Transcript Crime and Criminology - Washington State University

Crime and Criminology
1. What is crime?
2. Durkheim on crime
3. What is deviance?
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.
 ''What she did was illegal, but also what she did was
moral: she stopped the suffering of these children,''
her lawyer, Lee Sexton, said.
Lorena Bobbitt (1970 - )
 Perpetrator of domestic abuse
 Lorena Bobbitt married John Wayne Bobbitt
on June 18, 1989
 Five years later, on the night of June 23,
1993, she severed her husband's penis with a
kitchen knife while he was sleeping
 She then got in her car and flung the penis
out the window while driving
 It was later found and surgically reattached.
Lorena Bobbitt (1970 - )
 According to police reports, Lorena pleaded self
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defense, saying that John had continuously raped her
John adamantly denied her accusations
John was acquitted of charges of assault against
Lorena in 1993.
In 1994, Lorena was found not guilty based on expert
testimony stating that her husband’s abuse had
caused her to suffer from post-traumatic stress
disorder, or temporary insanity, at the time of the
crime
She was ordered to spend 45 days in a psychiatric
hospital.
Lorena Bobbitt (1970 - )
 Lorena and John Bobbitt divorced in 1995
 She currently works as a hair stylist in
Asburn, Virginia.
Clifton Eames
 Clifton Eames was a law school graduate who found
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it difficult to pass the bar
But apparently his wife was much more successful in
her dental (student/school) career
After a stormy marriage the couple eventually
divorced
Police say on Monday Eames shot and killed his exwife Mina Rosenthal-Eames
He was later shot and killed after a gunfight with
police
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
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
 There he argued that crime, in itself, is a
‘‘normal’’ social phenomenon and should not
be considered ‘‘morbid’’ or ‘‘pathological.’’
 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
In primitive society
 Punishment was more severe
 Criminal act offends the strong, well-defined
common consciousness
 A crime against another person=crime
against the entire society
 Rejection was the most terrible punishment
In industrialized society
 A crime against another person=crime
against another person
 Punishment=isolation
Crime is inevitable
 No society can ever get 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 inevitable
 It seems impossible for everyone to share precisely the
same strong sentiments
 Since we are subject to different hereditary antecedents
and are located in different physical and social
environments, each of us will have somewhat different
experiences and will perceive the world from a
somewhat different viewpoint
 We may expect people who have had similar
experiences to perceive things in similar ways, and those
who have had very different experiences to perceive at
least some things in very different ways
Crime is inevitable
 Given that some of us are bound to have very
different experiences, the development of
conflicting sentiments, and the translation of
these sentiments into violent arguments,
seems to be an unavoidable consequence of
social life
Crime is useful
 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 useful
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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= Everybody's
Equal Under The Law
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)
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
Federal Domestic Violence Laws in
the United States
 The Violence Against Women Act of 1994
(VAWA) .
 "Domestic abuse" means the following, if
committed against a family or household
member by a family or household member:
 (1) physical harm, bodily injury, or assault;
 (2) the infliction of fear of imminent physical
harm, bodily injury, or assault.
Family or household members:
 spouses and former spouses;
 persons related by blood;
 persons who are presently residing together or
who have resided together in the past;
 persons who have a child in common
regardless of whether they have been married
or have lived together at any time;
 a man and woman if the woman is pregnant
and the man is alleged to be the father,
regardless of whether they have been married
or have lived together at any time; and
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
 Powerful individuals are able to influence the
making laws
 Powerful individuals may escape the label
“criminal”
Eliot Spitzer, 48
 Had a reputation as a hard-nosed "Mr. Clean"
who had built his career as a relentless and
moralistic foe of organized crime, corruption
and alleged unethical Wall Street behavior
 New York's North Fork Bank informed the
U.S. Treasury Department about suspicious
transfers of money from Spitzer's accounts
 Spitzer had spent up to 80,000 dollars on call
girls going back 10 years to his time as New
York state attorney general
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)
Child labor - Crime?
 For many years, human rights groups have
attacked Nike for the low pay and terrible
working conditions, and for the use of child
labor
 Nike admitted employing children in Third
World countries but added that ending the
practice might be difficult
Child Labor
 About half of the world's soccer balls are
made in Pakistan, and each one of them
passes through a process of production
where child labor is involved
 About 7,000 children between the ages of 5
and 14 have no time for school because they
work full-time manufacturing soccer balls,
earning about 50 cents for each ball they
produce
 Majority of these children work in Asia, India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia
Eleven-year-old Imtyaz from Pakistan
Imtyaz stiches a
soccer ball
Child Labor
 So what happens when you question Nike
about child labor practices?
 An answer comes that it is not they who are
involved in child labor practices but it is the
local subcontracter who is doing so
Poor working conditions
 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 (less than $2.00 per day),
even though Nike makes huge profits
 “Abusive treatment", physical and verbal, is
exercised in more than a quarter of its plants
Gap
 The clothing company Gap
 Report revealed terrible working conditions in
its factories in Mexico, China, and India
 Report disclosed details of child labor, the
virtual slavery of workers and working weeks
in excess of 80 hours.
'‘Eco-mafia''
 The developing South (particularly
African countries like Somalia, Sudan,
Eritrea, Algeria and Mozambique) has
become the dump for hundreds of
thousands of tones of radioactive waste
from the world's rich countries
 A colossal business which is linked to
money laundering and gunrunning
Nuclear waste dumps
found by Greenpeace
 Illegal 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 crime is that the definition of
what is criminal/deviant is socially
negotiated
 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 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
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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
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 (subculture,
counterculture)
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 shortly 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
Prostitution in Canada
 Law does not criminalize prostitution
 It instead criminalizes communication with the
intent to arrange for prostitution (Street
prostitution was a problem in Toronto and
Vancouver)
 The law was to be enforced equally against
people working as prostitutes and against
customers
 Results: concentration of police apprehension
on less-advantaged prostitutes (homeless or
addicted to drugs)
Alternative conceptualization of
prostitution
 Does criminalization punish people for
making reasonable choices when trading sex
for money is the only way, or the best way,
they can survive
 Alternative view of the culpability of people
who sell sex versus the culpability of
customers, entrepreneurs, and network that
support prostitution
 Prostitute as victim or prostitute as a sex
worker
Social Context of crime
 Crime is socially constructed (Burger, 1968)
 Do you agree with Burger?
 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
 Is Crime socially constructed?
Palestinian Suicide Bombers
 Claim that it is merely a tactic of war in
defense of their land and homes
 They see it as a heroic act of martyrdom, not
suicide
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 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
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
ILLEGAL
ILLEGAL
And
DEVIANT
DEVIANT