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Social Distribution of Crime - Coggle Diagram
Social Distribution of Crime
Institutional Racism
Stop and search, black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by police officer in the UK.
However, a very small amount of stop and searches lead to an arrest.
MacPherson's report into the Stephen Lawrence murder and police failings used the phrase "institutional racism" when describing the actions of the police in that specific case.
Macpherson accused the police of incompetency by not following up on important leads.
Holdaway claimed that there was a "canteen culture" that existed within the police force.
He claimed that many officers held prejudicial thoughts about members of African Caribbean community and therefore told negative stories and shared derogatory jokes at their expense.
Holdaway argued that many new recruits felt under pressure to conform to this "canteen culture"
Theoretical Approaches to ethnicity and crime
left realists
Lea and young believe that crime is caused by relative deprivation, subcultures and marginalisation.
When it comes to ethnic minority crime, they believe that the racism of our society leads to the "economic exclusion" of ethnic minority communities.
Right realists
Right realists view cultural deprivation as one of the main reasons for crime occurring.
Moynihan claims that the main cause behind ethnic minority crime is poor socialisation caused by ineffective family structures.
Moynihan suggests that cultural deprivation can become a cycle in single parent families as the children are likely to fail in education.
Neo-marxists
Hall suggests that the ruling class use racism as a tool to divide the proletariat and prevent a revolution.
He refers to this as divide and rule.
Hall claims that, through the media, the bourgeoisie have used "moral panics" about ethnic minority groups that have led to clear divisions due to racial tensions.
He talks specifically about the 1970's portrayal of the "black mugger"; a media representation of young black men that the demonised them in the eyes of the public.
The "chivalry thesis"
Pollack discusses the "chivalry thesis"; an idea that suggests the criminal justice system threats men and women differently.
He claims that this stems from gender role socialisation.
Gender role socialisation
The criminal justice system is traditionally dominated by men who are raised to be "chivalrous" towards women.
This means that when faced with a female offender, male police officers are more likely to treat them leniently
Heidensohn
In many domestic abuse cases, women choose not to report the majority of incidents to the police.
Radical feminists Heidensohn claims that the criminal justice system treats women very poorly when investigating claims of sexual assault or domestic violence.
Gender Norms
This is because women are viewed to have deviated from stereotypical gender norms.
E.g if they act in a sexually promiscuous way they are not performing their expressive role
sex role theory
parsons suggests that women are less likely to be criminals due to their genetic characteristics , this is called the sec role theory.
He argues the importance of the "expressive leader" in the primary socialisation of the children and suggests women have more to lose if they turn to criminal activity.
Patriarchal control
Heidensohn claims that women are generally more likely to conform to societies norms and values than men and therefore tend to be restricted when it comes to criminal or deviant activity.
she claims that because of "patriarchal control", women are used to being controlled by men throughout their lives and consequently do not have the same opportunities to commit crime.
The liberation thesis
Alder suggests that as a female progression evolves, so will the opportunity for women to commit crime.
She refers to this as the "liberation thesis".
As women become more prevalent in traditionally male spaces such as employment women will have more opportunity to commit crime, such as white collar crime.