1. what is deviance?
   1. deviance
      1. "The violation of norms (or rules or expectations)."
   2. the relativity of deviance
      1. deviance is relative to the society and is defined not by the act thought deviant but by the reactions of others
      2. crime
         1. "The violation of norms written into law."
         2. Durkheim argued that crime is a normal part of society, emphasizing the norms being violated
            1. punishment is generally carried out as a spectacle
         3. most people have committed some kind of crime at some point in their lives
   3. sociologists mean this term in a non-judgmental or neutral way
   4. stigma
      1. "'Blemishes' that discredit a person's claim to a 'normal' identity."
   5. how norms make social life possible
      1. social order
      2. social control
   6. sanctions
   7. competing explanations of deviance
      1. sociobiology
         1. Lombroso in the early 20th century
            1. "atavists"
            2. "super males"
            3. supposedly males with elevated testosterone more likely to be deviant
         2. genetic predisposition
            1. "Inborn tendencies (for example to commit deviant acts)"
            2. involves an assumption that genes determine behavior
            3. not true, genes INFLUENCE behavior
         3. focus on street crimes
            1. "crimes such as mugging, rape and burglary"
            2. crimes more often committed by people in lower class positions
            3. sociobiologists argue that males and females have different rates of violent crimes because of genetic factors tied to the mother
            4. problems
            5. mothers pass on the X chromosome to both male and female offspring
            6. as we move closer to gender equality, more women are starting to commit more violent crimes suggesting that the explanation is more social than genetic
      2. psychosocial explanations
         1. focus on internal individual explanations
         2. personality disorders
            1. "The view that a personality disturbance of some sort causes an individual to violate social norms."
      3. sociological explanations
         1. focuses on external explanations such ass the way things like class influence us
            1. someone with a higher class position is not less likely to commit crime
            2. they are more likely to commit white-collar crime, less likely to commit street crimes
2. the symbolic interactionist perspective
   1. differential association theory
      1. the theory
         1. differential association
            1. "Edwin Sutherland's term to indicate that people who indicate that people who associate with some groups learn an 'excess of definitions' of deviance, increasing the likelihood that they will become deviant."
         2. excess of definitions
            1. learning that certain types of deviance are actually good
         3. emphasizes that deviance is a learned behavior
      2. groups that influence us from Sutherland's model
         1. families
            1. about 50% of people who are imprisoned have a close relative who has also gone to prison
         2. friends, neighborhoods, and subcultures
            1. the values and norms of various groups we belong to can contradict mainstream values and can be defined as deviant
            2. examples
            3. Chicano gangs in Chicago and honor
            4. in Chicano gangs if someone disrespects you, you are expected to respond violently
            5. Italian Mafia and masculinity
            6. if you were a mob boss, you would typically have multiple girlfriends
            7. the more girlfriends you had, the higher status you have
            8. ex. if someone lower in the chain has sex with one of the mob boss's girlfriends, it is interpreted as a direct attack on the boss's masculinity
   2. control theory
      1. proposed by Walter Reckless (1973)
      2. outer controls
         1. other people who pressure us not to deviate
         2. consists of
            1. attachments
            2. to friends and family we respect
            3. involvements
            4. belonging to normative groups
            5. commitments
            6. such as school, a job, etc.
      3. inner controls
         1. consists of things like beliefs (personal moral codes)
   3. labeling theory
      1. "The view that the labels people are given affect their own and others' perception of them, thus channeling their behavior into either deviance or conformity."
      2. techniques of neutralization
         1. "Ways of thinking or rationalizing that help people deflect (or neutralize) society's norms."
         2. from Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957/1988)
         3. 5 techniques
            1. denial of responsibility
            2. "I couldn't help myself"
            3. denial of injury
            4. "Who really got hurt?"
            5. denial of victim
            6. "They had it coming."
            7. condemnation of the condemners
            8. "Who are you to judge me?"
            9. appeal to higher loyalties
            10. "I had to help my friends"
      3. some manage deviant labels by embracing them such as outlaw biker gangs
3. the functionalist perspective
   1. strain theory
      1. "Robert Merton's term for the strain engendered when a society socializes large numbers of people to desire a cultural goal (such as success), but withholds from some the approved means of reaching that goal; one adaptation to the strain is crime, the choice of an innovative means (one outside the approved system) to attain the cultural goal."
      2. cultural goal
         1. "The objectives held out as legitimate or desirable for the members of a society to achieve."
      3. institutionalized means
         1. "Approved ways of reaching cultural goals."
   2. illegitimate opportunity structures
      1. "Opportunities for crimes that are woven into the texture of life."
      2. crime requires illegitimate opportunity structures to occur
      3. types of crime
         1. street crime
            1. those things we typically think of as being "crime"
            2. examples
            3. violent crimes
            4. theft
            5. rape
            6. most often associated with people with lower status (or SES - "socioeconomic status") positions in society
         2. white-collar crime
            1. "Edwin Sutherland's term for crimes committed by people of respectable and high social status in the course of their occupations; for example, bribery of public officials, securities violations, embezzlement, false advertising, and price fixing."
            2. corporate crime
            3. "Crimes committed by executives in order to benefit their corporation."
            4. sub-category of white-collar crime
            5. examples
            6. Sears executives defrauded $100 million from poor and bankrupted customers (1999)
            7. Macy's and Bloomingdale's were doing the same thing and settled out of court
            8. Citigroup has a long history of stealing money from its clients
            9. they had to pay $70 million in 2004 and then $18 million in 2008
            10. they even took money from dead clients
            11. 1930's: mining company in West Viriginia knew clearing silica would kill the miners beforehand and 600 died
            12. no one went to prison
            13. 1980's: Firestone recalled tires from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela but left them in the US
            14. 200 people died
            15. no prison sentence
            16. setting up conditions that you know will lead to worker deaths is considered a misdemeanor with a sentence of up to 6 months
            17. in contrast, bothering a wild donkey on federal lands is a minimum of a year in prison
   3. Kai T. Erickson and Emile Durkheim
      1. since the 1980s, the gap between rich and poor has increased significantly
      2. people are put into prison at a higher rate than ever before (forced labor)
      3. prisons are increasingly privatizing (being run for profit by corporations)
      4. we know ways to reduce crime
         1. don't be so quick to send people to prison
            1. cuts into profits of private prisons
         2. legalize drugs
            1. cuts into profits of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and pharmaceutical companies
         3. increase funding to programs that we know decrease crime and increase life chances for the poor
            1. such as Head Start, a program repeatedly on Congress's chopping block
            2. however, this also cuts into profits
      5. we don't decrease crime because that would cut into the wealth of the economic elites
4. known sources of crime
   1. poverty and inequality
      1. classism
         1. part of this is definitional
            1. what do you think of when you hear the word 'crime'?
      2. since the 1980's the gap between the rich and everyone else has increased
         1. from 1930's to 1970's we saw the gap between rich and poor shrinking
         2. that all changed because of governmental policies passed in the 1980's
            1. slashed federal funding for programs designed to help the poor
            2. revenue saved from cutting these programs spent to build prison
            3. cut taxes of the wealthiest people and corporations
         3. number of Americans living in poverty has steadily increased
            1. in 2007 it reached 1 in 8 (and that's BEFORE the recession)
         4. in 2007 the richest 1/5 of the country received 50% of the gross national income
            1. the poorest 1/5: 3%
      3. racism
         1. over the past 40 years, poverty and unemployment rates for African-Americans has been 2x what it has been for whites
            1. 2015: white unemployment rate hovering at 4%, for African-Americans just below 10%
            2. reasons why
            3. 2008: Justice Department did a study
            4. findings
            5. Black men 3x more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white men even in the absence of suspicious behavior
            6. white men 4x more likely to be in possession of contraband when stopped
            7. MIT and University of Chicago studies
            8. people with "white-sounding" name 50% more likely to get a call back than someone with a "Black-sounding" name
            9. for someone with a "Black-sounding" name to have the same chance for a call-back they would need at least 8 years more experience
            10. Princeton study
            11. white men WITH criminal records slightly more likely to be called back for a job interview than Black men WITHOUT a criminal record
            12. Indiana University study
            13. Black and Latinx students 2x-3x more likely to be expelled from school than white students who broke the same rules and have the same history of rule-breaking
            14. Justice Department reports Black people more likely to receive prison sentences for first-time offenses than white people
            15. in comparing prison sentences between white and Black people with the same record and accused of the same offense, African-Americans received far more severe penalties
   2. prison itself
      1. 70% of current prisoners are recidivists
         1. illustrates that prison does not serve as a deterrent
      2. once you have a record it is hard to
         1. get a job you can live on
         2. find adequate housing
         3. avoid all contact with those deemed "undesirable"
            1. often a condition of parole is not to have contact with convicts - which may be many in social network
         4. meet every demand of your parole officer
   3. guns
      1. the US has 93 guns for every 100 people
      2. CDC reports that in 2005, 30,694 deaths resulted from guns
      3. in 2014 more people were killed by toddlers with guns in the US than people killed by terrorists in the entire world
      4. 1993 Brady Bill
         1. imposes mandatory wait period for purchase of guns to do a criminal background check but leaves it up to the states
         2. 75% of those arrested for crimes with weapons had no prior felony
            1. so a Brady Bill background check will still miss 75% of offenders
   4. drugs
      1. the dangers of drugs are often presented as present in the drugs themselves however the dangers more often come from the social conditions surrounding drugs
         1. lack of regulation making drugs dangerous
      2. examples
         1. heroin
            1. more physical damage is done by the withdrawal than the drug itself
            2. there is no known physical deterioration caused by long-term use of heroin (besides addiction)
            3. "addictiveness is enough reason to make a drug illegal"
            4. nicotine is more addictive
            5. caffeine is addictive
            6. association between HIV/AIDS and heroin use comes from the inability to get clean needles
            7. a social effect from the "War on Drugs"
            8. since there is no quality regulation on heroin (since it is illegal) the dangers of the drug come not from the drug itself but from things that may be mixed with it to make higher profits
         2. marijuana
            1. it is physically impossible to eat or smoke enough marijuana to kill you
            2. in its 5000 years of recorded use across cultures there has not been a single confirmed case of a death caused by marijuana
            3. in this sense, aspirin is more dangerous
            4. pot is not a "gateway drug" but the social conditions surrounding the sale of pot brings people in contact with other drugs
            5. whilere is some debate, most experts agree that marijuana is not addictive
            6. chemical vs. behavioral addiction
            7. you can become behaviorally addicted to anything
            8. TV
            9. eating too much
            10. etc.
            11. chemical addiction is when taking a drug alters your body's chemistry in such a way that you cannot function without the drug in your system
      3. "addiction"
         1. nicotine is not only more addictive than heroin but also cocaine
            1. nicotine is the most addictive drug known to humanity
         2. there are 15 million known alcoholics in the US today
         3. caffeine addiction is on the rise
         4. there's a reason the pharmaceutical industry is a multi-billion dollar industry: there are a lot of addicts out there
            1. a lot of the drugs sold by the pharmaceutical industry are chemically addictive
         5. sugar is addictive
            1. most of the ingredients in fast food are addictive
      4. connection to crime in 3 possible ways
         1. pharmacological/psychological consequences
            1. by taking the drug, it makes you statistically more likely to engage in criminal activities
            2. number one drug with this property: alcohol
            3. followed by synthetic drugs created in chemical labs
            4. crystal meth
            5. PCP
            6. etc.
         2. economic/compulsive crimes
            1. people committing crimes in order to support their habit
            2. often coming out of addiction
         3. systemic crime
            1. organized crime like gangs
            2. typically produced by social conditions
            3. part of what produced the Mob and the Mafia was alcohol prohibition
      5. War on Drugs is not working
         1. demand is up overall
         2. supply has significantly increased as well
            1. examples
            2. cocaine production went from 774 to 994 metric tons between 1990 and 2007
            3. opium (heroin) production went from 990 tons in 1971 to 4,200 tons in 1989 to 8,800 tons in 2007
         3. because of addiction and the illegality of certain drugs, addicts must spend a great deal of time procuring their drugs at high cost
            1. illegality causes the price to be severely inflated
            2. therefore it is hard to hold a job
            3. many have to steal to afford their habits
         4. if there were 500,000 addicts with a $100 a day habit having to go through a fence to sell stolen merchandise, accounting for days in prison or hospital (so say they're free 250 days a year) they would have to steal $18.75 billion a year
            1. these are real numbers: this actually almost exactly reflects the amount of theft reported by the FBI yearly
         5. British example
            1. started the War on Drugs in the 1970s when Nixon was pushing for it
            2. drug production and demand started going up in England
            3. response was very much like the US initially: lock them up
            4. started changing approach through the 70s
            5. changed from a criminal model to a medical model
            6. started setting up clinics all around England to treat addicts by providing safe drugs
            7. property crimes like theft declined significantly
            8. new drug users plummeted
            9. 50% ended up stopping drug use on their own
            10. significantly cheaper than the US model: a big part of the high cost of drugs comes from the danger involved in producing and obtaining them
         6. results of drug illegality
            1. increased number of non-violent offenders in prison
            2. in 2007 there were 1.8 million drug arrests
            3. police corruption
            4. police paid by drug dealers to "look the other way"
            5. lost tax revenue
            6. we spend so much money policing drugs that it actually ends up costing us money
            7. states that have legalized drugs had a boom in tax revenue
            8. organized crime with resulting increase in violence
            9. often the people arrested are those at the bottom
            10. when you arrest dealers en masse it may lead to turf wars between gangs
            11. inability to regulate
            12. quality control as well as keeping it out of kids' hands
            13. heroin is easier for a kid under 21 to get than alcohol in major cities
5. what works to reduce crime
   1. most social programs don't work
      1. examples
         1. D.A.R.E.
            1. some evidence suggests that D.A.R.E. actually INCREASES usage of drugs
   2. however, some programs do work
      1. what they have in common
         1. preventing child abuse and neglect
            1. often people who commit street crime have a history of abuse and neglect
         2. enhancing children's intellectual and social development
         3. providing support and guidance to vulnerable adolescents
            1. getting directly involved on a daily basis so the child ends up seeing there is someone there for them
         4. working extensively with juvenile offenders
            1. not writing them off as "bad apples" destined to be criminals
      2. examples of working programs
         1. Head Start
            1. educational program targeting children living in low-income households
            2. children who go to Head Start
            3. more likely to go to college than their parents
            4. more social mobility
6. post-structuralism
   1. Michel Foucault
      1. Panopticon
         1. initially invented by British philosopher Jeremy Bentham
            1. he argued for a change in the architectural structure of prisons
            2. a guard tower in the center with cells surrounding; the prisoners can see the guard tower but not the guards inside, and the guards can see the prisoners at all times
         2. Panopticons work as a structure of power
            1. people in the cells feel as if they are under constant gaze of the guards, whether they're being watched or not
            2. prisoners become self-conscious and internalize the identity of criminal
         3. Foucault argued that while Panopticon started in prisons, it spread out
            1. argued that today we all live in a Panopticon
      2. normalization
         1. people internalize the norms of the institution and the associated institutional identity
         2. eg prisoner
      3. individuation
         1. a form of power
         2. when you are forcibly separated as an individual from the rest of the group
            1. though the prisoners exist together, they feel isolated by the cell and the gaze of the guards
         3. strengthens internalization of institutional norms
      4. docile bodies
         1. willingness to learn/be taught
      5. concrete examples
   2. Pyrrhic defeat theory
      1. shares much with Durkheim and Erikson but also with Foucault
      2. difference from Durkheim and Erikson
         1. social consensus is not assumed but is created
      3. difference from Foucault
         1. Foucault mystifies relations of power and thus writes out the function of class and race among other things as major sociological categories used in the mechanics of control
            1. Foucault actually argues that coalitions of power develop, not necessarily mystifying relations
         2. Foucault doesn't see power as residing in a particular group or institution, but rather changing based on social context
      4. Pyrrhic defeat
         1. we're investing everything we have into this system and not even winning the battle, much less the war
7. the conflict perspective
   1. criminal justice system
      1. "The system of police, courts, and prisons set up to deal with people who are accused of having committed a crime."
   2. the criminal justice system as an instrument of oppression
      1. conflict theorists argue that the criminal justice system (CJS) is not objective and set up to protect the economic status quo
      2. most people from prison come from lower classes but that does not mean the lower classes are committing more crimes
         1. watched more closely
         2. arrested more often
         3. convicted more
      3. basic question: which crime is more harmful to society? someone breaks into another person's home or an executive who ignores EPA regulations and pollutes to save money resulting in people nearby developing higher rates of cancer?
      4. the main point of this perspective is the belief that the CJS means "justice for all" is ideological and false
      5. conflict theorists argue that because workers make up the vast majority of the population, CJS is an oppressive control that maintains social order and keeps workers from "stepping out of line"
   3. street crime and prisons
      1. privatization of prisons on the rise
         1. currently there are about 130,000 prisoners in for-profit prisons
         2. privatized prisons are far more likely to argue against parole to keep prisoners as long as possible
      2. about 1 in every 135 Americans is in prison
      3. highest age percentage in prison or jail
         1. 20-34
         2. 49% of people in prison or jail are younger than 35
      4. even though crime rates (not from official statistics) are about even across populations there is inequality in who is going to prison
         1. 1 in 100 white men age 20-34 are in jail or prison
         2. 1 in 26 Latinos age 20-34 are in prison or jail
         3. 1 in 9 Black men age 20-34 are in prison or jail
      5. recidivism rate
         1. "The percentage of released convicts who are rearrested."
         2. recidivism rates are very high indicating that prison is not a deterrent for crime
            1. US recidivism rate is the highest in the world
      6. capital punishment
         1. aka the death penalty
         2. the strongest negative social sanction we have
         3. opponents point to the number of death row inmates exonerated after DNA evidence was considered
         4. gender bias in the death penalty
            1. women commit 9.6% of murder but only 1.8% of death row inmates are women
            2. many things that could explain this, further research is needed
            3. men are seen as being more responsible for actions
         5. Furman v. Georgia (1972)
            1. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty as it was being practiced was unconstitutional because of extreme racial bias
            2. for 5 years capital punishment was illegal in the US
            3. states rewrote their laws and continued in 1977
            4. there is still a huge racial bias in the death penalty
   4. Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison"
      1. CJS designed to fail
      2. crime statistics
         1. politicians call for more prisons and more police whether crime goes up or down
            1. crime goes up
            2. "we need to get tougher on crime"
            3. crime goes down
            4. "it's working"
         2. 1980-2007 "incarceration binge"
      3. incarceration not responsible for lower crime rates
         1. crime rates still higher than 60's
         2. incarceration only explains 10%-20% of drop
            1. mostly non-violent crimes
            2. reasons
            3. most who were originally locked up (pre-1970s) were violent so non-violent prisoners had to become violent to survive
            4. prison as a social institution trains people to become violent
            5. many prisoners are raped and beaten on a regular basis
            6. causing
            7. psychological trauma
            8. mistrust of authorities
            9. often prison guards will not step in
            10. tendency to solve problems with violence
            11. parole system makes it difficult to stay out of prison
            12. 66% who go back in are on technical violations, not technical offenses
            13. many prisoners are convicted of drug charges
            14. basic supply/demand economics
            15. locking up a drug dealer only opens up opportunities for someone else to move in
            16. organized crime begins recruiting children because so many adult members are in prison
            17. socializing newer generations earlier
            18. juvenile justice system is more lenient
            19. incarceration only worsens the conditions leading to crime
         3. decline in national crime statistics leveled in 2004 and were predicted to increase since but then continued to drop, even though incarceration rates have remained the same
            1. in other words, people are committing fewer crimes but just as many people as before are getting locked up
            2. part of the 2009 decline in crime rates is because of the Obama administration turning down the heat on the War on Drugs
   5. David Garland
      1. prisons can only be seen as a "failure" if you believe that they are meant to combat crime
      2. however, if prisons are meant to lock away large portions of the population and keep them separate from everyone else, prisons are a success
   6. prison is a big industry
      1. in 2003, it raked in $185 billion in tax dollars and employed 2.4 million people
   7. three common excuses that do not work
      1. we're too "soft"
         1. US is the only developed country that still has the death penalty
         2. we are far more likely to pass the sentence of "life with no possibility of parole" than other developed countries
         3. US leads the world in cases of police brutality
         4. even adjusting for population, the US has the highest incarceration rate of the entire world
      2. "a cost of modern life"
         1. we have higher crime rates than any other developed country and much higher than Japan with its higher population density
      3. blame it on the kids
         1. crime rates are higher among youths age 14-24
            1. however, overall crime rates do not significantly increase or decrease with population increase or decrease in that age range
            2. AND this fails to explain why crime rates have not fallen to 1940's levels when the percentage of 14-24 year olds was the same as now: 14%
8. terms
   1. serial murder
      1. "The killing of several victims in three or more separate events."
   2. hate crime
      1. "A crime that is punished more severely because it is motivated by hatred (dislike, hostility, animosity) of someone's race-ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin."
   3. Southern Poverty Law Center
      1. A legal center that monitors the activities of Hate Groups and brings lawsuits against them when they violate the law.
      2. essentially shutting down hate groups one at a time by making them go bankrupt