Crime and Deviance

• Crime and Deviance


  considers social structure and culture and how these forces interact with agency

  - is focused on trying to explain conformity (why people ...iate from conformity)

  - a real explanation of "society" (or part of society) must account for both conformity and ...
• Deviance


  It is both a....

  1. Violation of social expectation

  AND a...

  2. Response to the violation

  - is based on how a society responds to the act
• Crime


  based on what society criminalizes (based on the response of society)

  - refers to deviant behaviour that violates criminal law
• Mild to Severe Categories of Deviant Behaviour

  (1 = mild 4 = severe)

  1. Social Diversions

  2. Social Deviations

  3. Conflict Crimes (criminalized)

  4. Consensus Crimes (criminalized)
• 1. Social Diversions


  minor acts of deviance that are recognized, but largely tolerated by society (no formal sanctions)

  Ex:dressing inappropriately
• 2. Social Deviations


  more serious acts of deviance that have a widespread agreement about the social harm associated with the act

  - often institutional sanction, but no criminal sanction

  Ex:not doing your job properly (you could lose your job, but won't go to jail)
• 3. Conflict Crimes (criminalized)

  deviants acts that are criminalized (state sanction), but havecontroversy regarding their moral status

  - response is split into 2, half consider it a crime, and the other half don't

  Ex:the use of marijuana

  - Normalization can play a part in the shift from deviant -> criminal to normal -> accepted
• 4. Consensus Crimes (criminalized)


  deviant acts that are criminalized and universally consideredmorally unacceptable

  Ex:cold blooded murder
• Sociological Study of Crime

  doesn't just study the criminal and the criminal act but also focuses on the response to the behaviour
• Institutions: Self-Concept vs. Reality

  "Self-Concept"

  - the story about what the institution is

  - what it does, in the context of society

  - Any sociological analysis of institutions needs to go beyond their self concept and look at the reality of whatever social consequences the institution produces
• Manifest Functions


  theintended consequencesof a social institution's organization that arepart of their self-concept

  Ex:the function of the university is to educate students
• Latent Functions


  theunintended consequencesof a social institution's organization(not part of the self-concept)and yet are important for maintaining social structure (i.e. facilitating social reproduction)

  Ex:the function of the university is to facilitate the reproduction of the social institution of the family
• Lay Theory of Crime (Conservative)

  crime is an undesirable or pathological phenomenoncaused by individual moral failure
• Lay Theory of Crime (Liberal/Progressive)


  crime is an undesirable or pathological phenomenoncaused by social problems(ex: poverty, lack of education, unemployment, etc.)
• Durkheim's Functionalist Analysis of Crime


  states that crime exists in all societies even where the punishment is death

  - demonstrates how one might step outside of the institution's self-concept, to analyze the reality of how it operates
• Durkheim: What is Crime's Function?


  according to ... crime and punishment is intended to produce an event that strengthens the feeling of pro-sociality that governs social life

  - crime reinforces collective pro-sociality

  - collective pro-sociality stabilizes society

  - therefore, crime stabilizes society
• Relationship between Criminals and Police

  for Durkheim, they exist in a symbiotic relationship

  - both roles are necessary for crime to produce it's stabilizing effect
• Relationship between Fear of Crime vs Rate of Crime

  researchers have consistently found that fear of crime isNOTa direct reflection of crime rates
• Fear of Crime and the Availability Heuristic

  the tendency to overgeneralize from experiences that can be recalled from memory (fear)

  - has to do with the experience and whether it caused a vivid recollection

  - because something being frightening increases its prominence
• What accounts for Fear of Crime?

  what accounts for ... is not crime itself but,representations of crime in the media