AC 4.2 Social Changes Affect Policy Development

• Values

  Rules shared by most people in a culture

  • respect for elders
  • women and children first
  • queueing
• Norms

  Social expectations that guide behaviour, vary from culture to culture

  • wearing certain colours to funerals (UK black, China White)
  • quiet in library
  • paying in a shop
• Mores

  Moral/good ways of behaving, essential norms society sees as vital for maintaining standard of decency

  • killing another human is wrong
• Technology

  • Number of crime increased and nature of crime has changed
  • Identity theft, fraud, white collar crime
  • Crimes that were face to face now online
  • New modern crimes e.g. fishing, up skirting, hacking
  • Computer Misuse Act, Voyeurism Act
• Death Penalty - Outline

  • Gives justice to victim, stops reoffending, cost effective, can act as deterrent
  • Killing another human is morally wrong, wrongfully convicted murdered
  • No opportunity to reform, disproportionately used against certain races, ethnicities, sexual orientations
• Death Penalty - Legislation

  • 1957 Homicide Act - reduced categories of murder that could be punishable
  • Capital Punishment suspended in 1965, made permanent in 1969
  • Human Rights Act formally abolished death penalty in UK
• Abortion - Outline

  • 1930's women's groups and MP's concerned about great loss of life and damage to health due to back alley abortions
  • 87% British public think it should be legal, 6% it shouldn't, 7% unsure
  • August 2022, women in England and Wales allowed to take early abortion pills up to 9 weeks and 6 days into pregnancy
• Abortion - Legislation

  • Abortion Act 1967 legalised abortion in UK excluding N. Ireland (legalised in 2019)
  • National Abortion Campaign 1975 established to protect 1967 act
• Immigration and Racism - Outline

  • Windrush generation - faced hostility and discrimination when trying to find, housing, jobs, and services
  • 1956 survey in Birmingham - 1.5% would let a room to a Black tenant
  • Exploitation by landlords letting slum housing to immigrants
  • Alan Turing - openly gay, created idea of computer, given choice between prison or chemical castration, committed suicide via cyanide
• Immigration and Racism - Legislation

  Race Relations Acts

  • 1965 banned racial discrimination in public places
  • 1968 outlawed discrimination in key areas of employment, housing, and services
  • 1976 extended to cover both direct and indirect discrimination
  • 2010 Equality Act brought together laws on racial, sex, age, and disability discrimination