INTRO

• • Crime - acts such as robbery that break the criminal law, can lead to criminal proceedings
  • Deviance - behaviour such as eavesdropping that is not accepted by societys norms, can result in negative sanction, it can be legal and illegal
• Deviance as socially defined behaviour

  • Many sociologists argue that crime involves legally defined behaviour while deviance involves socially defined behaviour
  • Whether or not act is seen as deviant depends on who carries out the act and how others react to it
  • What is considered deviant varies between cultures and changes overtime
• Social order

  • 2 main ways to explain social order: consensus and conflict approaches
  • Functionalism argue modern society is based on consensus and mutual agreement amongst the people, social order is maintained overtime as most people support and agree to the rules
  • Marxism sees capitalist society based off of conflicting interests between bourgeoise (the rich) and the working class, occurs due to opposing interests, social order maintained overtime but bourgeoise have power to enforce order and influence laws
• Formal social control 1

  • Formal social control - based on laws and written rules, linked to ways that state control peoples behaviour
  • Agencies of formal social control - bodies that make laws, enforce them or punish law breakers
• Formal social control 2

  • Police maintain order, enforce law, investigate crime and punish offenders
  • Judiciary - deal with offenders and sentence those guilty
  • Magistrates - deal with most criminal cases, minor ones such as theft
  • Prison service - keeps offenders in custody and punish them
  • Probation service - supervises offenders who been released into community
• Informal social control

  • Informal social control - based on unwritten rules and processes such as approval of people, enforced by social pressure by reactions of agencies of informal social control (peoples behaviour based on social processes) eg family members friends colleagues, reaction can form positive or negative sanction