crime and deviance*

• what is conformity?

  accept means to achieve goals

  accept social goals
• what is innovation?

  accept social goals

  reject means to achieve goals
• what is ritualism?

  accept means to achieve goals

  reject social goals
• what is retreatism?

  reject social goals

  reject means to achieve goals
• which type of crime is most common?

  white collar, corporate crime
• how are black people labelled as criminals in society?

  black people are 16 times more likely to be searched than white people by the metropolitan police, making them more suceptable to developing a deviant career.
• how do some black males in the criminal justice system support Becker's theory?

  they go onto negotiate the process with their job and put back into society by challenging it.
• what do marxists believe is the cause of crime?

  crime is a by-product of the way capitalist society is organised and the inequalities built into it.
• what values do marxists believe a capitalist society is based on?

  materialism (valuing material possessions), consumerism (wanting the latest consumer goods such as mobile phones) and competition between individuals to obtain these products.
• what do functionalists believe about crime and prisons?

  prisons are beneficial: they keep dangerous people away, act as a deterence, and help rehabilitate people. The criminal justice system is supported by the need for it.
• what did Durkheim say about crime and deviance?

  a certain amount of crime and deviance as normal and an integral part of all healthy societies. This is because it acts as a safety valve, providing a relatively harmless way for someone to express their discontent.
• what did Durkheim and Cohen say was a good example of a safety valve?

  Prostitution
• what are examples of deviance resulting in social change?

  suffragettes, striking, Martin Luther King
• what is chivalry?

  men behaving courteously towards women (holding the door for them, offering jackets when it's cold).
• what did Pollak say about gender and crime?

  men have a protective attitude towards women, so they are unwilling to arrest them, charge them, prosecute or convict them.
• how is the criminal justice system bias towards women?

  police, magistrates, and judges are mostly men. Men are socialised to act in a 'chivalrous' way towards women. Female crime is less likely to end up in official statistics.
• how many American men are currently behind bars?

  1 in 50
• how many male and female convicts are persecuted?

  male: 94%

  female: 81%
• what is a man's sentence like compared to a woman's?

  men recieve 63% longer sentences than women for the same crime.
• what is the difference between crime and deviance?

  • crime is any act that breaks the law, if the perpetrator is detected, then prosecuted then if found guilty they are sentenced.
  • deviance is behaviour that deviates that norms of society, if one is deviant, they might face sanctions (but not the law).
• what does socially constructed behaviour refer to?

  behaviour that is invented by and accepted by a society.
• how can people's socialisation affect their behaviour?

  they can either lack socialisation or they can be socialed with the wrong norms and values.
• how can relative deprivation affect people's behaviour?

  it refers to lacking resources that majority of people have, for example the latest gadgets.
• what is value consenus?

  a shared agreement among a group of people about what is important or valuable.
• which survey found that male black youths were more likely to be stopped and searched by the Met than any other groups?

  BCS, british crime survey
• what do marxists believe leads to crime?

  we live in a capitalist society which the bourgeoise benefits from and the proletariat are exploited by.
• who did marxists believe created the laws?

  the bourgeoise to serve the interests of the bourgeoise.
• what do marxists believe about law enforcement?

  even if laws are created to support everyone, many times the criminal justice system may be biased towards certain groups.
• how did marxists believe that self interest is an explanation for crime?

  capitalist society promotes consumerism by influencing people to want material things and to complete in order to get them. Those who might be relatively deprived still share these goals and can turn to crime in order to achieve them.
• what are criticisms of marxist explanations for crime?

  • they ignore other inequalities such as gender and ethnicity and focus too much on class inequalities.
  • they see people as being too passive, with no free will to decide for themselves; they see them as doomed to commit crime when it isn't always true.
• what do feminists argue about crime theories about men?

  • women can be offenders
  • women can be victims
  • theories that only applied to men in the past now are seen as equally possible to be applicable to women.