Study Guide: Crime & Underclass

Glossary:

anomie theory	psychopath	law
crime	deviant subculture	total institution
conformity	consensus	cultural transmission
plea bargaining	underclass	recidivism rate
deviance	status offences	primary deviance
organized crime	white-collar crime	secondary deviance
differential association	victimless crime	labeling theory
Anomie	Anomia	ethnocentrism
ethnicity	anomie theory	relative deprivation
institutional discrimination	stereotypes	stratification
minority group	prejudice	racism
interpersonal violence	scapegoating	underclass

	Biological/psychological/sociological approaches to crime
	Death penalty (deterrence)
	Demography of crime
	Functions of crime
	Victimization studies (recent history)
	Uniform Crime Reports (recent history)
	Types of crime

Names to Know:

Emile Durkheim

Robert K. Merton

Edwin Sutherland


	Tracking Felons Through the System
	Persons Under the Death Sentence, 1953-1993
	Inmates in Prison, 1970-1995
	Characteristics of Prison Inmates
	Households Reporting Victimization, 1975-1992
	Property Crimes as a Percentage of All Crimes
	Violent Crime in the U.S.
	Homicide and Young Males--Crosscultural
	Public Corruption, 1975-1991
	Arrest Rates and Age
	Crime Clock, 1993
	A Profile of Suicide
	Suicide Rates in the U.S. by Age, Sex and Race

According to lectures, account for the fact that more crimes seem to be committed by persons aged 15 to 17 than by persons in any other age group. Why is the crime rate among young females increasing more rapidly than the crime rate among young males?
What are some of the reasons why white-collar criminals are rarely caught and, if they are caught, rarely punished severely?
Account for the fact that rates of recidivism among ex-convicts are so high.
It has been suggested that many behaviors such as public drunkenness, homosexuality, possession of narcotics should be decriminalized. Choose one of these and answer the following: What would be some of the functions and dysfunctions of removing this behavior from the criminal justice system?
According to lectures, how can the U.S. most efficiently bring down the high rates of juvenile crime? How does his reasoning fit in with sociocultural materialism?
What is the underclass? How is it related to violent crime in America?
According to Conrad and Schneider (From Badness to Sickness), what is the medicalization of deviance? How has this changed the way we think about people's behavior? What are the implications of this for the study of social problems?
How is illness a social construction? Can we also say that badness is a social construction?
How can medicine be seen as an agent of social control? Should this be a matter of concern for our society?

Barak, Gregg. ed. 1991. Crimes by the Capitalist State: An Introduction to State Criminality. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Box, Steven. 1983. Power, Crime and Mystification. New York: Tavistock.

Braithwaite, John. 1984. Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Currie, Elliot. 1985. Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. New York: Pantheon Books.

Mokhiber, Russell. 1988. Corporate Crime and Violence: Big Business Power and the Abuse of the Public Trust. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Quinney, Richard. 1970. The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: Little, Brown.

Wilson, James Q. and Richard J. Hernstein. 1985. Crime and Human Nature. New York: Simon.

Wilson, William Julius. 1990. The Truly Disadvantaged : The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wilson, William Julius. 1997. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage Books.