Assessing The Strengths And Limitations Of Crimes Criminology Essay

Assessing The Strengths And Limitations Of disgusts Criminology auditionGender, well up-disposedly desirable responding and the fright of disgust(1) I bequeath be assessing the facultys and limitations of utilize friendly mountains to investigate misgiving of discourtesy. One form of social surveys is questionnaires. It includes a list of written questions. The strengths of these be that the researcher is able to gather a large number of good deal quickly and efficiently. another(prenominal) strength of questionnaires is that they explore certain atomic number 18as to a greater extent than thusly other methods i.e. offence. The questionnaire can be anonymous which means stack can answer them privately. This increases the chances of batch respondent questions honestly because they result not be intimidated by the heading of a researcher. When questionnaires argon used to investigate the fear if criminal offence, it is found that workforce ar more probabl e to actually become victims of crime. Although wo manpower are describe to r all(prenominal) a higher level of fear thence(prenominal) men are. A limitation of questionnaires is that they include closed questions, which the researcher cannot examine labyrinthine issues and go into detail. Issues maybe such as hegemonic definitions of masculinity when men are being questioned ab discover their fear of crime, they tend to hold back. Whereas, women are unacquainted(p) to express and can just abouttimes exaggerate. Another type of social survey is structured interviews. The strengths are that the researcher can explore in wisdom a particular topic and recover out the how the respondent feels towards the topic. For mannikin crime victimisation and fears of crime. Because women rescue a higher level of fear then men they tend to stay indoors rather then go out.According to Cohen golf club is the subject of such periods of moral alarm. In his book Folk devils and moral panics the creation of mods and rockers. A moral panic is a societal response to beliefs about the treats from moral deviants. Cohen used this status as a form of collective behaviour i.e. when a approximatelybody or a group of people are performing a deviant act which is seen as a threat to society. This is then visualised by the media and included in newspapers. This moral panic can turn out an impact on how people view crime in society and begin to feel a fear towards it.Looking at twain types of social surveys that I have mentioned, I have found out that structured interviews are more useful when it comes to investigating fears of crime then questionnaires. This is because structured interviews are much more powerful, they provide a true(p) response and is more valid then questionnaires.Patterns of crime(a) Two advantages of using authorised statistics to measure crime is that, one it gives a general image of trends in crime. Politicians and the mass media often point to incre ases or decreases in formalized figures as a measure of the governments success in tackling crime. Each political party places their own interpretation of what the statistics could mean. However, official statistics does show a fear of crime rising. Researchers Pantazis and Gordon (1999) found out the poor are most likely to fear crime. They did a think over on household surveys, found out those with the utmost were most likely to fear crime and those with the highest incomes were actually likely, to become victims of crime. Another advantage is that they are readily available. They are accessible for the police and bothone and are cheap to gather information from.(b) I will examining the view that departure can best be explained by reference to an individuals social background. I will be using material from these areas education and families and households. Charles Murray (1990) a innovative Right sociologist argues that deviance can be found in those who are from underclas s backgrounds. In both British and American society which have a distinct culture and value system. However, Miller (1962) thought crime and delinquency came from the works class cultural values. He said that the raze working class culture was what encouraged lawbreaking behaviour. According to him values passed from each generation encourages working class men to break the law. Delinquency was then formed from this culture. Because of working class deviant behaviour, they did not achieve well in education and so looked at other ways of gaining some form of success. The working class suffer from status frustration, which means that they dominate it hard to gain success and so turn to illegitimate ways. Where in this case, they turn to crime eventually. Family can also influence a persons tycoon to turn to crime. The type of family that you are born into or live in can determine whether you turn to crime or not. Mostly working class people from single-parent families, where they a re a lack of male fibre models, turn to deviant behaviour such as gang violence. besides laws broken in the family can deal to family breakdown and so work to anomie. However, Functionists Durkheim explained that a little amount of crime is good and necessary in society. This is because crime has a function in society, it allows for social change to occur. Crime can move from functional to dysfunctional when down to the level of crime is either too high or too low.(c) I will be assessing the view that interactionist explanations of crime and deviance fail to consider the truthfulness of crime as measured in official statistics. Firstly, I will be explaining the interactionists explanation of crime and deviance. Interactionist theory became significant in the study of crime and deviance in the 1960s. They are mostly concerned with the content people attach to events or people and so study the societal reception to deviant behaviour. Unlike positivists, their theory assumes tha t criminals and deviants are somehow diametric from non-criminals and non-deviants. They dont look at causal factors in the background or social characteristics of individuals and groups, but look at the process of social interaction in which some actions, individuals and groups were labelled as deviant yet others were not.Interactionists are distinguishable to other sociological approaches they are concerned more about the inseparable factors. People are social actors, they have the ability to do more than simply react to external social hales. Unlike positivists approaches, they dont see people as largely passive in the way their behaviour is a response to social forces. Interactionists place on the approach the idea that people attach meanings to behaviour. They want to find out why some groups and some behaviour are more likely than others to have the meaning crime or deviance attached to them.Labelling is one of the most basic aspects of humankind understanding. Howard Bec ker (1963) gave the best view on labelling theory. He believed that there is no such thing as a deviant act, it is behaviour that other people label others. In orb labelling happens all the time i.e. in school. barely formal labelling can only be applied someone by the authority. However, quash labels i.e. being called a criminal can take on a huge effect, once applied it is difficult to live down. From some chasten labels, some people can be stigmatised and rejected from society. This can lead to crime and can take on a self-fulfilling prophecy approach.Edwin Lemmert deluxe primary from secondary deviance. Primary deviance meaning deviant acts in the beginning they are being labelled. I.e. teenagers who commit some acts that leads to being called a ramshackle. secondary deviance is produced by the reaction to an act and public labelling. It is far more important than primary deviance because, it is the effect on a persons self-image of the reaction of society. Lemmert did a s tudy on stuttering amongst a group of Native Americans who didnt have the ability to speak publicly. A person who stuttered a little would earn attention from others, which would then make the problem worse. A primary deviance which is lead to a secondary deviance from the reactions of people in society.To help oneself assess this view I will be using sponsor Youngs research study. Young did a study on hippies they were viewed negatively by the police because of their unusual lifestyle which was seen as deviant to them. They were refer in little criminal activity and minor use of marijuana. But once they were caught hard by the police, marijuana began to be much more important and was used frequently. This was caused from greater deviance from the police which put pressure on the hippies to become more deviant then at they were at the beginning.Another research study from Stan Cohen on mods and rockers.Official statistics are a form of secondary data. They are published by the folk Office and give information on the numbers of different types of crimes act and the social background of offenders. Official statistics are publishes annually. The advantages of official statistics are that they are already available to access as well being cheap. Positivists find it of great use as it helps to explain patterns of criminal behaviour. The official statistics is a large sample, all recorded crimes in the UK are included. Because these statistics are produced e real year it now follows a long history, so sociologists find it very useful to compare data over a period of time.However, criticisms from official statistics are mainly from Interactionists. They argue that these statistics are socially constructed. Although they are concerned in finding out how this happens, they dont see how the statistics can be seen as real. Also crime statistics are produced by those in social affirm such as the police and can include those who might or might not be labelled as dev iant. Cicourel criticises official statistics by saying that the working class young persons who are arrested by the police were likely to be labelled as delinquents. This is because they fitted the polices idea of a typical delinquent while the middle class were able to negotiate. Working class youth are overly represented in official statistics and so could be the result of the process of negotiation happening finished interaction through the police.