Crime and Punishment: Sociology Perspective

This assignment delves into the sociological understanding of crime and punishment. It begins by defining deviance and differentiating it from crime, highlighting how societal norms influence both concepts. The discussion then explores various theoretical perspectives on criminal behavior, including labeling theory, strain theory, and control theory. The assignment further examines alternative strategies to traditional punishment, such as rehabilitation, decriminalization, and restorative justice. Finally, it analyzes the role of prisons and capital punishment within the broader context of social control.

Chapter 5: Deviance and Crime
Learning objectives:
 See how people define deviance and crime differently in different times and places
 Interpret differences in crime rates over time and between different population
categories
 Apply a variety of sociological theories to the analysis of various aspects of deviant and
criminal behaviour
 Learn how forms of punishment have changed historically
 Explain how fear of crime is subject to manipulation by political and commercial groups
that benefit from it
 Identify workable alternatives to tough prison regimes
THE SOCIAL DEFINITION OF DEVIANCE AND CRIME
 Norms vary widely
 Deviance is relative
 From a sociological point of view everyone is deviant in one social context or another
The difference between deviance and crime
 Deviance:
o Departure from a norm that evokes a negative reaction from others.
 Some norms are laws
 Crime:
o Deviance that is against the law
 Law:
o A norm stipulated and enforced by government bodies
 Norms and laws have changed dramatically
SANCTIONS:
 Deviant acts go unnoticed or are considered too trivial to warrant negative sanctions or
actions indicating disapproval
 Formal punishment:
o Penalization by the judicial system for breaking a law
 Ex: criminals are usually formally punished by having to serve time in
prison, pay a fine or perform community service
 Informal punishment:
o A mild sanction that is imposed during face-to-face interaction rather than by the
judicial system
 Raised eyebrows, harsh stare, ironic smile, gossip, ostracism, “shaming”
or stigmatizations:
 Stigmatizations:
o Process of negatively evaluating people because of a marker that distinguishes
them from others
 Negatively evaluated because of visible characteristics that distinguish
them from others
 Deviance and crime vary in terms of the severity of the social response
o Mild disapproval to capital punishment

 Perceived harmfulness of the deviant or criminal act
 Degree of public agreement:
o If an act should be considered to deviant
MEASURING GAME
 Crime statistics:
o Information on crime collected by the police is the main source of crime statistics
 Statistics have 2 main shortcomings:
o 1. Victimless crimes:
 Violations of the law in which no victim has stepped forward and been
identified
o 2. Authorities and the wider public decide which criminal acts to report and
which to ignore
 Self-report surveys:
o Surveys in which respondents are asked to report their involvement to criminal
activities, either as perpetrators or as victims.
o Same rate of serious crime as official statistics do
 Victimization surveys
o Surveys in which people are asked whether they have been victims of crime
o Impact of victimization and perceptions of personal safety
 First: growing number of well-trained troops are fighting crime
 Second: the people most prone to street crime is young man
 Third: The unemployment rate has followed a downward
 Finally: some researchers argue that declining crime rates may be linked to the
legalization of abortion
 Criminal profiles:
o Age and gender:
 Socialization, traditional social controls and definitions of femininity are
less often being imposed on women
 15-24 years old who are charged with a violent crime is about twice as
high as the percentage of their population
o Race:
 5 reasons for the overrepresentation of indigenous people:
 1. A disproportionately large number of indigenous people are
poor
 2. The indigenous population is younger than the rest of the
population
 3. They tend to do street crimes:
o Crimes including arson, break, and enter, assault, and
other illegal acts, are disproportionately committed by
people from lower classes
o White-collar people:
 Illegal acts committed by respectable, high-status
people in the course of work.

 4. Police, courts and other institutions may discriminate against
indigenous peoples
 5. Contact with western settlers and western culture disrupted
social life in indigenous communities
 Disruption led to a weakening of social control over community
members.
 Some people think that “races” are inherently more law-abiding than
others but they are able to hold such opinion by ignoring the powerful
social forces
EXPLAINING DEVIANCE AND CRIME
Symbolic interactionist approaches to deviance and crime
 Learning deviance:
o Social context was established by Howard S. Becker’s classic study or marijuana
o 3 stage learning process before becoming regular marijuana users
o 1. Learning to smoke the drug in a way that produces real effects:
o 2. Learning to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use
o 3. Learning to enjoy the perceived sensations
o It requires a social context
 Labelling:
o Labelling theory:
 Holds that deviance results not so much from the actions of the deviant
as from the response of others, who label the rule breaker a deviant
o Deviant and criminal aren’t applied automatically when a person engages in rule-
violating behaviour other define the actions as deviant and other actions as
normal
Functionalist explanations
 Emile Durkheim:
o Controversial claim that deviance and crime are beneficial for society
o Deviance and crime help societies adapt to social change
 Robert Merton:
o Developed Durkheim’s theory by emphasizing the dysfunctions of deviance and
crime
o Cultures often teach people to value material success
o Strain:
 The result of a culture teaching people to value material success, but
society failing to provide enough legitimate opportunities for everyone to
succeed
o 4 types of actions:
 1. Rejecting the society goals and its institutionalized of achieving them
 2. Rejecting the goals of conventional society but continuing to follow
them
 3. Accepting cultural goals and creating novel means

 4. Rejecting cultural goals and finding new means of achieving new goals
involves
 Criminal subcultures:
o Some social groups adapt by forming criminal gangs
 Legitimate world has rejected them
 Functionalism and the relationship between crime and class:
o Exaggerate the connection between crime and class
o Stronger correlation between serious street crimes and class
Conflict theories
 Rich and powerful members of society impose deviant and criminal labels on others
 Steven Spitzer call this school of thought
 Reporting: less frequent
 Conviction + prosecution: less frequent because wealth
 Social control:
o Control theory:
 Holds that the rewards of deviance and crime are ample. Therefore,
nearly everyone would engage in deviance and crime if they could get
away with it. The degree to which people are prevented from violating
norms and laws accounts for variations in the levels of deviance and
crime.
PUNISHMENT
 Degree of social control varies over time and place
 Forms of punishment also vary
The medicalization of deviance
 Medicalization of deviance:
o The process of applying medical definitions to deviant behaviour, a practice that
is becoming more prevalent
 The spread of mental disorders:
o Chemical imbalances in the brain
o Treat it with :
 Drugs
 Therapies
o Social and political process
The prison
 Origins:
o Most important punishment
 Goals of incarceration:
o Rehabilitation
o Some see it as deterrence
o Revenge
o Incapacitation

MORAL PANIC
 Widespread fear that occurs when many people fervently believe that some form of
deviance or crime poses a profound threat to society’s well-being.
o The mass media benefit from moral panic because it allows them to earn hefty
profits
o The crime prevention and punishment industry benefits from moral panic for
much the same reason
o The criminal justice system is a huge bureaucracy with many employees.
o Moral panic is useful politically insofar as it can help candidates get elected
Other forms of punishment: two extremes
 Capital punishment:
o Blind justice
o Social class is a factor
ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES
Rehabilitation
 Recidivism rate:
o The percentage of imprisoned people who commit another crime, usually within
two years after release from prison.
Decriminalization/legalization
 Decriminalization:
o Allows for fine or other non-prison penalties
 Legalization:
o Does not
 Diversion:
o Restorative justice:
 Focuses not on punishment but on rehabilitating offenders through
reconciliation with victims and the larger community.
POWERPOINT
Crime and Punishment:
From deviance to crime:
 Deviance:
o Deviance is relative because norms vary
 Crime:
o Deviance that is against the law, a norm stipulated and enforced by government
bodies
o Not all deviant acts are crimes; laws also change
Sanctions:
 Formal punishment:
o Serve time in prison, pay a fine, perform community service, etc
o Usually enforced by the authorities
 Informal punishment:
o Ironic smile, gossip, ostracism, shaming, etc

Crimes and criminals:
 Street crimes and white-collar crimes:
o Street: theft, robbery, assault, arson, etc
o White-collar: fraud, embezzlement, bribery, etc
 Criminal profiles:
o Age: 15-24 year old cohort most prone to crime
o Gender: men account for more than 3 quarters
o Race: indigenous peoples (4% of population) account for nearly a quarter of
Canadian prisoners
Labelling theory:
 Symbolic interactionism:
o Becoming a habitual deviant or criminal is a learning process that require a
social context
o Deviance results from the responses of others
 Labelling:
o Terms like deviant or criminal are not applied automatically when a person
engages in rule-violating behaviour
o Others must define some actions as deviant and other actions as criminal
Strain theory:
 Structural functionalism:
o Crime provides a chance to punish the transgression and reinforce social
solidarity
o Deviance helps societies adapt to social change
 Strain:
o “The result of a culture teaching people to value material success, but society
failing to provide enough legitimate opportunities for everyone to succeed.”
Control theory:
 Conflict theory:
o Rich and powerful members of society impose deviant and criminal labels on
others while using money and influence to escape punishment
o Law is more lenient on white-collar crime
 Control:
o Nearly everyone would engage in deviance and crime if they could get away with
it
o Laws are broken because social controls are weak
Punishment:
 The medicalization of deviance
 The prison
 Capital punishment
 Rehabilitation
The prison:
 From the scaffold to the prison
o Prison as a gentler way of punishment

o The objectification of the power to punish
o The “panopticon”: unarbitary and unattractive, constantly being watched and
observed
 Goals of incarceration:
o Deterrence
o Incapacitation
o Rehabilitation