ac1.1

• Norms


  Specific rules or socially accepted standards that govern people's behaviour in particular situations
• Values


  General principles or guidelines for how we should live our lives, telling us what is right and wrong, good and bad
• Values


  • Respect for human life
  • Accumulating personal wealth (in UK/USA)
  • Duty to share wealth with the group (in traditional societies)
  • Respect for elders
• Norms of a society

  Linked to its values
• Moral code


  A set of basic rules, values and principles held by an individual, group, organisation or society as a whole
• Police Code of Ethics


  • Principles: accountability, integrity, openness, fairness, leadership, respect, honesty, objectivity, selflessness
• Deviance is any behaviour that differs from normal, is unusual, uncommon or out of the ordinary
• Forms of deviance


  • Heroically risking one's own life to save someone else
  • Unusual and eccentric or bizarre behaviour
  • Behaviour that is unusual and bad or disapproved of
• Formal sanctions


  Punishments imposed by official bodies like police, courts, schools for breaking formal written rules or laws
• Informal sanctions


  Punishments used where rules are not formally written down, such as refusing to speak, telling off, a slap on the wrist
• Positive sanctions


  Rewards for behaviour that society approves of, such as medals or praise
• Social control


  Ways in which society seeks to control our behaviour and ensure we conform to social norms
• Criminal behaviour


  Serious, harmful acts that are a wrong against society, so disruptive that the state must intervene to forbid and punish them by law
• Actus reus


  A guilty act
• Mens rea


  A guilty mind
• Strict liability


  Wrongful act on its own is enough to convict, mens rea not required
• Self-defence


  Assaulting someone is not a crime if done in self-defence with reasonable force
• Not all harmful acts are criminal, and not all criminal acts are particularly harmful
• Differing views on what acts are 'really crimes'

  • Fare-dodgers
  • Motorists who go a little over the speed limit
  • Users of soft drugs
  • Workers who take home stationery
• Not all criminal laws are enforced, with some low on the list of police priorities, like white-collar crimes
• Which actions get made illegal often depends on who has the power to influence the law-makers, like the media, campaigning groups or big business
• Laws are sometimes changed to reflect changes in public opinion, with some actions being decriminalised and others being redefined as crimes
• Criminality


  Acts that break the law
• Deviance


  Acts that are forbidden or unacceptable in society
• Most acts classified as crimes would be regarded as deviant


  As they are appalling and intolerable to society
• Not all acts classified as crimes are particularly serious or regarded as deviant
• Society is often divided on whether a particular crime is actually deviant
• Acts seen as deviant are not always crimes
• Attitudes may change towards behaviour that was once both illegal and seen as deviant by almost everyone
• Others may continue to see the behaviour as deviant, even though the law has changed
• Examples of changing attitudes

  • Homosexuality
  • Abortion
• the legal defintion of a crime is a violation of the law, a breach of the law
• the social definition of criminal behaviour is the behaviour is considered criminal by society and not against the law
• crimes habe consquences that are considered detrimental
• fatal offences

  • murder
  • manslaughter
• non-fatal offences against a person

  • assult
  • battery
  • actual and grievous bodily harm
• offences against property

  • theft
  • robbery
  • bulgary
• sexual offences

  • rape
  • indecent assult
• public order offences

  • riot
  • affray violent disorder
• drug offences

  • possesion of a controlled drug
  • possession with intent to supply