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34 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is Criminology |
- Knowledge regarding a crime as a social phenomenon - The process of making laws, breaking laws, and reacting towards the breaking of laws. |
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Crime and Deviance - Crime |
- Designates certain behaviours and actions that require social control and social intervention, codified in law.
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Crime and Deviance - Deviance |
- Actions that violate social norms, and that may or may not be against the law |
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Crime and Deviance |
- Most crimes understood as deviant however all deviant acts are not criminal - Changes over time - How do some acts become labelled as deviant? Who is responsible for defining deviance? |
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Social Deviance |
- Any acts that involve the violation of social norms |
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Social Deviance - Howard Becker (1966) |
- Not the act itself, rather people's reaction to the act that makes it deviant |
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Social Deviance - Who defines deviance? |
- Politicians/governments, scientists, religious institutions, media - moral entrepreneurs - Informal and formal social controls |
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Classical Criminology - Rational Choice Theory |
- Behaviour not the result of supernatural forces, but rather purposeful |
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Classical Criminology - Beccaria (1764) and Bentham (1838) |
- If crime results in some form of pleasure for the criminal, then pain must be used to prevent crime - Sentences must be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime |
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Classical Criminology - Four Basic Beliefs |
- People have free will to choose criminal or lawful solutions, and thus crime is a rational choice - Criminal solutions are seen as more attractive than lawful ones if they require less work for a greater payoff - The fear of punishment can control people's choices - A society is better able to control criminal behaviour when criminality is met with: measured severity, certainty of punishment, swiftness of justice. |
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Biological Perspectives - Positivism |
- Application of the scientific method to the social world - Focused on the individual, assuming that once we identify features that distinguish criminals from non-criminals, then possible to determine how to eliminate criminal behaviour. |
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Biological Perspectives - Positivism - Biological Determinism |
- The hypothesis that biological factors completely determine a person's behaviour |
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Biological Perspectives - Cesare Lombroso - The Criminal Man |
- Distinguished by an asymmetrical face, large ears, particular eye defects, etc. |
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Biological Perspectives - Cesare Lombroso |
- People are born criminal |
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Sociological Approaches to Crime |
- Shift the focus of criminology toward a consideration of environments in which people are located |
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- Sociological Approaches to Crime - Functionalism |
- Roots in Emile Durkheim's notation of anomie - Rules governing behaviour break down resulting people no longer knowing what to expect from one another - Normlessness leads to deviant behaviour |
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Conflict Theory |
- Crime is a product of class struggle - Focus on role of government plays in creating a criminogenic environment - an environment that, as a result of laws that priviledge certain groups, produces crime or criminality - Challenge the commonly held belief that law is neutral & reflects the interests of society as a whole. - Also focus on the role that bias plays in the criminal justice system. - Criminal law is a tool to protect the interests of the affluent and the powerful. |
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Symbolic Interactionism |
- Criminal Behaviour learned through interactions with others |
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Symbolic Interactionism - Differential Association Theory (Sutherland) |
- People learn criminal behaviour through social interaction |
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Symbolic Interactionism - Differential Association Theory - Labelling Theory (Becker) |
- Based on reactions of others to an individual's act; response leads to the labelling of a person as deviant. - No act inherently deviant until a group with socially powerful statuses labels it as such |
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Feminist Theory |
- Concerned with issues of power, distributions of resources - Explain gendered nature of crime - Historically female criminals viewed as 'sick' or 'pathological' - Chivalry hypothesis - Paternalism - Women who commit violence are constructed as 'victims' or 'mad' or 'bad' or all three Patriarchy underlying condition behind certain crimes. |
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Sociology of law - Subdiscipline of sociology |
- Attempt to place laws, regulations, specific legal cases, and the administration of criminal justice into a social context |
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Sociology of Law - Canadian Law |
- Principles adopted from britain - rule of law - No person is above the law, and there should be no arbitrary exercise of state power - Creation, administration and application of the law based on acceptable procedures that promote fairness and equality |
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Theorizing the law - Consensus view |
- Law is neutral framework for maintaining social cohesion -Definition of crime is a function of norms, morality -Applied fairly and uniformly |
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Theorizing the law - Conflict view |
- Law as a tool to protect the haves from the have-nots - Protects the property of those in power, suppresses potential political threats to the elites |
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Interactionist view |
- Crime and law reflect opinions of people who impose their definitions of right and wrong on the rest of society |
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Sociology of law - Critical Legal Studies |
- Focuses on contradictions and inconsistencies of the law - Rejects notion that law can ever be value-free - Laws exist as a legitimized way to support the interests of specific classes and groups of people |
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Sociology of law - Critical race theory |
- Focuses on issues of oppression and discrimination - Racism is an embedded feature of modern society - Interested in topics such as racial profiling |
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Crime, Risk, and Regulation in Canada - Media |
- Actively constructs our sense of who is "at risk"
- Create moral panics: the reaction of a group based on the false or exaggerated perception that some group or behaviour threatens the well-being of society |
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Crime, Risk, and Regulation in Canada - FACTS |
- Since 1991 the crime rate has significantly decreased - Since 2011 crime rate at its lowest level in more than 25 years - Canada's Crime Severity Index (CSI) measures the seriousness of crimes reported to the police - Highest CSI values in NWT and Nunavut, lowest in Ontario, New Brunswick, PEI - Homicide rate remains fairly stable; slight increase 2011 |
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Fear of Crime - Womens fear of Crime |
- Fear gender paradox: Men are more likely than women to be victims of crime; women have higher fear of crime |
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Fear of Crime - Consequences of Women's fear |
- Policies such as the Safe Streets Act - Reinforces women's dependency on men - Focusing on risk shifts responsibility from the state protecting its citizens to individuals being responsible for avoiding risk and risky situations - Fear of becoming a victim can lead to avoidance of outings and interactions which can negatively affect life satisfaction |
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Moral regulation - Public order or victimless crimes
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- Acts considered to be crimes based on moral principles (Prostitution, gambling, pornography, substance abuse). |
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Moral Regulation |
- Used to describe how some behaviours become constituted as immoral and thereby regulated - eg. welfare recipients, sex, and sexual relationships - Perpetuated through discourse - Affects our perception of crime vicitms |
