Society Level Factors and Crime

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Society Level Factors and Crime
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What is it about America?

• Is our culture criminogenic?
• Some of the factors we identified
• Nationalism / arrogance
• Sex / aggression
• Guns / freedom
• Consumerism / Capitalism
• Politics / ideology

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The Clinton Effect
New Initiates to Marijuana Use
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What about Bowlingfor Columbine?
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Possible criminogenic factors

• Social disorganization
• Anomie / strain
• Culture conflict
• Criminal Subcultures
• Demographics Race, Class, Gender

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Social disorganization

• Recall from earlier in course social
  disorganization implies some inability of
  inhabitants to control behavior of residents
• Societal sources?
• (What makes urbanization, residential mobility,
  family disruption, poverty, unemployment, income
  inequality?)

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Anomie / Strain

• Anomie state of normlessness, breakdown of
  norms in society
• collective conscience of society threatened
• Can occur during large-scale societal changes
• Can occur during growth from small town to
  thriving city

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Anomie / Strain

• Institutional anomie allegiance to the
  American Dream promotes crime
• especially when economy takes precedence over
  family, schools, places of worship
• Would we have less crime if we put our families,
  schools, and places of worship first?

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Anomie / Strain

• Structural strain disjunction between
  culturally prescribed goals and legitimate means
• We all have same goals, but not all have means to
  achieve them
• When people cannot achieve goals legally, they
  create new means to achieve them
• (innovation)

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Anomie / Strain

• Financial strain is not only source of strain
• There is also general strain occurs when a
  person
• Is prevented from achieving goals
• Loses something of value
• Experiences some undesirable stimulus / negative
  experience

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Economic factorsand crime

• Urbanization and industrialization related to
  higher property crime
• Income inequality related to higher murder,
  violent street crimes
• Poverty related to depression, joblessness,
  family disruption, community instability
• Poverty and street crime related (duh)

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Economic factorsand crime

• Unemployment related to higher property crime
  within neighborhoods
• Structural strain related to higher street crime
• General strain related to higher deviance /
  antisocial behavior / delinquency / criminality

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Race, Class, Gender

• What is race?
• What is class?
• What is gender?
• Criminal justice system disproportionately
  catches poor, minority, men
• Meaning?

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Race, Class, Gender

• Relative to Caucasians, minorities have
• Lower income
• Less wealth
• Higher unemployment
• So, more criminal? (see UCR, NCVS, self-report
  studies)