Sociology Midterm

• 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?

Examples that may be covered

• 70% of crime is never reported

UCR —> uniform crime report (surverys)

• Dark figure (of crime)

• Seriousness Rule —> pick the most serious crimes out of all the crimes and send those to the government.

Deterrence Theory: the idea that the threat of punishment will discourage people from committing crimes

We need three things in order for Deterrence Theory to work

• Certainty —> is impossible to achieve, why? its impossible to suggest that you will catch any and everyone that commits a crime.

• Swiftness —> can be achieve but would not allow for appropriate punishment.

• Appropriate —> allowing for due process to take effect (fair trial).

Self Report Victimization Crime Data:

• really accurate

  • As they guarantee that they will not use what you say against you, unless it is any of the 4. Terrorism, child abuse, sexual assault or murder

Truth

• in order for truth to occur three different methods that don’t rely on each other need to agree with each other.

  1. Crime stats

  2. Self-Report

  3. Victimization —> only good about asking “what happened” not “who did it” so victimization statistics usually don’t show much as the victim might not be able to identify who did the crime.

• ALL THREE MUST BE IN AGREEANCE AND AT THE SAME RATE IN ORDER FOR TRUTH TO BE ASSURED!

G.S.S(General Social Survey)

• Happens every 5 years

• How sociologists gather their crime statistics from the public

1935-Sutherland's Differential Association Feb 12th

1. Micro

2. Crime is learned

3. small intimate groups

4. Technique

5. Attitude

6. Frequency, Duration, Priority and intensity.

   • Example Johnny (bad kid) Freddy (good kid)

     • Frequency —> If johnny talks to freddy frequently he can corrupt freddy (good kid)

     • Duration —> if johnny talks to freddy for long chunks of time he could corrupt freddy.

     • Priority —> if Freddy puts priority on the relationship it could cause freddy to be corrupted

     • Intensity —> if the relationship is intense than freddy might do anything for johnny

7. learning how to do crime, is the same process you use to approach for anything else. (directed to professionals)

8. Sutherland believes that criminals have the same goal as non-criminals but just use techniques that go against societies norms and values (directed to professionals)

Merton-Strain Theory(strain/stress within society)

• Believed some (not all) crime was based on strain or stress within society

• Stress

  • is put into two categories Goals and Means

• Goals

  • Positive meaning: meaning societal acceptable goals

    • Negative meaning: unacceptable societal goals or no goals at all(DON’T HAVE GOALS)

      • Comformist: Postive

      • Innovator: Postive

      • Ritualism: negative

      • Retreatism: negative

      • Rebellion: negative

• Means

  • Positive means: meaning societal acceptable Means to achieve that goal

  • negative means: meaning unacceptable societal means to achieve that goal

  • Comformist: Postive

  • Innovator: negative

  • Ritualism: Postive

  • Retreatism: negative

  • Rebellion: negative

Chapter 6 (Class and social inequality)

• 1906 Big boss vs average salary ratio

  • 7:1

    • example: If a worker made 50,000 than a ceo made 7X which would be 350k

• 1960 Big boss vs average salary ratio

  • 23:1

    • example: If a worker made 50,000 than a ceo made 23X which would be 1.15million

• 2011 Big boss vs average salary ratio

  • 372:1

    • example: If a worker made 50,000 than a ceo made 372X

      which is 18.6 million.

• Sociology predicts that in 2065 Canada and the United States will be 3rd World Countries

• Absolute

  • homeless people

• Relative

  • your poorer than most