Crime (CONTROL, PUNISHMENT & VICTIMS)
General
Sociologists believe ability to control crime takes different measures - it is targeted at situational and environmental crime prevention. Surveillance is another method used to control and punish criminals. Also focus on victimisation - positive victimology focuses on victim proneness or precipitation, whilst critical victimology emphasises structural factors such as poverty.
Positive Victimology - MIERS
There are factors that lead to some being more likely to be a victim of crime (eg, homeless are statistically most vulnerable victims, due to lack of resources and power).
Miers says some victims provoke behaviour that leads to their own victimisation - M/c victims contribute to their own victimisation by displaying their wealth, so encouraging crimes such as theft and w/c more likely to provoke threats, leading to violent crimes against them.
Critical victimology - MAWBY AND WALKLATE
Victimisation is a form of structural powerlessness - structural factors such as patriarchy and poverty place powerless groups such as women and the poor at greater risk of victimisation.
Critical victimology - TOMBS AND WHYTE
A ‘victim’ is a social construct. Through the CJS, the state applies label of the victim to some but withholds from others, and so has an ideological function of ‘failure to label’ or ‘de-labelling’. By concealing true extent of victimisation and real causes, it hides the crimes of the powerful.
Control and prevention - situational crime prevention - CLARKE
Believes that SCP is a pre-emptive approach, focussed on reducing opportunities to commit crime, rather than improving society or institutions.
Control and prevention - Displacement
Situational prevention moves crime elsewhere:
- Spatial - moving elsewhere.
- Temporal - Different time.
- Target - Choosing different target.
- Tactical - Different method.
- Functional - Different type of crime.
Control and prevention - Environmental crime prevention
The Broken Windows thesis by Wilson & Kelling refers to disorderly neighbourhoods with an absence of formal social control (police) and informal control (community). Police are merely concerned with serious crime and turn a blind eye to nuisance behaviour.
Control and prevention - Zero tolerance policing
As environmental crime prevention, Wilson and Kelling advocate a ‘zero tolerance policing’ approach where police crack down and tackle any form of disorder and repair any disorderly signs in neighbourhoods (eg. graffiti).
Control and prevention - Social and community prevention - Perry Preschool project.
Shifts emphasis from policing, to potential offenders. The perry preschool project attempted to do this with a group of young disadvantaged black children who were offered a two-year intellectual enrichment programme aiming to reduce criminality in future. The longitudinal study showed differences with group who hadn't done programme. By 40, they had fewer arrests and were in paid employment.
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behaviour for purpose of crime control. In today's society, surveillance is carried out by the use of CCTV cameras, biometric scanning, information databases.
Two types of power and punishment - FOUCAULT
1) Sovereign power - monarch has absolute power over people. Control asserted by inflicting punishment on the body. This was a brutal and emotional spectacle, such as a public execution.
2) Disciplinary power - dominant from the 19th century, involves new system of discipline seeking to govern the mind, soul and the body. It does this through surveillance.
Punishment - Reduction of crime
One justification of punishment is that it prevents future crime:
- Deterrence - punishing an individual discourages them from reoffending.
- Rehabilitation - punishment can reform/ change offenders so they don't offend. Can be done through providing education and anger management courses.
Punishment - Retribution of crime
Based on idea that offenders deserve to be punished and society is entitled to take revenge on the offender.