2. Nice Quiet Week!
Complete the assigned Readings
Read pp in Henslin, and review the Web Resources related to crime, juvenile delinquency, and ways to treat criminals. In order to learn more about crime and the criminal justice system, refer to the document titled “Unit 4 Resources” in Doc Sharing.
Participate in Discussion
The book discusses four different ways to deal with criminals: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. Which of the four ways do you feel is most effective in dealing with criminals? Which do you feel is least effective? Explain your answers.
After watching ABC Primetime: Juvenile Corrections, and reading the chapter, answer the following questions: Why do juveniles get involved with crime? What are some differences and challenges human services professionals may face when working with juveniles convicted of crimes versus adults convicted of crimes? 
Attend Seminar

3. The Problem in Sociological Perspective
Crime: The violation of law
Crime is culturally relative
Making acts criminal is a political process
Determining which behavior is criminal is a political process
Power: The capacity to achieve goals in the face of opposition

4. The Scope of the Problem
Criminal Justice System: Agencies that respond to crime
Crime Rate: Number of crimes occurring per 100,000 people
The universal nature of crime: No society exists without crime

5. Symbolic Interactionism
Social Class And Labeling
Social class affects our perception and behavior
Social class affects visibility
Social class affects styles of interaction
Labeling
Practice that can set people on different paths in life
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Refers to something that becomes true because one said it might come true
Police Discretion
Deciding whether to arrest someone or to ignore a particular offense
Social class influences the authorities' reactions affecting who shows up in official statistics

6. Functionalism
Functionalists consider crime a natural part of healthy society.
Strain theory states that illegitimate opportunity structures encourage some people to commit crime and provide that others will not have the need to.
Robert Merton’s analysis:
Conformists
Innovators
Ritualists
Retreatists
Rebels
Innovation is most often the cause of criminal behavior
Innovators turn to illegitimate means

7. Social class and illegitimate opportunities
Illegitimate Opportunity Structures
Opportunities woven into the texture of life in urban slums
Middle and upper classes are not free of crime
Ponzi Scheme
Occurs when high investment returns are paid to clients using other clients’ money—not real investment profit
Why do only some people commit property crimes?
Inner controls
Outer controls

8. Conflict Theory Inequity in the legal system: power and social class
Conflict theorists stress that every society is marked by power and inequality.
The Ruling Class
The Working Class: three major groups
Upper-level managers and professionals
White-collar and blue-collar workers
Marginal working class
Law is controlled by the ruling class

9. White-Collar Crime White-Collar Crime: Two major types:
Crimes “committed by people of respectable and high social status in the course of their occupation.”
Two major types:
Those committed by employees on behalf of a corporation
Those committed against a corporation

10. Professional and Organized Crime
Professional Criminals
People who consider crime to be their occupation
Criminal Enterprise
Crime committed within a highly organized gang
Mafia
Famous organized crime group; made up only of Italians is a myth
Organized crime involves three main elements:
In-group loyalty
Scorn for the values of the straight world
Pride in specialized skills

11. Cosa Nostra: “our thing”
Structure in which leaders of most powerful families form a “commission” or “combine” to take over weaker families.
Mafia’s success despite government efforts
Bureaucracy
Provides illegal services in high demand
Wields influence through political corruption
Uses violence and intimidation
Conflict theorists: organized crime serves the goals of the U.S. ruling class

12. Political Crime
Political Crime: crime motivated by a particular ideology
Some view political actions of individuals as major social problems, while viewing similar acts by government as acceptable.
Crimes designed to maintain the social order

13. The Criminal Justice System
Plea Bargaining
Poor spend months (even years) behind bars awaiting trial
Plea Bargaining: Pleading guilty, even if innocent, for lesser charge―encouraged by defense attorneys
Threats of mandatory minimum sentences to get guilty pleas
Judges impose harsher sentences on those who insist on unnecessary trials
Age, employment, and the number of previous arrests affect sentencing
Number of arrests, not the seriousness of those charges, influences a sentence

15. Recidivism and Rehabilitation
Recidivism rates: percentage of former prisoners rearrested
Likelihood of recidivism is influenced by gender, race–ethnicity, and age
The more often someone has been put in prison, the greater that person’s chances of going back to prison

16. The Sting of Justice
Respectability, wealth, and power insulate many lawbreakers.
Assembly-line justice
Plea bargaining has become standard in U.S. criminal justice system.
Vast majority of cases, people accused of a crime do not receive a trial
Criminal justice system is also slow and inefficient.
Plea bargaining and the inefficiencies of the court system…

17. Bias in the Criminal Justice System
African Americans are 12% of the U.S. population: 45% of prison inmates
Criminal conviction rates in U.S. vary greatly among different racial groups
Unclear why African Americans are most apt to be arrested and charged
Cannot conclude that the courts are biased for or against minorities or for or against Whites
The evidence is inconclusive.

18. The Death Penalty Capital punishment Furman v. Georgia (1972)
The decision by a jury in the sentencing phase of a capital (death penalty) case to put an inmate to death
Best predictor of whether a man would be sentenced to death was knowing that the victim was White and the accused Black
Furman v. Georgia (1972)
Death penalty was being applied unconstitutionally—in a discriminatory fashion

19. The Prison Experience The Zimbardo Experiment
Society structure and groups to which we belong provide basis for our orientations and how we act toward others
Provides insight into what is wrong with our prisons
Adding to knowledge of why prisons fail to reduce crime

21. Social Policy Retribution Punishment to uphold values Restitution
Compensation to victims for harm
Deterrence
Create fear by letting potential offenders know they will be punished if they commit a crime
Uniform sentencing: same sentence for everyone convicted of the same crime
Rehabilitation: resocializing offenders
Probation
Imprisonment
Parole
Furloughs
Halfway houses
Honor farms
Diversion: diverting offenders away from courts and jails

22. The debate over capital punishment
Incapacitation
Removing offenders from circulation
The debate over capital punishment
Proponents argue that death is appropriate punishment for heinous crimes
Opponents argue that killing is never justified

23. Goals and Principles Clear laws Swift justice
More rehabilitation programs
Added incapacitation
Task forces to investigate organized crime white-collar crime
Harsh penalties
Prison reform
Unbiased research

24. The Future of the Problem
Changes in crime
The criminal justice system
The judicial system changes slowly
Need for fundamental change