Sociology 100 (Crime and deviance)Feb 3rd 2025

• Time Frame (Western Europe

  • Early—> age of witches burning people at the stakes (child ,disabilities ,elderly and Economic Independent women) these acts were used by the rich to gain more power.

  • Classical —> Beccaria(created modern day criminology systems): believed that age of witches was not based on scientific notions but really the rich using their power against the weak (less wealthy).

    • Beccaria also believed: Criminals —> put a lot of thought into their crimes. They also weigh the consequences of their actions.

    • Becarria: decided to create laws and harsh punishments based on the law, so that the rational criminals understood the consequences of their actions and wouldn’t commit more crimes.

    • Becarria was wrong!!!

  • Statistical Era —> main idea of the statistical era was to fix societal issues (only era that was correct)

    • Main flaw: not enough money to fix the issue.

  • Positive Era —> Lombrosso’s era

    • Lobrosso’s suggested that criminals were born into criminality and instead of helping them like (the statistical era) we should find these “sub - humans” and put them in jail for life.

    • Atavistic traits(everyone fits into a category except the white’s) —> traits that Criminals are born with

      • Example: criminals have cold glassy eyes and pointy noses.

  • 1905 —> Era of Goring and Goddard

    • Both Goring and Goddard critized lobrosso’s techniques and tried using IQ (“smartness”) to create a link between low IQ to Crime.

    • Eugenics is the forced sterilization of people with low IQ.

• Crime: Behaviour that violates laws and is punishable by the government.

  • Crime is defined by humans through laws, which can vary significantly across different cultures and societies, reflecting their values and norms.

  • Crime is broken down into 3 categories: Indictable, Summary and hybrid.

    • Summary Crime: Low level crimes, similar to misdemeanour

    • Hybrid Crime: Offences that can be prosecuted either as summary or indictable, allowing for flexibility in legal proceedings depending on the severity of the crime.

    • Indictable Crime: High level crimes, similar to felonies.

Test someone:

1. Has the Crime Rate increased or decreased?(decrease)

2. Average of age of a criminal in Canada?(17.5 or 18, varies)

3. what gender does the most crimes and what would the percentage be. (male, 80% 20%)—> could be a statistic error

4. What race commits the most crimes (white, this tends to change a lot due to geography,(where the crime happens))

• Deviance: Actions or behaviours that violate social norms, which may not necessarily be illegal.

  • Complex

• Difference between Crime and deviance:

  Crime is specifically defined by legal statutes and results in formal sanctions, whereas deviance encompasses a broader range of behaviors that may be disapproved by society but do not always lead to legal consequences.

• Question on the exam: what is the definition of a crime?