Crime and Criminology

1.What is crime?

2.Durkheim on crime

3.What is deviance?

Course Website

http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/garina/soc361

Crime can be defined…

Form of normal behavior Violation of behavioral norms Form of deviant behavior Legally defined behavior Violation of human rights Social harm/injury Form of inequality

Definition of crime

If we believe that crime is human conduct in violation of the criminal law, we can easily identify criminal behavior from non-criminal

Carol Carr

The woman, Carol Carr, 64, killed her sons, Michael R. Scott, 42, and Andy B. Scott, 41, in a nursing home

Both men were in the advanced stages of Huntington's disease and were bedridden and unable to communicate.

The disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that causes involuntary body movement, dementia and death, killed their father, Ms. Carr's first husband.

Carol Carr

''What she did was illegal, but also what she did was moral: she stopped the suffering of these children,'' her lawyer, Lee Sexton, said.

Unusual behaviors?

Keeping poop in show boxes

Emile Durkheim (1895)

Made three specific claims about the nature of crime:

1. Crime is normal

2. Crime is inevitable

3. Crime is useful

Crime is normal

As normal as birth and marriage Crimes occur in all societies They are closely tied to the facts of collective

life Crime rates tend to increase as societies

evolve from lower to higher phases

Kitty Genovese of Kew Gardens, New York In 1964, a 29-year-old Kitty cried out for help

from her neighbors when an assailant stabbed her twice in the back.

News reports afterwards suggested that 38 neighbors heard or saw some of what happened that night.

Everyone feels that someone else will do something or that someone is better equipped to respond

Crime is normal

Crime is functional for society By punishing criminals, society reaffirms it

own values If crimes were not committed, then the values

of society would become blurred If there is no punishment, then there would be

no way of reestablishing the values that the crime offends

Crime is inevitable

No society can ever be entirely

rid of crime Imagine a community of saints in a perfect and

exemplary monastery Faults that appear venial to the ordinary person will

arouse the same scandal as does normal crime Absolute conformity to rules is impossible Each member in society faces variation in

background, education, heredity, social influences

Crime is useful

Crime is indispensable to the

normal evolution of law and morality Crime often is a symptom of individual

originality and a preparation for changes in society

Rosa Parks (was a criminal) is a hero now Her simple act of protest galvanized

America's civil rights revolution

Three perspectives on crime

The Consensus View of Crime The Conflict View of Crime The Interactionist View of Crime

The Consensus View of Crime

Consensus = agreement Crimes are behaviors believed to be

repugnant (repulsive) to all elements of society

Substantive criminal law – written code that defines crimes and their punishments

This code reflects the values, beliefs, and opinions of society’s mainstream

Concept of ideal legal system

Legalistic definition

Crime is human conduct in violation of the criminal laws of state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction that has the power to make such laws

Some activities are not crimes even though they are immoral (watching pornography, torturing animals, creating poor working conditions)

No law= No crime

Domestic Violence

Twenty-five years ago, police, prosecutors, and judges did not view domestic abuse (rape and battering) as real crime but rather as private matter where the woman to blame

No law = no crime

Nike

Up to fifty percent of workers cannot drink water or go to the toilet when they want A quarter of workers receive less than the legal minimum wage, even though Nike makes huge profits“Abusive treatment", physical and verbal, is exercised in more than a quarter of its south Asian plants

Poor working conditions - Crime?

For many years, human rights groups have attacked Nike for the low pay and terrible working conditions, and for the use of child labour

Over half of its employees in Asia work more than sixty hours a week and have no day off

Conflict View of Crime

Powerful groups of people label selected undesirable forms of behavior as illegal

Powerful individuals use their power to establish laws and sanctions against less powerful persons and groups

Official statistics indicate that crime rates in inner-city, high-poverty areas are higher than those in suburban areas

Self-reports of prison inmates show that prisoners are members of the lower class

Conflict View of Crime

Crime of inequality includes a lot of behaviors that are omitted by legalistic definition

Crime is a political concept used to protect powerful people

Crimes of power (price fixing, economic crimes, unsafe working conditions, nuclear waste products, war-making, domestic violence, etc)

'‘Eco-mafia''

The developing South (particularly African countries like Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Algeria and Mozambique) has become the dump for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste from the world's rich countries

A colossal business which is linked to money laundering and gunrunning

Nuclear waste drums found by Greenpeace

IIlegal dumps - among the largest in the world - in Somalia, where workers handle the radioactive waste without any kind of safeguard or protective gear - not even gloves

The workers do not know what they are handling, and if one of them dies, the family is persuaded to keep quiet with a small bit of cash

Interactionist View of Crime

This view takes a smaller scale view of society and social order and analyses small or medium scale social interactions

The main idea behind the interactionist approach to deviance is that the definition of what is deviant is socially negotiated

We will discuss the fact that definition of crime differs from one culture to another and also across time

It also differs according to where you are and with whom at any given moment.

Example

Imagine that a young male of 18 is walking home late one night through the city streets singing at the top of his lungs and weaving about in the road

The police are called and the young man is taken to the police station

When he gets there he explains that earlier that day he has been accepted for a place at Cambridge University and he had been out with his friends to celebrate

Example

He has no previous police record. His father is the local GP (General Practitioner)

The police call his father who arrives looking rather embarrassed. He apologizes to the police and they have a little joke together about young men and ‘boys will be boys’

The young man is sent home with a mild warning and the suggestion that he won't feel very well in the morning.

Another Scenario

A young male of 18 is walking home late one night through the city streets singing at the top of his lungs

The police are called and the young man is taken to the police station

When he gets there he explains that earlier that day he has been out with his friends to celebrate birthday

He has no previous police record When asked for his address and telephone number the police

realize that he lives in a notorious housing estate that has a high rate of criminal activity.

The police call his father who arrives looking not very embarrassed. He apologizes to the police but they are unimpressed

The boy is charged with breach of the peace

Howard Becker (1966)

“It is not act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant”

People in different social groups/societies react differently to the same behavior

Moreover, within the same society at a given time the perception of deviance varies by class, gender, race, and age

Deviance is commonplace

We are all deviant from time to time Each of us violates common social norms in

certain situations Being late for class is categorized as deviant

act Dressing too casually for a formal wedding

Relativity of crime

Space Time Social context

Adultery is crime

Saudi Arabia, the

United Arab Emirates,

the Sudan, and some of

the northern states of Nigeria practice a very strict form of Sharia law Sharia law requires that married or divorced persons found guilty of Zina (adultery) be executed by stoning

Sati tradition

Within the Indian culture there is a custom in which a woman burns herself either on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband or by herself with a momento after his death

Proof of her loyalty to husband

Prostitution

Prostitution legalized in Netherlands from October 1, 2000

Prostitutes have the right to hygienic working conditions and security in the workplace

They must pay taxes Can have social insurance, be paid sick leave, and

receive a pension if they work for a brothel or own a company

According to estimates published by the de Graaf Foundation, some 25,000 people work as prostitutes in the Netherlands.

Prostitutions in the USA

A federal law against prostitution concentrate on the prohibition of crossing state or international boundaries for the purpose of engaging in sex for pay

In selected counties in Nevada prostitution is not criminalized

Social Context of crime

Crime is socially constructed (Burger, 1968) An criminal act can be the same but the

interpretation of it can be different

The vocabulary of Homicide

Murder is the name for legally unjustified, intentional homicide (legal and moral meanings)

Execution is the name for justified homicide (when terrorists kill their enemies)

Journalist Ambrose Bierce: “Homicide is the slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference slain whether he fell by one kind or another-the classification is for the purposes of the lawyers”.

Vocabulary of homicide

Debate about abortion Those who oppose call it murder Those who favor legal access to abortion

speak of “terminating pregnancy” or “removing tissue”

Different moralities-different vocabularies Crime is socially constructed?

What is deviance?

Deviance involves the violation of group norms which may or may not be formalized into law

Some examples: criminals, alcoholics, people with tattoos, compulsive gamblers, and the mentally ill

Deviance

Deviation from norm is not always negative: A member of an exclusive club who speaks

out against its traditional policy of excluding women, or poor people

Police officer who speaks against corruption within the department

Deviance

Deviant behavior is human activity that is statistically different from the average

Deviance and crime are concepts that do not always easily mesh

Some forms of deviance are not violations of the criminal law and the reverse is true as well

Relationship between crime and deviance

DEVIANTILLEGAL ILLEGALAnd

DEVIANT