# Study Guide: Chapter 8 — Crime And Criminal Justice

> Organized by textbook section. Review the objectives, study topics, key takeaways, and questions for each section.

## 8.1: The Problem of Crime

### Study Topics
- Media Myths
- Measuring Crime

### Key Terms
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **dark figure of crime** — The large number of crimes that do not come to the attention of the police and thus also not to the public.
- **Deviance** — Behavior that violates norms and arouses negative social reactions.
- **family** — A group of two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, adoption, or a mutual commitment and who care for one another.
- **National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)** — An annual survey conducted by the US Department of Justice that asks a representative sample of the American public about crimes they have suffered.
- **Part I Crimes** — The FBI’s term for the major crimes included in the Uniform Crime Reports, including homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
- **Prostitution** — The selling of sexual services.
- **race** — A category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.
- **self-report survey** — A survey given to individuals, usually adolescents, that asks them about offenses they have committed and usually about their families and other aspects of their lives.
- **Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)** — The FBI’s regular compilation of crime statistics, most of them on Part I crimes.
- **white-collar crime** — Crime committed by people in the course of their occupations; Edwin Sutherland’s definition emphasized crime by people of high social status.

### Learning Objectives
1. Understand the extent of public concern about crime.
2. Explain how the news media contribute to myths about crime.
3. Describe how crime in the United States is measured.

### Key Takeaways
- Much of the American public is concerned about crime, and many people worry about becoming a victim of various types of crime.
- The news media overdramatize the nature and amount of crime, and they give more attention to crimes involving African Americans and Latinos as offenders and whites as victims.
- The nation’s major source of crime data is the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). However, many people do not report their crimes to the police, and police practices affect the number of “official” crimes reported by the UCR.

### Review Questions
1. Why do you think so many Americans are afraid of crime even though the crime rate has greatly declined since the early 1990s?
2. Why is it difficult to measure crime accurately? Why is the measurement of crime by the FBI inaccurate?

## 8.2: Types of Crime

### Study Topics
- Violent Crime
- Figure 8.2 Population Size and Homicide Rate, 2010
- Property Crime
- White-Collar Crime
- Organized Crime
- Consensual Crime

### Key Terms
- **Consensual crime** — Illegal behavior in which people participate voluntarily, including drug use, prostitution, and gambling.
- **corporate violence** — Actions by corporations that cause death, injury, or illness.
- **corporation** — An organization that has a legal existence apart from that of its members.
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **drug** — Any substance other than food that, when taken into the body, affects the structure and/or functioning of the body.
- **economy** — The social institution that organizes the production, distribution, and consumption of a society’s goods and services.
- **intraracial** — In criminology, the commission of crime by offenders against members of their own race or ethnicity.
- **National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)** — An annual survey conducted by the US Department of Justice that asks a representative sample of the American public about crimes they have suffered.
- **Organized crime** — Criminal activity by groups or organizations whose major purpose for existing is to commit such crime.
- **Pornography** — Printed or visual materials that are sexually explicit and that are intended to arouse sexual excitement rather than artistic appreciation.
- **professional fraud** — Stealing by physicians, attorneys, and other professionals from their patients/clients or from the government.
- **Prostitution** — The selling of sexual services.
- **race** — A category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.
- **Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)** — The FBI’s regular compilation of crime statistics, most of them on Part I crimes.
- **white-collar crime** — Crime committed by people in the course of their occupations; Edwin Sutherland’s definition emphasized crime by people of high social status.

### Learning Objectives
1. Describe the major aspects of homicide.
2. Discuss evidence indicating that white-collar crime is more serious than street crime.
3. Explain the major issues raised by the concept of consensual crime.

### Key Takeaways
- Most homicides are committed for relatively emotional, spontaneous reasons and between people who knew each other beforehand.
- White-collar crime involves more death, injury, and economic loss than street crime, but the punishment of white-collar crime is relatively weak.
- Consensual crime raises two related issues: (a) To what extent should the government prohibit people from engaging in behavior in which there are no unwilling victims, and (b) do laws against consensual crime do more good than harm or more harm than good?

### Review Questions
1. If homicide is a relatively emotional, spontaneous crime, what does that imply for efforts to use harsh legal punishment, including the death penalty, to deter people from committing homicide?
2. Do you think consensual crimes should be made legal? Why or why not?

## 8.3: Who Commits Crime?

### Study Topics
- Figure 8.3 Gender and Arrest (Percentage of All Arrests)
- Social Class
- Race and Ethnicity

### Key Terms
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **deviant places** — Sociologist Rodney Stark’s term for neighborhoods that have severe crowding and other features that promote high crime rates.
- **Discrimination** — With regard to racial and ethnic inequality, the arbitrary denial of rights, privileges, and opportunities to members of subordinate racial and ethnic groups.
- **race** — A category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.
- **Socialization** — The process whereby individuals learn the culture of their society.
- **white-collar crime** — Crime committed by people in the course of their occupations; Edwin Sutherland’s definition emphasized crime by people of high social status.

### Learning Objectives
1. Explain why males commit more crime than females.
2. Discuss whether social class differences exist in crime rates.
3. Discuss whether racial/ethnic differences exist in crime rates.

### Key Takeaways
- Males commit more street crime than females, in part because of gender role socialization that helps make males more assertive and aggressive.
- Young people commit a disproportionate amount of street crime, in part because of the influence of their peers and their lack of stakes in conformity.
- The disproportionate involvement of African Americans and Latinos in street crime arises largely from their poverty and urban residence.

### Review Questions
1. If we say that males commit more crime than females, does that imply that we are prejudiced against males? Why or why not?
2. Write a brief essay that outlines social class and racial/ethnic differences in street crime and explains the reasons for these differences.

## 8.4: Explaining Crime

### Study Topics
- Table 8.2 Sociological Explanations of Crime
- The Functional Perspective: Social Structure Theories
- Social Disorganization Theory
- Anomie Theory
- Table 8.3 Anomie Theory
- The Interactionist Perspective: Social Process Theories
- Differential Association Theory
- Social Bonding Theory
- Children and Our Future: Saving Children from a Life of Crime
- Labeling Theory
- The Conflict Perspective

### Key Terms
- **anomie theory** — Robert Merton’s view that deviance is caused by a failure to achieve the American goal of financial success through the conventional means of working.
- **Capitalism** — An economic system in which the means of production are privately owned.
- **conflict theory** — The view that society is composed of groups with different interests arising from their placement in the social structure.
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **Deviance** — Behavior that violates norms and arouses negative social reactions.
- **differential association theory** — Edwin Sutherland’s view that deviance stems from interacting with primary group members who commit deviance and have values conducive to deviance.
- **Discrimination** — With regard to racial and ethnic inequality, the arbitrary denial of rights, privileges, and opportunities to members of subordinate racial and ethnic groups.
- **drug** — Any substance other than food that, when taken into the body, affects the structure and/or functioning of the body.
- **ethnic group** — A subgroup of a population with a set of shared social, cultural, and historical experiences; with relatively distinctive beliefs, values, and behaviors; and with some sense of identity of belonging to the subgroup.
- **family** — A group of two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, adoption, or a mutual commitment and who care for one another.
- **group conflict theory** — The assumption that criminal law is shaped by the conflict among the various social groups in society that exist because of differences in race and ethnicity, social class, religion, and other factors.
- **Labeling theory** — The view that being labeled deviant increases the chances of future deviance.
- **race** — A category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.
- **radical theory** — A view that highlights the importance of (economic) social classes more than the importance of religion, ethnicity, and other social group characteristics in shaping the creation and operation of criminal law.
- **religiosity** — How religious someone is, in terms of how often the person attends religious service, prays, and reads scripture.
- **social bonding theory** — Travis Hirschi’s view that deviance results from weak bonds to conventional social institutions such as the family and schools.
- **social disorganization theory** — The view that the weakening of social bonds and conventional social institutions in a community raises its crime rates.
- **Socialization** — The process whereby individuals learn the culture of their society.

### Learning Objectives
1. Understand social structure theories of crime.
2. Explain the social bonding theory of crime.
3. Describe the general assumptions of conflict theories of crime.

### Key Takeaways
- Social structure theories stress that crime results from economic and other problems in how society is structured and from poverty and other problems in neighborhoods.
- Interactionist theories stress that crime results from our interaction with family members, peers, and other people, and from labeling by the criminal justice system.
- Conflict theories stress that social groups with power and influence try to use the law and criminal justice system to maintain their power and to keep other groups at the bottom of society.

### Review Questions
1. What are any two criminogenic (crime-causing) social or physical characteristics of urban neighborhoods?
2. According to labeling theory, why are arrest and imprisonment sometimes counterproductive?

## 8.5: The Criminal Justice System

### Study Topics
- Criminal Courts
- The Problem of Prisons
- People Making a Difference: Making a Difference in the Lives of Ex-Cons
- Focus on the Death Penalty

### Key Terms
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **Discrimination** — With regard to racial and ethnic inequality, the arbitrary denial of rights, privileges, and opportunities to members of subordinate racial and ethnic groups.
- **drug** — Any substance other than food that, when taken into the body, affects the structure and/or functioning of the body.
- **family** — A group of two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, adoption, or a mutual commitment and who care for one another.
- **health care** — The provision of medical services to prevent, diagnose, and treat health problems.
- **Labeling theory** — The view that being labeled deviant increases the chances of future deviance.
- **plea bargaining** — An agreement between the prosecution and defense that a criminal defendant will plead guilty, usually in return for a reduced sentence.
- **race** — A category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.

### Learning Objectives
1. Describe what is meant by the “working personality” of the police.
2. Discuss the quality of legal representation of criminal defendants.
3. Explain whether incarceration reduces crime in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

### Key Takeaways
- Partly because the police often fear for their lives, they tend to have a “working personality” that is authoritarian and suspicious. Police corruption and use of undue force remain significant problems in many police departments.
- Although criminal defendants have the right to counsel, the legal representation of such defendants, most of whom are poor or near poor, is very inadequate.
- Prisons are squalid places, and incarceration has not been shown to reduce crime in an effective or cost-efficient manner.
- Most criminologists agree that capital punishment does not deter homicide, and they worry about racial discrimination in the use of the death penalty and about the possibility of wrongful executions.

### Review Questions
1. Have you ever had an encounter with a police officer? If so, how would you describe the officer’s personality? Was it similar to what is described in the text?
2. The text argues that improvement in prison conditions would help reduce the probability of reoffending after inmates leave prison. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain your answer.

## 8.6: Reducing Crime

### Study Topics
- Learning Objective
- Applying Social Research - “Three Strikes” Laws Strike Out
- Lessons from Other Societies: Preventing Crime and Treating Prisoners in Western Europe

### Key Terms
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **drug** — Any substance other than food that, when taken into the body, affects the structure and/or functioning of the body.
- **early childhood intervention (ECI) programs** — Programs that typically involve visits by social workers, nurses, and other professionals to the homes of children who are at risk for neurological, emotional, and/or behavioral problems during their childhood and adolescence.
- **family** — A group of two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, adoption, or a mutual commitment and who care for one another.
- **get-tough approach** — The use of longer prison terms and other law enforcement measures to reduce crime.
- **public health approach** — A strategy that highlights the need to prevent illness or disease; in criminology, a strategy that highlights the need to address the factors that lead to criminal behavior.
- **Socialization** — The process whereby individuals learn the culture of their society.
- **white-collar crime** — Crime committed by people in the course of their occupations; Edwin Sutherland’s definition emphasized crime by people of high social status.

### Key Takeaways
- The get-tough approach has not been shown to reduce crime in an effective and cost-efficient manner. A sociological explanation of crime thus suggests the need to focus more resources on the social roots of crime in order to prevent crime from happening in the first place.
- Strategies suggested by criminologists to reduce crime include (a) reducing poverty and improving neighborhood living conditions, (b) changing male socialization patterns, (c) expanding early childhood intervention programs, (d) improving schools and schooling, and (e) reducing the use of incarceration for drug and property offenders.

### Review Questions
1. The text notes that social science research has not shown the get-tough approach to be effective or cost-efficient. If this is true, why do you think this approach has been so popular in the United States since the 1970s?
2. Of the five strategies outlined in the text to reduce crime, which one strategy do you think would be most effective if it were implemented with adequate funding? Explain your answer.

## 8.7: End-of-Chapter Material

### Key Terms
- **Consensual crime** — Illegal behavior in which people participate voluntarily, including drug use, prostitution, and gambling.
- **corporate violence** — Actions by corporations that cause death, injury, or illness.
- **crime** — Behavior considered so harmful or offensive that it is banned by the criminal law.
- **drug** — Any substance other than food that, when taken into the body, affects the structure and/or functioning of the body.
- **intraracial** — In criminology, the commission of crime by offenders against members of their own race or ethnicity.
- **National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)** — An annual survey conducted by the US Department of Justice that asks a representative sample of the American public about crimes they have suffered.
- **Prostitution** — The selling of sexual services.
- **Socialization** — The process whereby individuals learn the culture of their society.
- **Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)** — The FBI’s regular compilation of crime statistics, most of them on Part I crimes.
- **white-collar crime** — Crime committed by people in the course of their occupations; Edwin Sutherland’s definition emphasized crime by people of high social status.

### Chapter Summary
1. Crime is a major concern for many Americans. More than one-third fear walking alone at night in their neighborhoods, and even larger percentages worry about specific types of crimes. News media coverage of crime contributes to these fears. The media overdramatize crime by covering so much of it and by giving especially heavy attention to violent crime even though most crime is not violent. In other problems, the news media disproportionately depict young people and people of color as offenders and whites as victims.
2. The nation’s major source of crime statistics is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Because many people do not tell the police about crimes they have experienced, the UCR underestimates the actual level of crime in the United States. It is also subject to changes in police reporting practices and in particular to deliberate efforts by police to downplay the amount of crime. To help correct these problems, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) measures crime every year in a national survey that asks residents to report their criminal victimization. The NCVS is thought to yield a more accurate estimate of crime than the UCR, and it also provides much information on the circumstances under which victimization occurs. Self-report surveys, typically given to adolescents, are a final form of crime measurement and provide much information on the adolescents’ social backgrounds and thus on the context of their offending.
3. The major categories of crime are violent crime, property crime, white-collar crime, and consensual crime. Much violent crime is relatively spontaneous and emotional, and a surprising amount involves victims and offenders who knew each other before the violent act occurred. Despite popular perceptions, most violent crime is also intraracial. A major distinction in the understanding of property crime is that between professional thieves, who are very skilled and steal valuable possessions or large sums of money, and amateur thieves, who are unskilled and whose theft is petty by comparison. Corporate crime and other kinds of white-collar crime arguably cost the nation more than street crime in economic loss, health problems, and death; corporate violence involves unsafe working conditions, unsafe products, and environmental pollution. Consensual crime, such as illegal drug use and prostitution, raises two important questions: (1) Which consensual but potentially harmful behaviors should the state ban and which should it not ban, and (2) does banning such behaviors do more harm than good or more good than harm?
4. Crime is socially patterned. Males commit more serious crimes than females. African Americans and Latinos have higher crime rates than whites, poor people have higher crime rates than the wealthy, and youths in their teens and early twenties have higher crime rates than older people. In addition, crime is higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
5. Many sociological theories of criminal behavior exist. Social structure theories highlight poverty and weakened social institutions as important factors underlying crime. Social process theories stress the importance of peer relationships, social bonding, and social reaction. Conflict theories call attention to the possible use of the legal system to punish behavior by subordinate groups, while feminist theories examine gender differences in criminality, the victimization of women by rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence, and the experiences of women professionals and offenders in the criminal justice system.
6. The criminal justice system costs tens of billions of dollars annually, yet scholars question the potential of this system to reduce crime. How police are deployed seems a more important factor regarding their potential for crime reduction than the actual numbers of police. The surge in imprisonment of the last few decades may have accounted for a relatively small drop in crime, but whatever reduction it has achieved has not been cost-effective, and hundreds of thousands of prison inmates are now returning every year to their communities. Several problems also exist in the criminal justice system itself. Police corruption and brutality remain serious concerns, while indigent defendants receive inadequate legal representation or none at all. Despite public perceptions, prisons and jails are squalid places, and rape and other violence are daily concerns.
7. The United States is the only Western democracy to use the death penalty for common criminals. Social science evidence finds that the death penalty does not deter homicide, is racially discriminatory, may involve wrongful convictions, and costs considerably more than life imprisonment.
8. Many proposals for reducing crime derive from sociological evidence. These proposals aim to reduce poverty and improve neighborhood living conditions; to change male socialization patterns; to expand early childhood intervention programs and nutrition services; to improve the nation’s schools and schooling; and to reduce the number of prison inmates by placing nonviolent property and drug offenders in community corrections. The funds saved by this last proposal could be used to improve prison and jail rehabilitation programming.

### Application
Suppose you are the Democratic Party Governor of a midsized state and that you are up for reelection in two years. You were a political science major in college but had a sociology minor with a focus in criminal justice. The crime rate in your state has risen slightly since you took office, and there is growing sentiment in the state’s major newspapers and from the Republican Party opposition in the state legislature to lengthen prison terms for serious crime and to build two more prisons for the greater number of prisoners that will be expected. Because of your studies in college, you are skeptical that this approach will reduce crime, and you recognize it will cost millions of dollars. But you also realize that your opponents and some members of the news media are beginning to say that you are soft on crime. What do you do?

### Action Ideas
To help deal with the problem of crime, you may wish to do any of the following:

1. Volunteer at an agency that helps troubled teenagers.
2. Volunteer with an organization that helps ex-offenders.
3. Work for an organization that provides early childhood intervention services for at-risk children.