Sociology Of Crime And Deviance
The Sociology of Crime and Deviance in Britain
Throughout this assignment, there will be discussion with reference to the role of the police, the usefulness of the official statistics. There will also be theoretical views included of the usefulness of the official statistics including, Marxism, interactionism, feminism, left realism and functionalism.
The role of the police is to enforce the law by prosecuting the public and catching criminal. They are the main agency responsible for the enforcement of social control. Although there have been considerable changes in the style of policing whereas years ago there would be police on the beat this has been replaced by officers in cars who respond to reports of incidents. Neighbourhood …show more content…
policing and reactive policing were two approaches that were put into place through the police department, neighbourhood policing is a dedicated team of police and community support officers working in a geographical are, the aim of this is to get more acquainted with members of the community and be able to respond to their specific concerns which usually involve anti social behaviour where as reactive policing is just responding to emergency calls from the public.
Official statistics come from two major sources of official statistics on crime. They would be from crime that has been recorded by the police and statistics about those who have been convicted of offences. These statistics have been collected since 1857 and so provide us with an excellent historical overview. An advantage of having these statistics is that they are cheap, available and we are able to use them to compare against previous statistics. These statistics cover a large part of the population as they are collected by the state. Having the ability to go back and forth to check these stats give us the confidence that the data is reliable and probably one of the reasons why functionalism have been known to use the official statistics to develop their theories to explain patterern 's in the official statistics.
However, there are disadvantages of official statistics as we are not actually aware of how accurate these official statistics are. There are factors that could be seen to influence the accuracy of these statistics. Some examples of those may be the fact that not all crimes witnessed are reported. This could be for many reasons. It could be the case that those who witnessed the crime could feel that the crime is too trivial to bother the police, rape victims could be to embarrassed to come forward as well as the victim may not be in a position to give information e.g. a child suffering from abuse. The problem rising from all crimes not being reported can affect the official statistics. However even crimes that are reported are not guaranteed to be recorded by the police as 57% of all crimes reported to the police fail to appear in the official statistics, and so in spite of the strength and usefulness of the official statistics they must be treated with caution as they may not be seen to give us an accurate measure of the extent of the crime and the offenders.
Police not recording all of the crimes reported to them could be seen to be because of many reasons, they may feel that the crime is not serious enough or to their standard and so discriminate the individual and not report the crime as the individuals concerns may not be worthy of it! And so the police are classifying. Other reasons have been apparent like discretion and promotion.
Official crime statistics is a disproportionate number of young black male’s Institutional racism. This could be seen to be down to the fact that police in training are taught to discriminate between ‘decent people’ and ‘potential trouble makers’ according to reiner (1982). This would be seen to highly involve young males, and particularly youths from ethnic minorities. Left realists do agree that statistics are more or less correct, however young black males commit crime because of relative deprivation. However, this was quite the opposite in the Steven Lawrence case when he was racially attacked by white males for no apparent reason other than the colour of his skin. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence).
Working class males are more likely to be the focus of police attention and evidence shows that there are more stop and searches for black male’s evidence Police discretion is seen to be used in terms of class background. The Scarman report 1982 showed that blacks were more likely to come under suspicion from the police than whites. While the police saw black youths as likely to be associated with crime. And people came to resent their use of the stop and search powers that the Metropolitan Police had under the act of 1824 which allowed them to stop and search anyone they suspected of being involved in crime (Sociology today). However, from these actions it was found that top and searches were not always accurate and can be seen as being inappropriately labelled (Saints & roughnecks).
The official crime statistics shows less females, this is due to the chivalry factor. This would mean that police are seen to be more lenient towards females because of their sexuality hence the belief that a woman could just flutter her eyelashes and get away with the crime. However, this does seem to be changing and the police are becoming less chivalrass as females today are more commonly known as ladettes and are becoming equals to males although feminists would argue that official crime statistics do not record the full extent of female victimisation. Crimes like domestic violence and sexual assault have not been taken seriously in the past and so crime stats do not give a clear picture of actual violence and assault. There will be crimes which are not reported to the police and others which are reported but not recorded. There are therefore, an unknown number of unrecorded crimes, also known as the dark figure of crime.
Marxist are known to be highly critical of the police and official crime statistics and feel that they are not accurate as they believe there is one rule for one and another for the other. They believe crimes committed by the working class attract more attention from the police in comparison to crimes committed by the more powerful for example white collar crimes are usually ignored or treated more lenient these crimes are committed by persons of respectability and high social status in the course f their occupations (Sutherland 1949) such as embezzlement or tax evasion.
Interactionists would argue that crime statistics are social constructs and should not be taken at face value.
They believe that the crime statistics are a social construction meaning they are the end product of a complex and highly selective process involving the interaction between several groups. These groups would be known to be that of the general public, victims of crime, mass media, police officers, magistrate and judges and the ruling class. And going back to what was mentioned earlier a victim of an assault firstly has to decide whether or not to report the incident to the police. It is believed that male victims of urban areas tend not to report assault to the police. Leaving the official crime statistics, having more knowledge about groups rather than the actual crimes committed and criminality according to research done by Winlow and Hall (2006). According to Herbert Blumer (1969) interactionism is based on three central views which can relate to those above and fall well under the interctionist approach which believes gone are the social systems and social structures which direct behaviour and in replace of this are small scale interaction situations in which people act in terms of meanings and definitions of the situation. The interactionist approach to crime and deviance became popular in the 1960s (Sociology in …show more content…
focus).
Over all as a conclusion, we can see there are so many positive factors towards having the official crime statistics although there is evidence to query how accurate they really are.
However, without these official crime statistics we would not be able to measure the extent of crime and offenders. There are many different theories towards the role of the police and official crime statistics which we need to be taking into consideration while reflecting on the statistics. However to get an overall view to the reasoning behind crime and deviance we have to consider all factors to get the best explanation to be able to move forward with resolutions to talking crime and deviance in our
society.
References
• Sociology in focus for aqa a2 level, Andrew Pilkington, Paul Taylor and Alan Yeo, 2005
• Introduction to sociology, third edition,1997, Tony Bilton, Kevin Bonnett,pip Jones, David skinner, Michelle Stanworth, Andrew Webster.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence 07/05/2012
• Sociology Today, Susan Calvert & peter Calvert, 1992.
• http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415464512/downloads/sample.pdf 07/05/2012
• Word count 1483
Throughout this assignment, there will be discussion with reference to the role of the police, the usefulness of the official statistics. There will also be theoretical views included of the usefulness of the official statistics including, Marxism, interactionism, feminism, left realism and functionalism.
The role of the police is to enforce the law by prosecuting the public and catching criminal. They are the main agency responsible for the enforcement of social control. Although there have been considerable changes in the style of policing whereas years ago there would be police on the beat this has been replaced by officers in cars who respond to reports of incidents. Neighbourhood …show more content…
policing and reactive policing were two approaches that were put into place through the police department, neighbourhood policing is a dedicated team of police and community support officers working in a geographical are, the aim of this is to get more acquainted with members of the community and be able to respond to their specific concerns which usually involve anti social behaviour where as reactive policing is just responding to emergency calls from the public.
Official statistics come from two major sources of official statistics on crime. They would be from crime that has been recorded by the police and statistics about those who have been convicted of offences. These statistics have been collected since 1857 and so provide us with an excellent historical overview. An advantage of having these statistics is that they are cheap, available and we are able to use them to compare against previous statistics. These statistics cover a large part of the population as they are collected by the state. Having the ability to go back and forth to check these stats give us the confidence that the data is reliable and probably one of the reasons why functionalism have been known to use the official statistics to develop their theories to explain patterern 's in the official statistics.
However, there are disadvantages of official statistics as we are not actually aware of how accurate these official statistics are. There are factors that could be seen to influence the accuracy of these statistics. Some examples of those may be the fact that not all crimes witnessed are reported. This could be for many reasons. It could be the case that those who witnessed the crime could feel that the crime is too trivial to bother the police, rape victims could be to embarrassed to come forward as well as the victim may not be in a position to give information e.g. a child suffering from abuse. The problem rising from all crimes not being reported can affect the official statistics. However even crimes that are reported are not guaranteed to be recorded by the police as 57% of all crimes reported to the police fail to appear in the official statistics, and so in spite of the strength and usefulness of the official statistics they must be treated with caution as they may not be seen to give us an accurate measure of the extent of the crime and the offenders.
Police not recording all of the crimes reported to them could be seen to be because of many reasons, they may feel that the crime is not serious enough or to their standard and so discriminate the individual and not report the crime as the individuals concerns may not be worthy of it! And so the police are classifying. Other reasons have been apparent like discretion and promotion.
Official crime statistics is a disproportionate number of young black male’s Institutional racism. This could be seen to be down to the fact that police in training are taught to discriminate between ‘decent people’ and ‘potential trouble makers’ according to reiner (1982). This would be seen to highly involve young males, and particularly youths from ethnic minorities. Left realists do agree that statistics are more or less correct, however young black males commit crime because of relative deprivation. However, this was quite the opposite in the Steven Lawrence case when he was racially attacked by white males for no apparent reason other than the colour of his skin. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence).
Working class males are more likely to be the focus of police attention and evidence shows that there are more stop and searches for black male’s evidence Police discretion is seen to be used in terms of class background. The Scarman report 1982 showed that blacks were more likely to come under suspicion from the police than whites. While the police saw black youths as likely to be associated with crime. And people came to resent their use of the stop and search powers that the Metropolitan Police had under the act of 1824 which allowed them to stop and search anyone they suspected of being involved in crime (Sociology today). However, from these actions it was found that top and searches were not always accurate and can be seen as being inappropriately labelled (Saints & roughnecks).
The official crime statistics shows less females, this is due to the chivalry factor. This would mean that police are seen to be more lenient towards females because of their sexuality hence the belief that a woman could just flutter her eyelashes and get away with the crime. However, this does seem to be changing and the police are becoming less chivalrass as females today are more commonly known as ladettes and are becoming equals to males although feminists would argue that official crime statistics do not record the full extent of female victimisation. Crimes like domestic violence and sexual assault have not been taken seriously in the past and so crime stats do not give a clear picture of actual violence and assault. There will be crimes which are not reported to the police and others which are reported but not recorded. There are therefore, an unknown number of unrecorded crimes, also known as the dark figure of crime.
Marxist are known to be highly critical of the police and official crime statistics and feel that they are not accurate as they believe there is one rule for one and another for the other. They believe crimes committed by the working class attract more attention from the police in comparison to crimes committed by the more powerful for example white collar crimes are usually ignored or treated more lenient these crimes are committed by persons of respectability and high social status in the course f their occupations (Sutherland 1949) such as embezzlement or tax evasion.
Interactionists would argue that crime statistics are social constructs and should not be taken at face value.
They believe that the crime statistics are a social construction meaning they are the end product of a complex and highly selective process involving the interaction between several groups. These groups would be known to be that of the general public, victims of crime, mass media, police officers, magistrate and judges and the ruling class. And going back to what was mentioned earlier a victim of an assault firstly has to decide whether or not to report the incident to the police. It is believed that male victims of urban areas tend not to report assault to the police. Leaving the official crime statistics, having more knowledge about groups rather than the actual crimes committed and criminality according to research done by Winlow and Hall (2006). According to Herbert Blumer (1969) interactionism is based on three central views which can relate to those above and fall well under the interctionist approach which believes gone are the social systems and social structures which direct behaviour and in replace of this are small scale interaction situations in which people act in terms of meanings and definitions of the situation. The interactionist approach to crime and deviance became popular in the 1960s (Sociology in …show more content…
focus).
Over all as a conclusion, we can see there are so many positive factors towards having the official crime statistics although there is evidence to query how accurate they really are.
However, without these official crime statistics we would not be able to measure the extent of crime and offenders. There are many different theories towards the role of the police and official crime statistics which we need to be taking into consideration while reflecting on the statistics. However to get an overall view to the reasoning behind crime and deviance we have to consider all factors to get the best explanation to be able to move forward with resolutions to talking crime and deviance in our
society.
References
• Sociology in focus for aqa a2 level, Andrew Pilkington, Paul Taylor and Alan Yeo, 2005
• Introduction to sociology, third edition,1997, Tony Bilton, Kevin Bonnett,pip Jones, David skinner, Michelle Stanworth, Andrew Webster.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence 07/05/2012
• Sociology Today, Susan Calvert & peter Calvert, 1992.
• http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415464512/downloads/sample.pdf 07/05/2012
• Word count 1483