Crime and the Legal System Flashcards

Crime and the Legal System: How Do Societies Respond to Crime and Deviance?

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison

• Jeffrey Reiman's book examines inequality in the U.S. criminal justice system.
• Poor people disproportionately incarcerated, often for non-violent or drug-related crimes.
• The system weeds out the wealthy, leaving behind those with the fewest resources.

Deviance

• Deviance is the violation of norms that a society agrees upon.
• Characteristics of Deviance:
  1. Linked to time.
  2. Linked to cultural values.
  3. A cultural universal.
  4. A social construct.

Crime

• Crime is the violation of norms that have been written into law.
• Street crime: Criminal acts such as burglary, rape, and assault.
• Criminology: The scientific study of crime, deviance, and social policies applied by the criminal justice system.

Crime Reports

• Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs): Official police statistics of reported crimes gathered from police reports.
• National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): Measurement of crime victimization based on contact with a representative sample of over 77,000 households in the U.S.

Crime Trends

• Crime rates change over time.
• The vast majority of crime in the U.S. is property crime.
• Some groups are over-represented in crime:
  • Gender and Crime: Men have traditionally committed more crime than women.
  • Race and Crime: Minorities are over-represented in crime.
  • Social class and crime: Crime rates are higher in poor neighborhoods.
  • Age and Crime: Crime is over-represented among young persons.

International Comparisons of Street Crime

• The U.S. has the highest murder rate in the industrialized world, three times higher than most advanced democracies.
• Possible causes include easy access to guns, a violent history, and the level of inequality.
• In 2003-04, England led the U.S. in robbery, assault, and most property crimes.
• The U.S. leads advanced democracies in incarceration rates.
• Caution in interpreting crime rates:
  1. Accuracy varies
  2. Legal definitions differ.
  3. Data collection methods vary.
  4. Cultures vary, as do programs to prevent, punish, and curb crime.

Societal Responses to Crime and Deviance

• Consensus model of law: Laws arise because people see a behavior they dislike and agree to make it illegal.
• Conflict model of law: Powerful people write laws to protect their own interests while punishing the actions of those they wish to control.

Punishments

• All societies must deal with rule breakers.
• Shaming: A deliberate effort to attach a negative meaning to a behavior.
• Stigmatized shame: A permanent label given to an offender, which could increase the chances of reoffending.
• Reintegrative shaming: An effort to bring an offender back into the community after punishment.
• Deterrence: A measure that prevents a person from doing something because of fear of the consequences.

Two Types of Deterrence

• General deterrence: Ensures individuals will not commit a crime because they see the negative consequences applied to others, and they fear experiencing these consequences.
• Specific Deterrence: Changes the attitude of individuals who have already violated the law and been punished, by causing them never to commit crime again.

Prison and the Characteristics of Prison Inmates

• Southern states have higher incarceration rates than other regions of the country.
• Problem with the Prison System: Recidivism – the tendency for inmates released from prison to return to prison.
• Prisons in the U.S. are increasingly crowded and dangerous places.
• Costs of Incarceration: Hidden costs include children in foster care and/or families dependent on welfare.
• The U.S. incarceration rate is six times higher than Canada and 13 times higher than Japan.

The Positivist School of Crime

• Positivists assume that people are naturally social beings and are not prone to act criminally unless some biological, psychological, or social factor is involved.
• They believe the world is orderly and follows natural laws.
• Positivists are interested in what factors cause people to commit crimes.

Biological Perspectives on Crime and Deviance

• Lombroso believed that criminals could be distinguished by physical characteristics.
• Current scientists still look for hormonal differences as a source of criminality.
• So far, the links between biology and crime appear to be weak.

The Classical School of Crime

• The Classical Model assumes all people are self-interested.
• Their primary question asks what keeps us from being criminal.
• Individuals make rational choices based on pleasure/pain.
• Some classical theorists believe people are hedonistic – seek pleasure over pain.

Psychological Perspectives on Crime

• The American Psychiatric Association claims that criminals suffer from a form of an antisocial personality.
• Criminals fail to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors.
• Criminals are thought to be impulsive, aggressive, and irritable.
• Hirschi and Hindelang believe that criminals have low IQs.

Structural-Functional Explanations of Crime and Deviance

• Structural-Functional theories describe crime as a response to some social factor.
• Durkheim noted that crime and deviance are functional for society because:
  1. Crime marks the boundaries of what is permissible in society.
  2. Crime promotes social solidarity.
  3. Deviance can bring about needed social change.

Theory of Anomie

• Merton’s theory of anomie is related to chances and opportunities for success.
• Lower-class individuals have blocked access to the goals of U.S. society such as wealth, a home, career, cars, and a stable family.
• Merton believed those with blocked access to goals would adapt in one of five ways:
  1. Conformists accept society’s goals and use socially acceptable means to try and achieve them.
  2. Innovators accept common goals but not the means of getting them.
  3. Ritualists accept the traditional means of achieving the goals but are not interested in material goals.
  4. Retreatists reject both the means and the goals of society and often live in isolation.
  5. Rebels use their own means to create new goals often seeking major societal changes.
• Merton attempts to show the connection between social structure and crime.

Social Interaction Theories

• Social Interactionists believe that individuals are influenced by the actions of others.
• Social process theories review how criminal behaviors develop.
• Social reaction theories examine how societal reactions affect criminal behavior.

Differential Association Theory

• Sutherland proposed the differential association theory, which emphasizes that criminal and deviant behavior is learned.
  1. Criminal behavior is learned, not inherited.
  2. Criminal behavior is learned through communication.
  3. Learning occurs through intimate personal groups.
  4. Learning includes criminal behavior.
  5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned as favorable or unfavorable.
  6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to the violation of the law.
  7. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity.
  8. The process of learning criminal behavior by association is the same as any other learning.
  9. Although criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values.

Social Control Theories

• Social control theories suggest that people are hedonistic and self-interested.

• Walter Reckless argued that all human behavior is controlled by external and internal forces. He called this containment theory.

• External containment controls when we’re around friends, police, and family.

• Criminals cannot resist the temptations that surround them; they lack internal containment.

• Hirschi suggests 4 bonds affect our inner control

  • Attachment – the social bond that refers to our relationship with conforming people
  • Commitment – the bond that refers to the level of dedication a person has toward conventional things
  • Belief – refers to a person’s conviction toward conventional things
  • Involvement – is the social bond that refers to the level of activity in conventional things

Labeling Theory

• Punishments can contribute to future deviance or crime.
• Lemert proposes two types of crime:
  • Primary deviance – the initial deviant act itself
  • Secondary deviance – refers to the psychological reorientation that occurs when the system catches a person and labels him or her as a deviant

Social Conflict Theory

• Social Conflict theory states that those on top (the rich) are able to get away with criminal acts to a greater extent than the ‘have nots.’
• Social conflict theories focus on social class, power, capitalism, and their relation to crime.
• Power and wealth inequality lead to crime.

General Theories of Crime Causation

• General Theories of Causation attempt to use explain all types of crime.

• According to Agnew’s general strain theory, a person experiences strain from 3 sources:

  1. A person can suffer from a failure to achieve valued goals of the society.
  2. Individuals experience strain from unpleasant life events.
  3. Negative events (abuse, punishment) cause strain.

• Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime:

  • Criminals have low self-control, which is an inability to delay gratification.
  • They seek short-term rewards and ignore long-term consequences.
  • Teaching children self-control will decrease crime later in life.

Crime Control: The Criminal Justice System

• The U.S. crime control system has 3 parts:

  • Police – have discretion or the ability to make decisions in law enforcement.
  • Courts – are able to plea bargain or make out of court agreements between the prosecutor and defense attorney; judicial decision is influenced by mandatory minimums (fixed sentences for specific crime).
  • Prisons – place where punishment is enforced.

• The Death Penalty:

  • Reserved for most serious crimes.
  • Costs more than lifetime incarceration.
  • Not a general deterrent.
  • Continues to be administered in a biased manner.