Test 4 Flashcards

Question

Sanctions

Answer 1

- sanctions are reactions to behaviour/actions Informal Sanction - not a process or policy - positive informal: an expression of thanks, liking something on social media, etc (positive reinforcement of following good norms) - negative informal: an angry comment (negative reinforcement) Formal Sanction - has a process/ procedure or policy - positive formal: a promotion at work, or a positive comment on a review website because its recorded feedback (pos reinforcement) - negative formal: a parking fine, demotion at work, getting written up, speeding ticket (neg reinforcement)

Answer 2

“A violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways, mores, or codified law” (Little et al, 2016, p. 299)

Answer 3

“an act of deviance that breaks not only a norm, but a law” (Little et al, 2016, p. 300)

Answer 4

1. Consensus crime - Agreement of the norm: high agreement - Severity of societal response (subjective): severe - Evaluation of social harm (objective): very harmful 2. Conflict crime - Agreement of the norm: high disagreement - Severity of societal response: moderate - Evaluation of social harm: somewhat harmful 3. Social deviations - Agreement of the norm: high disagreement - Severity of societal response: moderate - Evaluation of social harm: somewhat harmful 4. Social diversions - Agreement of the norm: confusion or apathy - Severity of societal response: mild Evaluation of social harm: relatively harmless

Answer 5

- media has tremendous affect on our lives and the decision we make - media misrepresents statistics based on crime (ex. over represents people of colour)

Answer 6

National media - doesn't cover a lot of crime unless its a significant event that captivates the nations attention Local media - covers most crime news - types include tv news, newspapers, online journals (web based media), etc. Web-based media - online - blogs, microblogs (twitter), similar to columns/editorials as they don't have to be factual, gives an illusion of authenticity/authority/fact Hard news - as it is happening - person on street hears reporting of what is currently going on - "breaking news" Soft news - after the fact - feel good stories - follow up stories on something that was previously hard news Columns/Editorials - not necessarily journalistic - opinion pieces - does not have to be factual , no journalistic investigation

Answer 7

1. Internet 2. 24-hour news cycle 3. Social media - contributes to accelerated news - from the business of media, always something fresh - issues with this = less journalistic integrity, less fact checking, news will report tweets/insta posts - news wants to be sensationalized - has effects on our understanding of crime, 1. presenting in a sensational way, 2. presenting the more sensationalized stories - increased coverage of violent crimes, news = 50% violent crime coverage when violent crime only makes up 6% of overall crime, huge overrepresentation

Answer 8

- Unique - Sensational - Extreme - Stranger danger - almost always presented in terms on an unknown threat to make us scared, which makes it all of these elements - makes us think we are under threat and should be fearful of various things, when crime is actually steadily decreasing - But rarely domestic violence, partner assault, & sexual assault - most violence is committed by someone we know (approx. 80%), the people we should be worried about and attending to

Answer 9

Crime Rates - (𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠)/𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 × 100,000 (rate per 100,000) - Incidents taken from UCR - data base fed from police reports, which means that anything which is not reported is not recorded - All incidents are equal, including theft s murder - gives us an overall idea but does not specify the severity Crime Severity Index (CSI) - (# 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 × 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡)/𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 - factors in the amount of harm, the severity of the crime

Answer 10

Violent victimization 35% - Sexual assault 10% - Robbery 3% - Physical assault 22% Theft of personal property 34% - not stolen from household Household victimization 32% - Break & enter 7% - Motor vehicle theft 4% - Theft of household property 12% - Vandalism 9%

Answer 11

- since 1992, sharp decline in all types of crime - since about 2012/2013-2017, slight increase in crimes (majority related to property crimes) but even then still way better off than previously crime rates

Answer 12

- same trends - decrease for many years of crime - since 2015, slight uptick but not a lot, can be accounted for by increases in fraud, child porn, uttering threats, mischief, sexual assault level 1, shoplifting under 5K - recent data, now trending back down again, may be aided by pandemic, most crimes since pandemic are property crimes

Answer 13

- mp ch ques

Answer 14

- crime prevention models ``` Crime Control Justice Welfare Community Change Restorative Justice ```

Answer 15

Punishment & deterrence approach - justice model - crime control model - these 2 models use punishment and deterrence as an approach to crime & crime prevention - get tough approaches do not really reduce crime, the idea that the result of punishment would prevent people from doing crimes, but research shows that it actually doesn't work to limit behaviour - ex. war on drugs

Answer 16

Treatment & Rehabilitation - Welfare - Community Change - Restorative Justice

Answer 17

Treatment & Rehabilitation Welfare - seeks to rehabilitate the person who was in conflict with the law - recognizes the need that the person is missing, does the person need skills training to get a job? - seek to rehabilitate at the microlevel, localized to the person in trouble with the law ex. fix family relationships Community Change - seeks to rehabilitate the community/society - what we need to fix isn't the person who stole the bread, its the community that allows the person who goes hungry - would want to have more social workers in the community to help with addictions, family problems, etc - resources needed within the community before the person reaches prison Restorative Justice - seeks to rehabilitate the relationship between the person who commit the offence, the victim, and the community - if the victim was harmed, what can we do to make them okay - rehabilitate the relationship between each factor - symbiotic approach to restore the harmony

Answer 18

``` Substance abuse Pro-criminal attitudes Anti-social personality Pro-criminal associates Education/employment Family/marital relationships Leisure/recreation Criminal history ``` - by reducing a risk factor may be able to reduce other factors as well

Answer 19

1. Reducing Poverty 2. Male socialization 3. Early childhood intervention 4. Improved schools and schooling 5. Community corrections

Answer 20

- Drug use has been common since ancient times. - Alcohol was widely drunk in colonial America. During the latter nineteenth century, opium, marijuana, and cocaine were legal drugs that were also widely used. - Racial prejudice played an important role in decisions during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century to ban opium, marijuana, and cocaine.

Answer 21

- The distinction between legal drugs and illegal drugs has no logical basis; legal drugs cause much more harm than illegal drugs. - Alcohol and tobacco kill more than 500,000 Americans annually. Binge drinking on campuses results in accidents and assaults involving several hundred thousand college students annually. - Marijuana is by far the most commonly used illegal drug. The low prevalence of other illegal drugs still amounts to millions of people using these drugs annually.

Answer 22

- Drug use is socially patterned: Aspects of our sociodemographic backgrounds affect our likelihood of using various drugs. - Perhaps the clearest social pattern involves gender, with males more likely than females to use and abuse alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. - Despite common beliefs, the rate of illegal drug use is lower for African Americans than for whites.

Answer 23

- Biological theories assume that some people are especially vulnerable to drug addiction for genetic reasons. - A popular set of psychological theories assumes that drug addiction results from certain personality traits and problems. - Sociological theories attribute drug use to various aspects of the social environment, including peer influences, weak social bonds, and the larger drug culture.

Answer 24

- To deal with drugs, the United States has used several strategies, including treatment, prevention, harm reduction, and the legal war on illegal drugs. - According to its critics, the war on illegal drugs has done much more harm than good and in this respect is repeating the example of Prohibition.

Answer 25

- Critics of the war on drugs say that people who use illegal drugs should be treated, not arrested, just as people who use alcohol and tobacco are treated, if they seek treatment, rather than arrested. - Specific measures that could help address the drug problem include providing legally prescribed heroin or substitute opiates for heroin addicts and raising the alcohol tax.

Answer 26

- 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.

Answer 27

- 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?

Answer 28

- 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.

Answer 29

- 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. - Interactionist theories 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.

Answer 30

- 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. - 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 costefficient 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.

Answer 31

- 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.

Test 4 Flashcards

(55 cards)