spurious: Looks like failure and delinquency are related, but in reality another variable is affecting both failure and delinquency.

Tracking

A practice that occurs when juveniles are placed in classrooms or groups within the classroom based on their perceived intellectual abilities.

- Mixed-ability classrooms show improved behavior. Shows segregation and self-fulfilling prophecies. NOT GOOD for delinquency.

Student Alienation and the Effect on Delinquency

A low degree of integration or high degree of isolation or distance between an individual and another individual, group, community, or institution.

- More likely to be delinquent! More connected to school less likely!

Factors that Influence Dropping out, the Effect on Delinquency

- Not good academically

- Low self-esteem

- Held back

- Poor attitude about school

- Previously suspended

- Students who work a lot

- Rules and processes of the school

- Type of discipline in school

- Size of school and its avaliable resources

DROPPING OUT RESULTS IN A GREATER LIKELIHOOD OF DELINQUENCY!!

Patterns of Crime and Delinquency in Schools

Less likely to happen off-campus more on campus, girls and Asian least likely to be victimized. School shootings are very RARE! Bullying more of a worry. More boys and American Indian/Alaska Native at-risk.

Characteristics of Bullying and Cyberbullying

- Repeated Nature

- Aggressive

- Label or Stigmatize Someone

- Can be direct, physical , OR can be indirect such as slander

- Cyber is willful and repeated

Homophobic Bullying and Sexually Harassing Behaviors

Homophobic: Directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer population. Much more higher among these youth. Bigger schools with more diversity have less of this. More support and clubs helps.

Sexually Harrassing Behaviors: Unwelcome sexual advances, sexual favors, and other conduct by an employee, another student, or third party. Behaviors of bullying and consequences (anxiety, depression, fear) are often the same.

Consequences of Bullying

- More anxious, lonely, insecure, and unhappy

- Harder to make friends and have relationships

- Drop in grades

- Increased depression and other mental health issues

- Suicide

Punishment in Schools: School-to-Prison Pipeline, "Zero-tolerance"

School-to-Prison: An argument that overly harsh rules, security enhancements, and punishments mean that for many students school becomes a preparation ground for prison.

- High levels of social control, more likely to be suspended or expelled.

Zero-tolerance: Any policy that allows no exception mandating predetermined punishments even for mistakes or extenuating circumstances.

- Opponents say: Schools are overreacting, real problems are ignored, being taught wrong lessons, only makes behavior worse, at-risk students put at more risk.