1. What is crime? Durkheim on crime What is deviance?
Crime and Criminology
What is crime?
Durkheim on crime
What is deviance?

2. Course Website

8. Crime can be defined… Form of normal behavior
Violation of behavioral norms
Form of deviant behavior
Legally defined behavior
Violation of human rights
Social harm/injury
Form of inequality

9. Definition of crime
If we believe that crime is human conduct in violation of the criminal law, we can easily identify criminal behavior from non-criminal

11. Carol Carr
The woman, Carol Carr, 64, killed her sons, Michael R. Scott, 42, and Andy B. Scott, 41, in a nursing home
Both men were in the advanced stages of Huntington's disease and were bedridden and unable to communicate.
The disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that causes involuntary body movement, dementia and death, killed their father, Ms. Carr's first husband.

12. Carol Carr
''What she did was illegal, but also what she did was moral: she stopped the suffering of these children,'' her lawyer, Lee Sexton, said.

13. Unusual behaviors?
Keeping poop in show boxes

14. Emile Durkheim (1895)
Made three specific claims about the nature of crime:
Crime is normal
Crime is inevitable
Crime is useful

15. Crime is normal As normal as birth and marriage
Crimes occur in all societies
They are closely tied to the facts of collective life
Crime rates tend to increase as societies evolve from lower to higher phases

16. Kitty Genovese of Kew Gardens, New York
In 1964, a 29-year-old Kitty cried out for help from her neighbors when an assailant stabbed her twice in the back.
News reports afterwards suggested that 38 neighbors heard or saw some of what happened that night.
Everyone feels that someone else will do something or that someone is better equipped to respond

17. Crime is normal Crime is functional for society
By punishing criminals, society reaffirms it own values
If crimes were not committed, then the values of society would become blurred
If there is no punishment, then there would be no way of reestablishing the values that the crime offends

18. Crime is inevitable No society can ever be entirely rid of crime
Imagine a community of saints in a perfect and exemplary monastery
Faults that appear venial to the ordinary person will arouse the same scandal as does normal crime
Absolute conformity to rules is impossible
Each member in society faces variation in background, education, heredity, social influences

19. Crime is useful Crime is indispensable to the
normal evolution of law and morality
Crime often is a symptom of individual originality and a preparation for changes in society
Rosa Parks (was a criminal) is a hero now
Her simple act of protest galvanized America's civil rights revolution

20. Three perspectives on crime
The Consensus View of Crime
The Conflict View of Crime
The Interactionist View of Crime

21. The Consensus View of Crime
Consensus = agreement
Crimes are behaviors believed to be repugnant (repulsive) to all elements of society
Substantive criminal law – written code that defines crimes and their punishments
This code reflects the values, beliefs, and opinions of society’s mainstream
Concept of ideal legal system

22. Legalistic definition
Crime is human conduct in violation of the criminal laws of state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction that has the power to make such laws
Some activities are not crimes even though they are immoral (watching pornography, torturing animals, creating poor working conditions)
No law= No crime

23. Domestic Violence
Twenty-five years ago, police, prosecutors, and judges did not view domestic abuse (rape and battering) as real crime but rather as private matter where the woman to blame
No law = no crime

24. Nike Up to fifty percent of workers
cannot drink water or go to the toilet
when they want
A quarter of workers receive less than the legal minimum wage, even though Nike makes huge profits
“Abusive treatment", physical and verbal, is exercised in more than a quarter of its south Asian plants

25. Poor working conditions - Crime?
For many years, human rights groups have attacked Nike for the low pay and terrible working conditions, and for the use of child labour
Over half of its employees in Asia work more than sixty hours a week and have no day off

26. Conflict View of Crime
Powerful groups of people label selected undesirable forms of behavior as illegal
Powerful individuals use their power to establish laws and sanctions against less powerful persons and groups
Official statistics indicate that crime rates in inner-city, high-poverty areas are higher than those in suburban areas
Self-reports of prison inmates show that prisoners are members of the lower class

27. Conflict View of Crime
Crime of inequality includes a lot of behaviors that are omitted by legalistic definition
Crime is a political concept used to protect powerful people
Crimes of power (price fixing, economic crimes, unsafe working conditions, nuclear waste products, war-making, domestic violence, etc)

28. '‘Eco-mafia''
The developing South (particularly African countries like Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Algeria and Mozambique) has become the dump for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste from the world's rich countries
A colossal business which is linked to money laundering and gunrunning

29. Nuclear waste drums found by Greenpeace
IIlegal dumps - among the largest in the world - in Somalia, where workers handle the radioactive waste without any kind of safeguard or protective gear - not even gloves
The workers do not know what they are handling, and if one of them dies, the family is persuaded to keep quiet with a small bit of cash

30. Interactionist View of Crime
This view takes a smaller scale view of society and social order and analyses small or medium scale social interactions
The main idea behind the interactionist approach to deviance is that the definition of what is deviant is socially negotiated
We will discuss the fact that definition of crime differs from one culture to another and also across time
It also differs according to where you are and with whom at any given moment.

31. Example
Imagine that a young male of 18 is walking home late one night through the city streets singing at the top of his lungs and weaving about in the road
The police are called and the young man is taken to the police station
When he gets there he explains that earlier that day he has been accepted for a place at Cambridge University and he had been out with his friends to celebrate

32. Example
He has no previous police record. His father is the local GP (General Practitioner)
The police call his father who arrives looking rather embarrassed. He apologizes to the police and they have a little joke together about young men and ‘boys will be boys’
The young man is sent home with a mild warning and the suggestion that he won't feel very well in the morning.

33. Another Scenario
A young male of 18 is walking home late one night through the city streets singing at the top of his lungs
The police are called and the young man is taken to the police station
When he gets there he explains that earlier that day he has been out with his friends to celebrate birthday
He has no previous police record
When asked for his address and telephone number the police realize that he lives in a notorious housing estate that has a high rate of criminal activity.
The police call his father who arrives looking not very embarrassed. He apologizes to the police but they are unimpressed
The boy is charged with breach of the peace

34. Howard Becker (1966)
“It is not act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant”
People in different social groups/societies react differently to the same behavior
Moreover, within the same society at a given time the perception of deviance varies by class, gender, race, and age

35. Deviance is commonplace
We are all deviant from time to time
Each of us violates common social norms in certain situations
Being late for class is categorized as deviant act
Dressing too casually for a formal wedding

36. Relativity of crime
Space
Time
Social context

37. Adultery is crime Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
the Sudan, and some of
the northern states of Nigeria practice a very strict form of Sharia law
Sharia law requires that married or divorced persons found guilty of Zina (adultery) be executed by stoning

38. Sati tradition
Within the Indian culture there is a custom in which a woman burns herself either on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband or by herself with a momento after his death
Proof of her loyalty to husband

39. Prostitution
Prostitution legalized in Netherlands from October 1, 2000
Prostitutes have the right to hygienic working conditions and security in the workplace
They must pay taxes
Can have social insurance, be paid sick leave, and receive a pension if they work for a brothel or own a company
According to estimates published by the de Graaf Foundation, some 25,000 people work as prostitutes in the Netherlands.

40. Prostitutions in the USA
A federal law against prostitution concentrate on the prohibition of crossing state or international boundaries for the purpose of engaging in sex for pay
In selected counties in Nevada prostitution is not criminalized

41. Social Context of crime
Crime is socially constructed (Burger, 1968)
An criminal act can be the same but the interpretation of it can be different

42. The vocabulary of Homicide
Murder is the name for legally unjustified, intentional homicide (legal and moral meanings)
Execution is the name for justified homicide (when terrorists kill their enemies)
Journalist Ambrose Bierce: “Homicide is the slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference slain whether he fell by one kind or another-the classification is for the purposes of the lawyers”.

43. Vocabulary of homicide
Debate about abortion
Those who oppose call it murder
Those who favor legal access to abortion speak of “terminating pregnancy” or “removing tissue”
Different moralities-different vocabularies
Crime is socially constructed?

44. What is deviance?
Deviance involves the violation of group norms which may or may not be formalized into law
Some examples: criminals, alcoholics, people with tattoos, compulsive gamblers, and the mentally ill

45. Deviance Deviation from norm is not always negative:
A member of an exclusive club who speaks out against its traditional policy of excluding women, or poor people
Police officer who speaks against corruption within the department

46. Deviance
Deviant behavior is human activity that is statistically different from the average
Deviance and crime are concepts that do not always easily mesh
Some forms of deviance are not violations of the criminal law and the reverse is true as well

47. Relationship between crime and deviance