Chapter 6

1. Chapter 6 Crime and Criminal Justice

2. Norms, Law, and Crime • Norms are rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members • Laws are the norms created through a society’s political system. • Civil law defines the legal rights and relationships involving individuals and businesses • Criminal law focuses on people’s responsibilities to uphold public order

3. Norms, Law, and Crime • Crime: the violation of the criminal laws enacted by federal, state, or local governments • Misdemeanors are less serious offenses punishable by less than one year in prison • Felonies are more serious crimes punishable by at least one year in prison

4. The Crime Problem • Most people in the U.S. think crime is a serious problem • Much greater crime problem compared to other high-income nations • more handgun murders than any other high-income country • Fear of crime is itself a social problem, because it limits the things people do and the places they go

5. Crime Statistics • The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is a main source of crime statistics providing data on • crimes against property (burglary, larceny-theft, motor-vehicle theft, and arson) • crime against persons (murder and manslaughter, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery)

6. Crime Statistics • Problems with the UCR • only includes crimes reported to police…how much crime goes unreported? • only gathers statistics on “street crimes” committed by ordinary people, not the more “elite” crimes (e.g., fraud, price fixing, and toxic dumping)

7. Violent Crime: Patterns and Trends • Crime rate for property offenses is 7 times than for violent crimes against persons • Violent crime rose quickly from 1960 until the early 1990s • After that, the trend turned downward

8. Murder • Most murder victims are males, with African Americans being at especially high risk • FBI data show that nearly half of all murder victims knew the offender • The high murder rate in the U.S. demands that we take a critical look at the role of handguns

9. Forcible Rape • Nationally, only one-half of women who are raped make a report to the police • Rape statistics don’t reflect attempted rape, sex with a minor, or attacks on males

10. Aggravated Assault • Aggravated assault accounts for nearly 2/3 of all reported violent crime • Aggravated assault is very much a male crime, with the majority of both victims and offenders being men

11. Robbery • Robbery involves both stealing and threatening another person, which makes this both a property and a violent crime • This the least likely of all violent crimes to result in an arrest • victims usually don’t know a robber so that identification is difficult

12. Property Crimes • Burglary • only 14% of cases are cleared • Majority of those arrested are male and under 25 • Larceny-theft • includes shoplifting, pick pocketing, purse-snatching • the most common of all the serious crimes tracked by the FBI

13. Property Crimes • Motor-vehicle theft • only 15% of cases are cleared • 2/3 of those arrested are under 25 and male • Arson • the arson rate is holding steady • majority of those arrested are under 25 and male

14. “Street” Crime: Who Are the Criminals? • Age • for all offenses, there is a strong link between crime and youth • Gender • In 1999, males accounted for 70 % of arrests for property crime • For violent crime, men are arrested in 83% of the cases • Women are more often arrested for larceny-theft, fraud, and prostitution • For all serious crimes, the number of women arrested is increasing

15. “Street” Crime: Who Are the Criminals? • Social class • Research shows that people of lower social position are involved in most arrests for street crime • The link between class and criminality depends on the kind of crime one is talking about

16. “Street” Crime: Who Are the Criminals? • Race plays a large part in the crime picture several ways • the deprivation faced by black youths may lead to hostility towards the police and various facets of the “system” • prejudice based on race may prompt people to suspect blacks on the basis of skin color • research suggests that such biases may lead police to arrest African Americans more than whites

17. “Street” Crime: Who Are the Criminals? • 2/3 of black children are born to single mothers and may be at a higher risk for criminality • Asian Americans are underrepresented in street crime statistics because • of higher income levels • a strong cultural emphasis on family discipline and honor

18. Juvenile Delinquency • Any violation of criminal law may lead a court to declare a minor “delinquent” • In juvenile courts, the focus is on helping children straighten out rather than simply punish them • in the cases of serious offenses, officials may try a juvenile as an adult • When found guilty, they are held in a juvenile detention center until of legal age, when they are transferred to an adult prison to serve out the rest of their sentence

19. Hate Crimes • A criminal offense against a person, property, or society motivated by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin • Because hate crimes are not always reported, their true extent is probably far greater than criminal statistics indicate

20. White-Collar Crime • Unlawful activities committed by people during the course of their employment or regular activities • Edwin Sutherland pioneered the study of white-collar crime • A recent trend in white-collar crime involves computers - both hackers and thefts • When white-collar offenders are caught, their cases are usually heard in a civil court - and they rarely go to jail

21. Corporate Crime • An unlawful act committed by a corporation or others operating on its behalf (e.g., environmental pollution and gross negligence) • Most of these offenses are tried in civil courts so that no individual is charged with criminal behavior

22. Organized Crime • A business operation that supplies illegal goods and services (e.g., gambling, sex, or drugs) • has a long history in the U.S. • RICO

23. Victimless Crimes • Offenses that directly harm no one but the person who commits them (e.g., gambling and prostitution) • Laws regulating victimless crime vary from place to place

24. Biological Causes of Crime • Cesare Lombroso pioneered theory that criminals were physically different from law-abiding citizens • identified certain traits of lawbreakers: low foreheads, protruding ears, excessive hairiness • His work was flawed because he failed to see that physical traits found among prisoners were also found in the general population

25. Biological Causes of Crime • In the mid-20th century, William Sheldon found that males with athletic builds (mesomorphs) were more likely to become criminals than fat, round people (endomorphs) or thin, wiry people (ectomorphs) • Results were confirmed by the Gleucks (1950) • They cautioned that rather than a muscular build causing criminal behavior, probably athletic boys become more independent and less sensitive to others

26. Biological Causes of Crime • XYY chromosome theory: • Men with an extra Y chromosome may have an increased chance of becoming criminals • Some geneticists think we may eventually be able to identify criminals before they commit crimes • The evidence linking criminality to any genetic trait is not conclusive

27. Psychological Causes of Crime • Like biological research, the psychological study of crime also focuses on individual traits; in this case, abnormal personalities • Peckless and Dinitz explained delinquency in terms of a boy’s degree of moral conscience • nondelinquent boys felt more strongly about right and wrong

28. Psychological Causes of Crime • One problem with this approach is that many serious crimes are committed by people who are quite “normal” • A second problem is that psychological theories consider only the individual, not how society defines them

29. Structural-Functional Analysis: Crime is Useful • Emile Durkheim: the Functions of Crime • Crime affirms a society’s norms and values • Recognizing crime helps everyone recognize the line between right and wrong • Reacting to crime helps bring people together • Crime encourages social change • Durkheim explains that crime is normal for society

30. Structural-Functional Analysis: Crime is Useful • Robert Merton: Strain theory • Crime is a product of society itself • He suggests that patterns of rule breaking depend on how society’s goals affect different categories of people, who do not all have the same opportunities to achieve those goals • There are five outcomes of this situation – conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion

31. Structural-Functional Analysis: Crime is Useful • Cloward and Ohlin: Opportunity structure • Becoming a criminal depends on the presence of illegitimate opportunity • Patterns of conformity and criminality depend on people’s relative opportunity structure

32. Structural-Functional Analysis: Crime is Useful • Travis Hirchi argues that social ties discourage crime • He identifies four kinds of social ties that operate to control crime: • attachment to other people • commitment to conformity • involvement in conventional activities • a belief in the rightness of cultural norms and values

33. Symbolic-Interaction analysis: Labeling Crime • Focuses on how and why society defines some people who break the law as criminals while paying little attention to others • This perspective - what becomes a crime and who becomes a criminal - is part of a process of social definition that changes from time to time and from place to place

34. Symbolic-Interaction analysis: Labeling Crime • Howard Becker: Labeling Theory • Crime and all forms of rule-breaking results not so much from what people do, as from how others respond to those actions

35. Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Labeling Crime • Edwin Lemert: Primary and Secondary Deviance • Explored how individuals can have their lives changed by the labels others apply to them • Primary acts of deviance (skipping school, underage drinking) may have only passing significance • The reaction of others to primary deviance can provoke secondary deviance - when the individual takes on a deviant identity

36. Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Labeling Crime • Erving Goffman: the Power of Stigma • A stigma is a powerful negative social label that radically changes a person’s self-concept and social identity • Once stigmatized, an individual may find that conventional friends disappear • A criminal prosecution can be a powerful ritual that stigmatizes an individual

37. Social-Conflict Analysis: Crime and Inequality • Karl Marx: Class and Crime • Understood social problems in terms of class conflict • Crime was seen as a product of social inequality • Solution to the crime problem is to eliminate capitalism in favor of a more egalitarian system

38. Social-Conflict Analysis: Crime and Inequality • Feminist theory: Gender and Crime • Socialist feminists believe that the solution to crime begins with eliminating capitalism • All feminists agree that subordinating women to men forces them to look to crime as a means of coping with their exploitation and enabling themselves to make a living

39. The Criminal Justice System • Police make choices about what warrants their attention • In a five city study, Smith and Visher found the following factors guided police in arrest decisions: • How serious is the crime? • What does the victim want? • Is the suspect cooperative? • Does the suspect have a record? • Are bystanders watching? • What is the suspect’s race?

40. The Criminal Justice System • Two changes in police policy have helped bring down the nation’s crime rate • community policing • zero tolerance

41. Courts • In principle, the U.S. court system is an adversarial process by which the prosecutor presents the state’s case against the suspect and the suspect’s attorney presents a defense

42. Courts • The reality of justice however, is something much different. • 90% of criminal cases are settled through plea-bargaining • While plea-bargaining saves the time and expense of a trial, efficiency doesn’t always produce justice

43. Punishment • There are four justifications for a society punishing its wrongdoers • retribution • deterrence • rehabilitation • societal protection

44. Punishment • In recent years, the greatest debate concerning punishment has centered on the death penalty • the U.S. is one of the few high-income nations that puts convicted offenders to death

45. Politics and Crime: Constructing Problems and Defining Solutions • Conservatives believe that people raised in strong, law-abiding families are unlikely to commit crime • Most conservatives favor tougher laws, more aggressive policing, and harsher penalties as ways to combat the crime problem. • They believe the key to controlling crime is parents teaching children to make the right choices in a world of pressures

46. Politics and Crime: Constructing Problems and Defining Solutions • Liberals believe that many people live in situations that pressure them to break the law • Crime is caused by a harmful environment, particularly living in poverty • To liberals, jobs are the key to a drop in the crime rate

47. Politics and Crime: Constructing Problems and Defining Solutions • The radical left believes the real crime of society is tremendous economic inequality • The radical solution begins with a restructuring of the economic and political system toward a more egalitarian social order that can make a real claim to justice