Tagged: deviance

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

The Rise of Police Body Cameras

Police departments across the country are rapidly increasing their technological capacity to become a more efficient and effective force. These technologies vary from new weapons, wide-area surveillance, facial recognition software, closed caption television cameras, and crime mapping software. Each of these technologies is oriented towards identifying offenders and preventing or intervening in crime incidents. The technology has become a multi-billion dollar industry with vendors regularly contacting departments attempting to sell them the next great technology. One technology becoming increasingly popular...

Class & Stratification / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

The School-to-Prison Pipeline and the Minority Educational Gap

In a recent Sociology Lens post, Markus Gerke detailed the problem associated with President Obama’s rhetoric of individual responsibility for increasing opportunities for Latino and Black men. One component to President Obama’s initiative is to increase educational opportunities for these populations and Gerke correctly notes that the focus on individual responsibility ignores the structural barriers that limit these populations. Research suggests that a major factor in the educational achievement gap is the presence of the school-to-prison pipeline and the punishment...

Sociology of Culture

Fear: What is it good for?

November is here, which means the season of ghosts and goblins has come to pass. As an enthusiast of all-things-haunted, I filled the month of October with scary movie nights, Halloween costume parties, visits to a haunted house and Phantom Fright Nights at my local amusement park, and even an outing that involved shooting paintballs at zombies. As any good graduate student in the social sciences might do, I pondered the sociological aspects of these activities throughout the month. What...

Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Rising to the Challenge: Prisoner Reintegration

In recent years, there has been a push for research to focus on prisoner reintegration. In response, researchers have begun investigating a number of important topics such as how to use theory to inform policy and practice, how to determine which prison programs work best to aid in reintegration, how to minimize the impact children face from having an incarcerated parent, how to acknowledge the important link that exists between sentencing and release, and how to take a holistic yet...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Neoliberalism, Anomie, and Interpersonal Violence: Normlessness Leads to Criminality?

As discussed in neoliberalism and its consequences, increasingly, there appears to be a connection between neoliberalism and the development of anomie. Such an association is unsurprising considering that neoliberalism encourages individuals to achieve ever greater success even though such a goal is unrealistic. In response to being blocked from realizing their never-ending aspirations, Merton (1968) argues that people in success-driven societies will feel deprived and frustrated as a divide forms between idealistic ambitions and factual reality. While such a divide has...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Embracing Civility or Intensifying Deviance….A Dialectic?

As prior posts may express, my attention has been gripped by the motivations and experiences of those engaged in deviant activity. More specifically, it is not major crimes under consideration but rather the marginal acts of expression and resistance – tagging, unsanctioned extreme sports, controversial fashions, and the like. While trying to empathetically understand the ‘deviant’ perspective, it seems this perspective is often dismissed as delinquent and nothing more, void of any further value. As scholars have often noted, this...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

The Legitimation of Deviance: Examining the Role of the State

Knee deep in studying for comprehensive exams, the literature has drawn my attention toward (1) how an illegal activity can have a legal counterpart, and (2) how a deviant activity becomes socially acceptable and celebrated within mainstream culture. As examples, there is skydiving and its illegal counterpart of base jumping; wall murals and their illicit sibling of extravagant graffiti; or the ‘world’s fastest growing sport’ of MMA versus the back-yard-brawls caught on tape. While the actual activity performed for each...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Contradictory Trends Influencing School Operations: A Case of Cell Phones

In 2010, MSNBC published an article written by Alex Johnson entitled “Some schools rethink bans on cell phones: Bans don’t work, so administrators explore using mobile devices”. In the report, Johnson notes that 100 plus students were suspended – not for cheating, smoking, or bullying – but for having cell phones. While presented here as merely an anecdote, there can little doubt that the use of cell phones, and mobile technology more generally, is an issue that has caught the...

Science & Technology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Illness or Deviance: A Contested Space Between Criminal Justice and Medicine

Foucault wrote that the nineteenth century ushered in a new way to inspect the body; recognizing that medical personnel had placed the patient under “perpetual examination” (1975). His interest, however, was on the discourse that produced, maintained, and extended the medical look or “gaze” (1975). The “clinic,” for Foucault, became an apparatus of examination; a site of knowledge production bound by rules and regulations. It became an authoritative institution where the individual became the object of scrutiny (Long, 1992). Following...

Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Video Abstract

First Video Abstract Available! – “Isn’t Every Crime a Hate Crime?: The Case for Hate Crime Laws”

Isn’t Every Crime a Hate Crime?: The Case for Hate Crime Laws Randy Blazak VIDEO ABSTRACT: ARTICLE ABSTRACT: The process to create hate crime laws in the United States has wrestled with the core issues of freedom of speech and greater harm. This article looks at the evolution of bias crime laws, culminating with President Obama’s signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. The constitutionality of the laws is ‘discussed and suggestions...

Science & Technology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

NHS Heroin: A “Cure” for Crime?

The General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing [RCN], Peter Carter, has called for the prescription of the (currently illegal) drug heroin to be prescribed on the National Health Service [NHS]. Although, not the first to suggest this radical approach to problematic drug (mis)use, his intervention at this particular juncture raises questions. Given the upcoming UK General Election (6 May 2010), as well as the recent controversies surrounding the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [ACMD], Carter’s comments appear...

Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Sex Offender Rehabilitation via Friendship

Bob Howard of the BBC has recently published an article looking at a scheme to combat sex offender recidivism. Originating in Canada, friendship circles are ‘based on the premise that while some offenders have friends and family to return to when they come out of prison, others have not and the more isolated they are, the more likely they are to re-offend’. Throughout the article, Sarah from London talks about her experiences as a volunteer for the child protection charity...

Science & Technology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

“Free” Heroin on the NHS

by paulabowles The links between illegal drug use and crime, particularly acquisitive, have long been recognised as problematic. Recent statistics published in The Independent suggest that as few as ten percent of addicts commit 75 percent of all acquisitive crime. In spite of these consistently dispiriting figures, the familiar approach is one of punishment, with some attempt at rehabilitation. Moreover, all of these programmes have at their foundations an aim to ensure their clients maintain complete desistance from drug use....

Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

“It's time to get liberal – or get mugged”

by paulabowles Johann Hari’s recent article in the Independent focuses on the ‘credit crunch’ and crime, in the UK. He states that ‘[i]t is an iron law of sociology that when the economy falls, crime spikes.’ However, Hari is keen to put forward three ideas for tackling crime. In brief these are: • Move all mentally ill prisoners to hospital where they can be treated appropriately • Stop trying to enforce a policy of abstinence for users of illegal drugs...