Crime and Deviance

Why?

First impressions:

Why do people commit crimes?

Why do people do drugs?

Stan Eitzen: mythbuster US: religious and violently criminal no crime wave now problem mainly among youth (males esp.) home more dangerous than street no crime gene social variables related to crime:

– poverty– unemployment– racial segregation– family instability– inequality

Merton: structural strain theory

Socially approved

goals (values)

Socially approved

means (norms)

Unequal access creates “structural

strain”

Individuals experiencing structural strain must choose a “mode of adaptation” to the resulting anomie.

Accept socially approved goals?

Accept socially approved means?

Conformity + +

Innovation + -

Ritualism - +

Retreatism - -

Rebellion -/+ -/+

Structural strain theory

Crime rates: scares vs. realities (Heiner) Missing children Serial killers Crack “epidemic”

Crime Scares: what is the evidence? Missing children: 50,000 or 500-1,000? Serial murder: 4,000 or 50-70? Drug scare: what happened to the crack

epidemic?

Crime rates: measures

Index crimes (UCR from FBI) Victimization studies (DoJ) http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm

Crime rates: index crime trend

Source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/cv2.htm

Crime in Context

Rosenfeld (Contexts: Spring 2002): What caused the 1980s rise in the first

place?– Drugs—esp. crack– Guns

Rosenfeld: Crime in Context

What factors account for the decline?– Crack market decline (youth)– Domestic violence trends (adults)

• Decrease in marriage

• Domestic violence prevention programs

– Policing (evidence weak)– Prison boom (what about releases?)– Economy (always strongest correlation)

Rosenfeld: “the big picture”

Multiple, interacting factors LaFree: rise and fall of institutional

legitimacy– Institutions regulate behavior to meet human

needs• High legitimacy, people “play by the rules; low

crime rate

• Low legitimacy, institutions unable to control behavior; crime goes up

How bad is white-collar crime?

We don’t know—no index, no statistics overall, no easy way to discern trends

More harmful than street crime?– Greater monetary cost– Greater cost in lives, if consider tobacco alone

Mokhiber: activist frame says corporations are the problem; essentially anti-democratic

Higher immorality effects

C. Wright Mills: the higher immorality “Of course, there may be corrupt men in sound

institutions, but when institutions are corrupting, many of the men who live and work in them are necessarily corrupted. In the corporate era, economic relations become impersonal-and the executive feels less personal responsibility. Within the corporate worlds of business, war-making and politics, the private conscience is attenuated-and the higher immorality is institutionalized. It is not merely a question of a corrupt administration in corporation, army, or state; it is a feature of the corporate rich, as a capitalist stratum, deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state.”

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/HigherImmorality_PE.html

Heiner: 3 main American values

Freedom Individualism Competition

C. Wright Mills: the higher immorality “There is still one old American value

that has not markedly declined: the value of money and of the things money can buy-these, even in inflated times, seem as solid and enduring as stainless steel.”

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/HigherImmorality_PE.html

Enron: multinational corporation

1997: exempt from Investment Company Act of 1940

This allowed them to create 3,000 limited partnerships; many “offshore,” used to hide debts

Received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies for overseas investments

Paid $0.00 in federal taxes four of last five years Stood to get $250 tax rebate from Bush’s

proposed economic stimulus package

Enron’s transgressions

Hid debts Accounting firm (Arthur Anderson) was also

consultant, colluded in hiding the debts Top 12 executives sold stock worth a billion

dollars before price tanked Employees, investors left holding the bag

C. Wright Mills: the higher immorality “A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle

levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.”

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/HigherImmorality_PE.html

Solutions

Eitzen on street crime: conservative and progressive options– Conservative: get tough– Progressive: get roots (poverty, racism, etc.)

Mokhiber on white collar crime: democratic control of corporations

Sutherland: differential association

Criminal (deviant) behavior is learned in primary groups where norms differ from those of wider society

Differential association

Dominant culture social norms

Deviant subculture

social norms

X

Becker: labeling theory

Social structure gives some people the power to define others as deviant

The label is a stigma; a mark of social disgrace that changes social interaction and self image

Lemert: labeling theory

Primary deviation: an initial act that violates social norms

Secondary deviation: the individual comes to accept the label, and acts accordingly

Labeling theory

Powerful interests

Label

Primary deviation

Label acceptedSecondary deviation