Deck 6: Deviance and Crime

Question 1

Why does the crime rate fluctuate in the United States? How might we use sociology to explain the fact that the crime rate has not increased dramatically even in the recession and slow economic recovery?

Answer 1

Crime rate of a nation is the ratio of crimes in the country to the population of country, usually expressed per 1000 or per million populations per year.
There are two ways to list the crimes of a region in the United States.
• One is the data of the reported crimes that are included in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) publishd by the department of Justice. Each year crimes of a particular nature increase or decrease, depending on various factors such as changes in classifications of the crime, interpretations of the police records, number of completed trials, etc.
• Second source of information is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) which is initiated by the Department of justice to survey 76,000 randomly selected households in the US. The households are surveyed to identify whether they have been affected by any of crime.
Both these sources of crime statistics put together report differences in crime rates for each category of crime per year. Often the figures vary for each category of crime year to year.

Question 2

Should so-called victimless crimes, such as prostitution and recreational drug use, be decriminalized? Do these crimes harm society?

Answer 2

A victimless crime is an action of an individual or a group that is illegal. But do not violate the rights of another individual. For example, drug use, gambling, excessive drinking, etc. are considered as crimes in certain contexts, but they do not harm other citizens.
Decriminalization or legalization of activities such as recreational drug use, indulgence in erotic events, etc. depends on the national policies, nature of the population, opinions of the people engaged in the activities, etc.
Whether victimless crimes harm the society or not is a matter of opinion and the ability of sociological imagination.
One of the victimless crimes, i.e. Prostitution can be interpreted as an economic activity where a set of consenting adults participate. Probably, legalization of prostitution can result in empowerment of women, and help them to uplift themselves in a dignified way.
Though, prostitution does not apparently and directly harm any individual, it has gradual injurious effect on the victim, and may attract and corrupt the youth through overindulgence.

Question 3

As a sociologist armed with a sociological imagination, how would you propose to deal with the problem of crime in the United States and around the world?

Answer 3

There are many theories and reasons to explain the occurrence of the crime. Some of the prominent ones are Strain theory, Opportunity theory, Feminist approach, Theory of Differential association, Labeling theory, etc. One common thread that is running in all the approaches is that deviant people are deprived, underprivileged and share different living conditions. Crime need to be prevented at root cause level rather than punish the deviants.
Some of the measures that can help in reducing and preventing crimes are listed below.
• Engage the deviant or likely-to-be deviant people in moral discussions
• Facilitate dialogues between victims and the criminals in safe environments
• Provide education and counseling to both victims and the offenders
• Identify early the deviant tendency and take the remedial action
• Encourage disconnected communities to participate in mainstream economic activities
• Avoid labeling the communities and individuals as deviants
• Empower the communities and reduce power imbalances among them
These positive measures are likely to reduce the imbalances in resource sharing, communications and power structures among individuals and communities.