SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY TO CRIME

Sociological Theory To Crime



Sociological Theory To Crime

Sociological Theory To Crime And Social Control In Asia And The Pacific Or Around The World

Attitudes toward crime and punishment historically have been informed by prevailing ideas about class, gender, race, and nation. They have rarely reflected strict legal definitions of crime, but rather have been influenced by political discourses, economic conditions, ideological circumstances, and the means by which ideas are publicly disseminated. In the late twentieth century, representations of crime through the mass media have encouraged an uncritical attitude of fear toward racially- and class-defined communities as the main perpetrators of crime, deflecting attention away from corporate, white-collar, government, and police crime, as well as domestic violence against women. The history of the prison reveals that this institution, which has emerged as the dominant mode of punishment, has been unable to solve the problem of crime, but rather has become a site for violence, assaults on human rights, and the perpetuation of racism. Nevertheless, it has expanded in the industrialized countries - especially in the United States - to the extent that we now can speak of an emergent prison industrial complex. Oppositional attitudes toward penal systems have emerged in transnational organizations, including abolitionist perspectives toward both prisons and the death penalty.

Representations of Crime

During the late twentieth century, increasing evocations of 'the crime problem' in the discourse of elected officials, the centrality accorded to crime reportage in the print and electronic news media, and the mounting popularity of literary, televisual, and cinematic representations of fictionalized crime all have tended to create a crime-saturated social environment. New genres such as 'Court TV' have helped to transform high-profile trials, such as that of O. J. Simpson, into global media events. The formation of popular attitudes toward crime - and specifically the fascination with and fear of crime - in fact is more an outgrowth of these representational practices than of the actual risk of becoming a victim of crime.

Crime, as it is perceived on the level of common sense, is only indirectly related to its legal definition, which covers a range of actions so vast as to make it difficult to identify commonalities among them beyond the fact that 'criminal actions' are those proscribed by law and those for which courts can impose punishments. What is considered a crime during one historical period, in another may become neutral behavior in which criminal justice systems have no apparent interest. The penal codes of different countries, as well as state penal codes within the United States, frequently are at variance with each other. Moreover, while numerous surveys indicate that a vast majority of most populations have engaged at one point or another in behavior proscribed by law, only a small percentage of these acts ever is addressed by criminal justice systems. In some countries, spousal battery, a historically sanctioned behavior, has been recognized relatively recently as a punishable crime. Although this and other crimes committed by victims' relatives and acquaintances over time have constituted ...