Transcript crime rates in canada - Vancouver School Board

Chapter 19
Deviance and Crime
by Rosemary Gartner
and Myrna Dawson
Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson
Canada Limited.
1
DEVIANCE
•
Although deviance involves breaking rules, rules
often change and people often disagree with the
rules.
•
Definitions of deviance are the outcome of
political processes and power relations in which
different groups compete to define right and
wrong.
•
Thus, to understand deviance we must examine
the people and organizations that define and
react to deviance.
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2
SOCIAL CONTROL I
• Deviance is defined by social control, the public
effort to change nonconformist behaviour or
punish deviance.
• Nonconformity only becomes deviance when it
produces a negative social reaction and
members of society try to impose social control.
• Social control may be informal (expressions of
disapproval and avoidance from peers) or formal
(controls exerted by the state through the
criminal justice system and by social workers
and psychiatrists).
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3
SOCIAL CONTROL II
According to Durkheim, deviance can have
positive social consequences, including:
• increasing social solidarity;
• defining a group’s moral boundaries; and
• keeping societies flexible
Yet deviance and crime also have costs or
dysfunctions:
• undermining social stability; and
• social control efforts with worse
consequences than the original deviant or
criminal acts.
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CRIME
•
•
•
•
Crime is deviance that is defined by norms that are
formalized in law.
Because criminal acts are defined by law, they are
considered more serious than other deviant acts.
Nonetheless, conflicting opinions surround even
the most serious crimes.
For example, while all Canadians agree that the
intentional killing of a person is wrong, they
disagree about euthanasia and the death penalty.
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THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
OF DEVIANCE AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES
• Efforts to define deviance are often called moral
crusades. They are initiated by individuals and
groups that act as moral crusaders (e.g., Mothers
Against Drunk Driving).
•
Sociologists use the status-conflict perspective
to understand the conflict involved in defining
deviance.
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THE STATUS–CONFLICT
PERSPECTIVE
•
This perspective holds that society consists of
many groups that compete against one another for
status and influence.
•
Groups that control definitions of deviance can:
• legitimate their moral standards and claims
to moral authority, and
• determine the types of social controls applied
to deviance.
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7
CONSEQUENCES OF
DEFINING DEVIANCE
•
The labeling perspective holds that social
reactions to deviance are an important cause of
deviance.
•
Agents of social control (police, psychiatrists,
etc.) label some behaviour as deviant and thereby
reinforce deviant identities.
•
Labeling can also result in collective deviant
responses such as the formation of deviant
subcultures (e.g., biker gangs).
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8
EXPLANATIONS OF DEVIANCE
There are two main types of explanations for
deviance:
• Motivational theories identify the social factors
that push people to engage in deviance. Two
variants of motivational theories are strain
theories and learning theories.
• Control and opportunity theories identify the
social factors that control or prevent people
from engaging in criminal activity.
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9
STRAIN THEORIES I
•
Strain theory argues that the motivation to
deviate lies in society, not the individual.
•
According to Merton, some people who lack
opportunities to achieve the success and status
valued by their culture withdraw from
conventional society and find deviant (including
criminal) means of achieving goals.
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10
STRAIN THEORIES II
Criticisms of strain theories:
• They focus on, and overstate the extent of,
lower-class, “street” crime by ignoring the
effects of discriminatory practices and
greater police surveillance in lower-class
communities.
• They fail to explain why so many people who
face strain do not become deviants.
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11
LEARNING THEORIES I
•
Learning theories argue that one learns to be
deviant in much the same way one learns to play
sports or enjoy music.
•
Sutherland’s theory of differential association
holds that when positive evaluations of deviance
in one’s social environment outweigh negative
evaluations, one is prone to accept deviance.
•
Sutherland’s theory explains deviance at all levels
of society.
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12
LEARNING THEORIES II
•
•
Sykes and Matza claim that deviants must learn
techniques of neutralization to reconcile the
conventional and deviant worlds in which they live.
Deviants use these techniques to nullify their own
guilt and blame others by:
• denying personal responsibility for their actions;
• condemning people who pass judgement on
them;
• claiming their victims deserve what they got;
and
• denying that they cause any real harm.
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13
CONTROL AND
OPPORTUNITY THEORIES I
•
Control and opportunity theories claim that
deviance and crime occur because they are
rewarding – that is, fun and profitable.
•
Opportunity theories, like control theories,
assume that in the absence of inner or external
controls, most of us would engage in crime.
•
These theories argue that the type of crimes
people commit depend on the opportunities
available to them.
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14
CONTROL AND
OPPORTUNITY THEORIES II
•
Control theories try to answer the question,
“Why do people not commit crime?”
•
Control theories argue that people who don’t
commit crime have strong social controls.
• One version of the theory argues that juvenile
delinquency results from the lack of strong
bonds to conventional institutions (family,
teachers, school).
•
A second version identifies self-control as the
basis of conformity.
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15
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES
OF CRIME AND DEVIANCE
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16
MEASURING DEVIANCE
AND CRIME I
•
Crime can be measured by official crime
statistics, but these are affected by control
agents’ decisions as to which acts to report and
which to ignore.
•
Surveys can ask people to report on their
involvement in deviance, or their experiences as
victims of crime, but they depend on people’s
willingness and ability to discuss openly their
own and others’ deviance.
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17
MEASURING DEVIANCE
AND CRIME II
•
Indirect measures may also be used to measure
deviance (e.g., statistics on cirrhosis of the liver
as an indicator of serious alcoholism).
•
A good policy is to use a combination of
measures to increase confidence in one’s
depiction of deviance and crime.
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18
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR
IN CANADA I
•
Many Canadians feel that the crime rate has been
increasing in recent years. However, official
crime statistics show that the crime rate has
been decreasing.
•
Canadians are more likely to be criminally
victimized than people in most European
countries, but much less likely than Americans to
be victims of serious violent crime.
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19
CRIME RATES IN CANADA
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20
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR
IN CANADA II
•
A substantial minority of Canadians thinks crime
is increasing because the mass media makes it
seem so.
•
Actually, crime decreased in the 90s, not because
of tough policing or an improved economy but
partly because the most crime-prone group –
people between the ages of 15 and 24 – shrunk.
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CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR
IN CANADA III
•
•
Canadian crime rates have historically been lower
in the east than in the west, and highest in the
territories.
Aboriginals and Blacks are overrepresented as
victims, offenders, and prison inmates, due to:
• higher rates of criminal activity that result from
high rates of poverty , unemployment, and family
disruption; and
• discrimination in the system of criminal justice.
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22
HOMICIDE RATES, SELECTED
COUNTRIES, 2001
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23
CRIME RATES, CANADA AND
THE USA, 2001
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24
CRIME RATES BY PROVINCE
AND TERRITORY
Insert Figure 19.2, p. 507
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25
CRIME AND GLOBALIZATION
•
As the world economy has become globalized
and linked by electronic technology,
motivations and opportunities for economic
crime on a global scale have increased.
•
Much global crime is being committed by
legitimate businesses in the form of violations
of antitrust and environmental laws.
•
Because corporate misconduct is defined
differently from nation to nation, controlling
global corporate crime is difficult.
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26
CRIME AND CHANGING
GENDER STRATIFICATION
•
The reduction of gender inequality in the
Western industrialized nations has not led to an
increase in women as offenders.
•
However, as women spend more time in the
labour force and outside of traditional domestic
roles they are more likely to become victims of
crime.
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27
YOUTHS ACCUSED OF
HOMICIDE, 1991-2001
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28
PATTERNS OF
SOCIAL CONTROL I
•
Before the 17th century, centralized states were
too weak to sponsor institutions of formal
control, so serious rule-breaking was dealt
with by physical punishment imposed by
families, communities, and the church.
•
Excessive confinement was criticized in the
twentieth century as repressive and inefficient
for rehabilitation.
•
The 1960s saw a move away from
institutionalization and a shift of control to
local governments and community agencies.
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29
PATTERNS OF
SOCIAL CONTROL II
•
Many forms of deviance and crime have been
redefined as medical problems, in some ways
widening the net of social control.
•
Current trends:
• operating jails and prisons by private
companies, and
• engineering away deviance and crime by
controlling the physical environment rather
than people.
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30
RECENT CANADIAN TRENDS
IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE
•
With the introduction of the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms in 1982, there has been a shift
away from the crime control model to the due
process model.
•
Nonetheless, incarceration rates continued to
rise until the mid-1990s and then began to
decline to:
• decreasing crime rates, and
• the use of alternatives to incarceration, such
as restorative justice.
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31
INTERNATIONAL
INCARCERATION
RATES
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SUPPLEMENTARY SLIDES
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33
VIOLENT AND PROPERTY CRIME,
CANADA, BY PROVINCE AND
TERRITORY, 2002
Crimes
per 100,000
population 8000
6000
Violent
Property
4000
2000
0
D EI NS NB UE NT AN SK TA BC UK WT UN
L
P
F
Y N N
Q O M SA AL
N
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34
PERCENT OF POPULATION VICTIMIZED
ONCE OR MORE IN THE PAST YEAR, BY
TYPE OF CRIME, 1996
Percent of Population
8
Note: Horizontal lines indicate
international average for each
type of crime.
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Violent Offenses
Household
Burglary
Theft of Personal
Property
Type of Crime
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Northern Ireland
Austria
France
Scotland
Switzerland
Canada
Finland
Netherlands
Sweden
USA
England and Wales
POPULATION PER POLICE OFFICER,
CANADA, 1991–2002
Population/officer
560
540
520
500
480
460
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
Year
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0
1
2
CRIMINAL CODE INCIDENTS PER POLICE
OFFICER, CANADA, 1991–2001
Incidents/officer
50
45
40
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
Year
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99
0
1
INMATES IN FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL
CUSTODY, 1991–1997
Inmates
40000
30000
7.3% increase
Provincial
20000
10000
Federal
0
91
92
93
94
Year
95
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96
97
RATE OF ASSAULT REPORTED TO
POLICE, CANADA, 1978–1998
Rate
sexual/100,000
non-sexual/million
100
50
0
78
83
88
93
97
Year
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98
CRIME IN SELECTED CANADIAN CITIES,
1998 (PER 100,000 POPULATION)
CITY
Regina
Vancouver
Saskatoon
Winnipeg
Halifax
Edmonton
Windsor
Calgary
Montreal
St John’s
Toronto
Quebec
CRIME RATE
VIOLENT CRIME RATE
(% change since ’97)
(% change since ’97)
14,785 (2.0)
12,142 (-4.9)
11,777 (-1.3)
9,952 (-3.2)
9,628 (0.0)
8,736 (-4.4)
7,892 (-5.5)
7,813 (-1.8)
7,779 (-4.8)
7,385 (5.8)
5,838 (-11.0)
5,348 (-8.7)
1,649 (0.8)
1,170 (-5.2)
1,407 (2.4)
1,299 (-10.8)
996 (-12.5)
996 (2.0)
918 (7.2)
849 (0.4)
827 (-11.4)
968 (-3.6)
836 (-2.2)
456 (-11.4)
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