S ocial Problems: Continuity and Change

1. Social Problems: Continuity and Change

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3. Chapter 8Crime and Criminal Justice

4. Learning Objectives • Understand the extent of public concern about crime. • Explain how the news media contribute to myths about crime. • Describe how crime in the United States is measured. • Describe the major aspects of homicide. • Discuss evidence indicating that white-collar crime is more serious than street crime. • Explain the major issues raised by the concept of consensual crime.

5. Learning Objectives • Explain why males commit more crime than females. • Discuss whether social class differences exist in crime rates. • Discuss whether racial/ethnic differences exist in crime rates. • Understand social structure theories of crime. • Explain the social bonding theory of crime. • Describe the general assumptions of conflict theories of crime. • Describe what is meant by the “working personality” of the police.

6. Learning Objectives • Discuss the quality of legal representation of criminal defendants. • Explain whether incarceration reduces crime in an effective and cost-efficient manner. • Describe five strategies that criminologists have proposed to reduce crime.

7. Key Terms • crime • deviance • Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) • Part I Crimes • dark figure of crime • National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) • self-report survey • intraracial

8. Key Terms • white-collar crime • corporate violence • organized crime • consensual crime • social disorganization theory • anomie theory • differential association theory • social bonding theory

9. Key Terms • labeling theory • group conflict theory • radical theory • plea bargaining • get-tough approach • public health approach

10. Key Takeaways • Much of the American public is concerned about crime, and many people worry about becoming a victim of various types of crime. • The news media overdramatize the nature and amount of crime, and they give more attention to crimes involving African Americans and Latinos as offenders and whites as victims. • The nation’s major source of crime data is the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). However, many people do not report their crimes to the police, and police practices affect the number of “official” crimes reported by the UCR.

11. Key Takeaways • Most homicides are committed for relatively emotional, spontaneous reasons and between people who knew each other beforehand. • White-collar crime involves more death, injury, and economic loss than street crime, but the punishment of white-collar crime is relatively weak. • Consensual crime raises two related issues: (a) To what extent should the government prohibit people from engaging in behavior in which there are no unwilling victims, and (b) do laws against consensual crime do more good than harm or more harm than good?

12. Key Takeaways • Males commit more street crime than females, in part because of gender role socialization that helps make males more assertive and aggressive. • Young people commit a disproportionate amount of street crime, in part because of the influence of their peers and their lack of stakes in conformity. • The disproportionate involvement of African Americans and Latinos in street crime arises largely from their poverty and urban residence. • Social structure theories stress that crime results from economic and other problems in how society is structured and from poverty and other problems in neighborhoods.

13. Key Takeaways • Interactionisttheories stress that crime results from our interaction with family members, peers, and other people, and from labeling by the criminal justice system. • Conflict theories stress that social groups with power and influence try to use the law and criminal justice system to maintain their power and to keep other groups at the bottom of society. • Partly because the police often fear for their lives, they tend to have a “working personality” that is authoritarian and suspicious. Police corruption and use of undue force remain significant problems in many police departments.

14. Key Takeaways • Although criminal defendants have the right to counsel, the legal representation of such defendants, most of whom are poor or near poor, is very inadequate. • Prisons are squalid places, and incarceration has not been shown to reduce crime in an effective or cost-efficient manner. • Most criminologists agree that capital punishment does not deter homicide, and they worry about racial discrimination in the use of the death penalty and about the possibility of wrongful executions.

15. Key Takeaways • The get-tough approach has not been shown to reduce crime in an effective and cost-efficient manner. A sociological explanation of crime thus suggests the need to focus more resources on the social roots of crime in order to prevent crime from happening in the first place. • Strategies suggested by criminologists to reduce crime include (a) reducing poverty and improving neighborhood living conditions, (b) changing male socialization patterns, (c) expanding early childhood intervention programs, (d) improving schools and schooling, and (e) reducing the use of incarceration for drug and property offenders.