Criminology Lecture 1 Notes on the sociology of deviance a Nothing is inherently intrinsically in it of itself bad evil sinful immoral deviant criminal b What makes something bad i Not the behavior ii Not the harm iii THE MEANING behavior o That social audiences construct about that behavior and assign to that c Social Audiences those that can do construct meaning Crack vs Cigarettes Assault vs Resisting Arrest Police Brutality Murder vs Manslaughter o Symbolic Interactionism don t need to know All behavior is organized and predicated on meaning Meanings are not inherent they are constructed by social audiences ii Formal o Power and authority o Exist for the purpose to assign meaning of assigning meaning Judges sentencing Jury Witnesses Lawyers verdict Police arrest Congress policy laws DEA policy Social Media Trial of public opinion What s important Referees Umpires Critics Coaches calls Any organized frameworks NCAA NFL etc policy iii Informal o Don t exist for the purpose of assigning meaning but do Me a judgmental person thoughts Friends peers classmates actions d Descriptive Meanings i Dictionary definitions ii No judgment involves medical procedure for the purposeful Abortion termination of a pregnancy 9 11 planes crashing into the world trade center e Normative Meanings Imply a judgment i ii Evoke implicit or explicit action iii Social Norms definitions Abortion 9 11 murder sinful USA tragedy conspiracy radicalism retaliation an act of terrorism against the iv Consequences o Insure predictability o Minimize threat Physical threat Social threat Symbolic threat o Promote solidarity 2 Crime as a Normative Meaning a Different from other prescriptive normative meanings i Specificity ii Uniformity of Application o Certainly a gap between hypothetical theory and reality o 220 victim events 100 are reported to the police 25 arrests 5 convictions iii Politicality o Meaning determined by the state o Prosecution of meaning is for the state For whom does the state speak the general will consensus of the will of the people for the elites religious military economic ex Capital punishments in the Massachusetts Bay Colony idolatry etc ex Egypt Ex Capitalist USA Tax laws 2013 2014 military dictatorship 12 companies BoA etc had a total of 171 billion profit and paid no taxes but received a rebate b Consensus View on the Meaning of Crime i Emil Durkheim o Collective Conscious Most powerful bond that connects people Criminal law is a direct expression of the collective conscious Restitutive Sanctions family contract property etc secure the interests of individuals Criminal Law goes beyond and enacts a punishment Repressive Penalty A survey of a diverse population rate the seriousness of specific crimes All rank crime relatively the same Evidence of Collective Conscious ii Problems with a Consensus View o Senate Class Less than 1 1000 of the population is a millionaire 25 are millionaires median net worth in Senate is 8 times higher than the median net worth of the populous o Senate Sex 80 Males 20 Females 50 50 populous o Senate Race 94 White 2 Black 1 Latino 1 other 63 13 17 7 populous o Florida House of Representatives Sex Race 28 Males 12 Females 20 20 populous 30 White 6 Black 4 Latino 0 other 23 7 9 1 populous o Who votes Age Race Black 65 years old 14 of population 22 of voters 18 29 years old 17 of population 13 of voters 13 of population 12 of voters 17 of population 8 of voters Latino White 63 of population 75 of voters Class 50K 73 of population 36 of voters 50K 100K 20 of population 34 of voters 100K 7 of population 30 of voters o The Chicken Egg Dilemma Which comes first Consensus Criminal Meaning Hierarchy of Credibility The higher you go in social standing political economic intellectual the higher you go in power authority the more credibility you have when you express your views Superordinate may construct meaning that trickles down and becomes a consensus Most crime 92 is committed in order to gain material wealth income generating Lack skill access privilege Drug Laws Ex FBI articulated the meaning that marijuana is a serious crime Bureau of Narcotics needed more funding Moral Panic Influx of societal and media attention to a problem that has been existing Crack Cocaine Pedophilia Juvenile Violent Crime Was decreasing Media coverage increased by 400 Common survey violence and crime was ranked number one in 1993 increased from 9 of answers to 52 of answers iii Durkheim s Dilemma and law o Argued that collective conscious leads to consensus of criminal meaning o As we ve become more industrial and urban collective conscious dissipates because there is less shared experience In relation to the agricultural state that once was the USA Shared experiences and shared circumstances lead to common values When everyone is specialized in an industry and varying backgrounds So much more idiosyncratic individualistic interests o As collective conscious diminished then crime as meaning should diminish Crime meaning has been expanding iv Coincidental Consensus o Elites make the rules let s assume they share some interest with the collective common population Overlapping interest as opposed to collective Interest in bodily safety Interest in protection of property o Back to Marijuana example Used to be any measure of marijuana was a felony Well dressed white men ranting about how these laws were making OUR CHILDREN into felons Came up with a quantity that was ok for experimenting with pot Nobody wanted to sound like they knew how pot worked A man from the Florida Medial Association came up with x grams of marijuana should be a misdemeanor v Limits to Collective Conscious o Abstract concepts not concrete applications o Many social audiences Victims family of victim Authorities Criminal o Example If we took a poll of everyone in this room should it be a crime for someone to shoot an unarmed teenager in the back who is moving away from the source most people would say yes but in concrete reality policemen are the only ones who really make that decision and often times they say No expert would say or do anything to affirm his solidarity with his fellow police brothers had young man outside of car determined he was unarmed one of the officers go to the other car and come back kid started running one police ran to the perimeter of the shopping center and shot the boy in the back one got in the car to chase him had a police dog no halt no nothing they won the trial boy said that they had the
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