Main concepts

• What is meant by secret and private deviance?

  Often undercover and maybe hidden in normal settings for example, home or work, it may be legal or illegal

  - for example, West appeared to be an average family man in the privacy of his own home, murdered two of his family members
• What is meant by open and public deviance?

  Involves conforming to the norms and values of those outside wider society

  - for example; travellers-> their lifestyles, very different from mainstream population, and could be classed as deviant
• How did Partygate illustrate the context and diversity of deviance?

  During Covid going, someone’s party, was seeing as deviant, as if you were to go to someone’s party now it wouldn’t be seen as abnormal
• Plummer distinguishes between 2 types of deviance they are….

  - societal deviance -> refers to behaviour which breaks the law, which is seen as deviant by most members of society

  - situational deviance -> the effect of the context on the classification of deviance. In one situation and act may be seen seen as deviant situation, it may not.
• What is a social construct?

  When society construct a meaning onto something, for example, the idea that boys wear blue and girls wear pink
• Why are crime and deviance social construct?

  Because society has socially construction meanings behind an act, which determines if it is criminal or deviant or both

  - for example; smoking used to be normal ages ago, but when there had been more research behind the dangers of laws has been put in place, because it has become something that society viewed as deviant.
• Explain, formal, social control mechanisms

  These are institutions, specifically set up to enforce social control.

  - for example, the parliament which impacts the law and the police and prison service. People know that if they do the wrong thing they get punished for it.
• Explain, informal, social control mechanisms

  Institutions which are not directly concerned with enforcing, social control and upholding the law .

  - for example, religious teachings, like Christian commandments, reinforce values placed on human life from private property . In turn, they back up the laws, protecting life and property . Religions offer rewards to those who follow their teachings and punishments to those who deviate from them in this way, religion act as a mechanism of social control

  - another way is through school and family 
• What are the strengths of police reported crime?

  - are useful, secondary source to identify patterns and trends

  - reliable because they can be collected in a consistent manner every year.

  - can be used to make comparison of crime patterns so changes in trends can be identified

  - they are objective sources of crime rates at they are not subject to research interpretations, making them more likely to lack bias

  - these may be the most objective measure of crime available to sociologists as they’re unable to collect data firsthand.

  - crime, statistics or public records, sociologists have the right to access them, saving them time and money in the long run
• What are the limitations of police recorded crime?

  - they lack validity as they cannot explain why the patterns and trends of crime occur

  - they are social constructions of reality. They only tell us what was reported and recorded, but not the reasons for the patterns.

  - the way that crime statistics are collected, change overtime, so making comparisons is not reliable

  - sociologist may not have access to some official or non-official crime statistics, even though they exist

  - the police use ‘cuffing’ which is a process of downgrading crimes, so they make the number of more serious crimes appear lower than they actually are

  - the ‘crime game’ has been used by some forces where they make up and crimes, and then claimed to clean them up to make them look better. Reducing validity.

  - although crimes might be reported, they may not be recorded

  - there are many crimes that are not reported, mainly domestic violence
• What is the crime survey of England and Wales victim survey?

  Is a continuous face-to-face interviewer administered survey that measures crime experiences among people, age 16 and over in household over England and Wales
• Strengths of CSEW

  - picks up and crimes that haven’t been reported to the police or that have been reported, but not recorded. This is why it shows higher estimates of crime than police reported crime statistics

  - as it has a high response rate over 70% - the validity is high and as the ONS carry it out rather than the government, the data is less likely to be manipulated

  - significantly more reliable as a source of information about crime. Then police supported crimes statistics since the methodology employed has remain consistent since the survey began.
• Limitations of the CSEW

  - does not provide a valid picture of crime overall. Sociologist has found that it doesn’t include murder or victimless crimes., doesn’t include people living outside household, so homeless, people, hostile, dwellers, and prisoners are not represented in the sample reducing representativeness

  - there were several methodological issues that are due to it being a face-to-face interview, for example; respondents may deliberately withhold information, memory may be poor, and result in interviewees forgetting incidents, the interview conditions, such as where, and when the interview took place, and the personal characteristics of the interviewer might influence the response
• What do functionalist view of crime statistics?

  Functionless except official statistics at face value as they see them as reliable and valid sources of data
• What do interactionist view of crime statistics?

  They see statistics as a social construction and only useful for identifying stereotypes and assumptions
• What do Marxists view of crime statistics?

  Statistics show a biased view of crime as they are constructed by the ruling class. They also ignore white colour and corporate crime, which therefore suggest criminals are working class.
• What do feminists view of crime statistics?

  Statistics represent the extent of female crime and climbs against women, such as domestic violence and rape