Crime and Violence

Background of the research

Violence is one of the major reasons for killings in the world. This menace has perpetrated the domestic as well as social lives of the people. The homicide rate in the country is extremely high. The statistics are significantly higher for places where the unemployment rates are high. Men have no jobs and family as a social institution is crumbling. Earlier literature has established a very significant link between poverty and violence. The neighbourhoods with a high level of crimes have a higher number of dysfunctional families (Bell, pp.79-85).

Violence is termed as a major endemic and a fast growing concern for the administration of the United States also. Also repeated studies have shown that violence is more common in the African-Americans than any other race. They are at a significantly higher health risk than any other race or ethnic group. This particular racial group has always been associated with violence-related crimes (Bell, pp.175-185).

It is high time that collaborative efforts are launched to deal with the problem. However, there is not only one strategy that can deal with the problem at large. Any one national program is not adequately going to address the problem at hand. It is only going to lead to marginalization and feelings of being targeted in the particular group. The factors that lead to violence in the African Americans may be different from what leads to violent behaviour among whites and other races.

Crime and Violence as Social Problem in Sociological Perspectives

In this paper, information will be provided to understand the importance of how violent crime has affected society, and the information being discussed will further go into detail about what causes violent crime to occur, how society contributes to the rates, and how crime affects the society as a social problem. The sociological perspective on crime will be discussed about crime being a learned behavior and what should be done about it (Bernard, pp.73-96).

Criminology, an emphasis of sociology studying crime and delinquency as phenomena of the social world, has three foci: lawmaking, lawbreaking, and reactions regarding the breaking of laws. The study of lawmaking examines whether the basis of legal definitions is one of consensus or conflict. The consensus model argues that members of society agree on which behaviors are unacceptable. As a result, laws are simply a formal codification, through legislation and court rulings, of prevailing notions of right and wrong. In contrast, the conflict model views society as composed of groups whose competing values and interests (i.e., politics, class, religion, race, gender, and so on) cause them to have different definitions of what behaviors are unacceptable. Groups with the most power in society have the ability to enact into law their definitions of right and wrong. Thus, law is a tool of the powerful to maintain their advantageous position over others (Goldstein, pp.493-506).

The study of lawbreaking concerns why some individuals are more likely to commit crime. Attempts to answer this question, albeit with very different responses, have led to the ...