Sociology of Crime and Deviance
Laws, in their purest form, are the set of rules created by a governing body to protect people’s fundamental rights, and create a guideline for acceptable behaviour (Haralambos and Holborn, 2009). The act of violating the law is called crime, and although it leads to a number of punishments including imprisonment or probation, a lot of criminals are not caught, and not all laws are strictly enforced (Kirby et al., 2000). Oftentimes, crime, in addition to being illegal, includes anti-social attitudes and general deviant behaviour. Deviance, however, is not always synonymous with illegal activity. It is described as a behaviour that defies social norms and expectations of a specific social group, or society …show more content…
The second and third most committed crimes are anti-social behaviour and violent crime, despite anti-social behaviour not qualifying as illegal. Although the list is rather detailed, there are no mentions of white-collar crimes such as bank frauds, bribery, blackmail or credit card frauds, which could either be a result of them being harder to detect, the criminal justice system overlooking them or simply not mentioning them, despite them costing the most money. Moreover, these crimes tend to be committed by middle or upper class citizens, while more physical crimes such as violence and robbery are mostly linked with working class men and some minority ethnic groups (Trueman, 2016). It has been suggested that younger people that commit these crimes are more likely to be persecuted because they often lack the funds for a good lawyer, further enabling the high numbers in crime within the youth. Older people, however, are usually the ones committing white-collar crimes but have the funds to support themselves legally, which might contribute to the low number of
Laws, in their purest form, are the set of rules created by a governing body to protect people’s fundamental rights, and create a guideline for acceptable behaviour (Haralambos and Holborn, 2009). The act of violating the law is called crime, and although it leads to a number of punishments including imprisonment or probation, a lot of criminals are not caught, and not all laws are strictly enforced (Kirby et al., 2000). Oftentimes, crime, in addition to being illegal, includes anti-social attitudes and general deviant behaviour. Deviance, however, is not always synonymous with illegal activity. It is described as a behaviour that defies social norms and expectations of a specific social group, or society …show more content…
The second and third most committed crimes are anti-social behaviour and violent crime, despite anti-social behaviour not qualifying as illegal. Although the list is rather detailed, there are no mentions of white-collar crimes such as bank frauds, bribery, blackmail or credit card frauds, which could either be a result of them being harder to detect, the criminal justice system overlooking them or simply not mentioning them, despite them costing the most money. Moreover, these crimes tend to be committed by middle or upper class citizens, while more physical crimes such as violence and robbery are mostly linked with working class men and some minority ethnic groups (Trueman, 2016). It has been suggested that younger people that commit these crimes are more likely to be persecuted because they often lack the funds for a good lawyer, further enabling the high numbers in crime within the youth. Older people, however, are usually the ones committing white-collar crimes but have the funds to support themselves legally, which might contribute to the low number of