Deck 6: Conformity, Deviance, and Crime

Question 1

Based on the recent study that investigated whether a child's propensity for aggression was linked to biological factors present at birth, with which statement would researchers most likely agree?

A) There is no such thing as a genetic predisposition.
B) There are genetic predispositions, but they have no impact on human behavior.
C) A baby with a genetic predisposition for alcoholism would not likely become a problem drinker if his or her social environment provided few opportunities to drink.
D) There is a genetic predisposition for alcoholism that will cause those with that predisposition to become alcoholics, with little regard to their environment.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

What do contemporary sociological theories about crime emphasize in their definitions of conformity and deviance?

A) Crime is a personal choice that is shaped by social context.
B) Definitions of deviance vary based on social context.
C) Crime depends on a genetic tendency toward violence.
D) Crime results from untreated mental illness.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Theorizing that terrorists have a certain personality profile is an example of which view of deviance?

A) biological view
B) psychological view
C) sociological view
D) evolutionary view

Answer 3

B

Question 4

In Robert Merton's typology, the majority of people in society are:

A) conformists.
B) innovators.
C) ritualists.
D) retreatists.

Question 5

Which researcher found that boys in the lower working class who are frustrated with their positions in life often join delinquent subcultures that reject middle-class values and replace them with norms that celebrate defiance?

A) Albert Cohen
B) Robert Merton
C) Émile Durkheim
D) Kingsley Davis

Question 6

Comparing biological and psychological approaches to criminality, a sociologist would argue that they both:

A) tend to focus more on violent crimes than any other type of crime.
B) view crime and deviance as an individual, not societal, problem.
C) are inadequate to explain deviance caused by mental illness.
D) view crime and deviance as a result of societal forces.

Question 7

What do the Heaven's Gate cult and the computer hacker community have in common?

A) Both are religious groups.
B) Both groups are considered deviant subcultures.
C) Both groups struggled financially.
D) Both groups restricted their membership to men.

Question 8

________ are norms governments define as principles that their citizens must follow; a ________ is any type of behavior that violates these norms.

A) Laws; crime
B) Informal codes; breach
C) Taboos; sin
D) Guidelines; deviation

Question 9

Which of the following statements related to the biological view of deviance is true?

A) Some of the first attempts to explain crime emphasized biological factors.
B) Cesare Lombroso's claims have been supported by a large body of subsequent research.
C) Nearly all studies claiming a relationship between body type and delinquency have used samples that are representative of the general population.
D) A correlation between body type and delinquency shows that one's body type causes criminal behavior.

Question 10

In Robert Merton's typology, drug dealers would be considered:

A) conformists.
B) innovators.
C) ritualists.
D) retreatists.

Question 11

A mode of reward or punishment that reinforces socially expected forms of behavior is called a:

A) conditioned response.
B) symbolic response.
C) sanction.
D) norm.

Question 12

Which of the following sociological theories views deviance as necessary for society and contributing to its overall stability?

A) conflict theory
B) functionalist theory
C) interactionist theory
D) control theory

Question 13

Which statement concerning deviance is true?

A) All lawbreakers are deviants.
B) Everyone participates to some degree in the creation of rules.
C) All deviant behaviors are illegal.
D) Everyone commits deviant crimes sometimes.

Question 14

The term used to describe modes of action that do not conform to the norms or values most members of a group or society hold is:

A) anomie.
B) alienation.
C) conformity.
D) deviance.

Question 15

________, a concept Émile Durkheim brought into wide usage in sociology, refers to a situation in which social norms lose their hold over individual behavior.

A) Egoism
B) Altruism
C) Fatalism
D) Anomie

Question 16

A subculture whose members hold values that differ substantially from those of the majority is called:

A) a social control group.
B) a deviant subculture.
C) a median subculture.
D) a normative subculture.

Question 17

A veteran police officer's criticism of a rookie police officer for not acting aggressively enough during an altercation with a suspect is an example of a:

A) positive formal sanction.
B) negative formal sanction.
C) positive informal sanction.
D) negative informal sanction.

Question 18

Boys who live in a disadvantaged community can become frustrated with their prospects for material success. Of the possible responses to this frustration that are listed below, which fits most closely with the work of Albert Cohen?

A) They sever ties with delinquent peers to enhance their chances of economic achievement.
B) They give up hope of achieving success but still value the idea of success.
C) They find a way to move to a different community as soon as possible.
D) They join deviant subcultures and adopt deviant norms instead of middle-class values.

Question 19

According to Robert Merton, at a time when society as a whole is becoming more affluent, why do crime rates continue to rise?

A) a sense of relative deprivation among those at the bottom
B) inadequate socialization of the poor
C) the rise of deviant subcultures
D) the ability of communities to afford more police officers

Question 20

The term that describes a rule of conduct that specifies appropriate behavior in a given range of situations is:

A) value.
B) belief.
C) sanction.
D) norm.

Question 21

Which of the following statements concerning victims and perpetrators of crime is true?

A) Men are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of crime compared with women.
B) Older people are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of crime compared with young people.
C) Whites are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of crime compared with African Americans.
D) Residents of the suburbs are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of crime compared with inner-city residents.

Question 22

Which theory proposes that we become deviant when exposed to a higher level of deviant people and influences, compared with conventional influences?

A) labeling theory
B) strain theory
C) differential association theory
D) control theory

Question 23

Joe is a straight-A student and wants to go to a four-year college after high school. When his friends encourage him to skip class and hang out with them, he refuses to do so because he doesn't want to jeopardize his GPA. This is an example of:

A) conflict theory.
B) control theory.
C) functionalist theory.
D) strain theory.

Question 24

Two groups of boys, one working class and the other middle class, engage in equal amounts of delinquent activity. The members of one group are considered "boys being boys," and the members of the other are considered "troublemakers." Which of the following theories best explains this difference?

A) strain theory
B) differential association theory
C) control theory
D) labeling theory

Question 25

Crime typically carried out by people in the more affluent sectors of society is called:

A) organized crime.
B) white-collar crime.
C) serial crime.
D) index crime.

Question 26

Conflict theorists would argue that laws:

A) are neutral.
B) are applied evenly across the population.
C) are used by the powerful to maintain their own privileged positions.
D) protect the working class from being exploited by the capitalist elite.

Question 27

According to the textbook, violent crime is more common:

A) in suburbs than in cities or small towns.
B) in small towns than in cities or suburbs.
C) today than in the early 1990s.
D) in the United States than in Switzerland.

Question 28

The National Crime Victimization Survey has found that crime rates are:

A) social constructions.
B) actually higher than those reported by official agencies.
C) actually lower than those reported by official agencies.
D) about the same as those reported by official agencies, confirming the accuracy of those reports.

Question 29

While the rate of violent crime has been declining in the United States since the 1990s, it is still relatively high in comparison to other industrialized countries. What is one reason often given to explain the relatively high violent crime rate?

A) aggressive law enforcement
B) availability of firearms
C) the stigmatization of crack among young urban dwellers
D) changes in welfare laws

Question 30

According to the textbook, why is there widespread panic about youth criminality?

A) Youthful deviants usually go on to become career criminals.
B) Young people are often taken as an indicator of the health and welfare of society.
C) Youth criminality is a direct outcome of increasing drug use.
D) Middle-class youth are the leading cause of increasing crime rates.

Question 31

According to differential association theory, who is more likely to be a delinquent?

A) a poor person whose friends do not commit crime
B) a middle-class person whose friends frequently commit crime
C) a person with high aspirations but few opportunities
D) a person with low aspirations but many opportunities

Question 32

Even though white-collar crimes may have further-reaching consequences than petty property crimes, they are often hard to prosecute and do not appear in official statistics at all. Which theoretical perspective would most likely examine this and draw a connection between criminal punishment and class?

A) labeling theory
B) functionalist theory
C) differential association theory
D) conflict theory

Question 33

Which theory views crime as the outcome of an imbalance between impulses toward criminal activity and the social or physical controls that deter it?

A) labeling theory
B) strain theory
C) differential association theory
D) control theory

Question 34

Fifteen-year-old Diego is arrested and spends thirty days in juvenile detention. He begins to see himself as a delinquent while there. When he is released, he commits more crimes. Edwin Lemert would consider the crimes Diego commits after being released:

A) primary deviance.
B) secondary deviance.
C) tertiary deviance.
D) anomic deviance.

Question 35

Which theory is closest to the arguments of Karl Marx?

A) strain theory
B) differential association theory
C) control theory
D) conflict theory

Question 36

According to the textbook, at what age is a person most likely to be arrested for a crime?

A) 13 or 14
B) 18 or 19
C) 25 or 26
D) 35 or 36

Question 37

Critics argue that one of the drawbacks of using the Uniform Crime Reports to measure crime is that:

A) the reports focus only on nonviolent "index" crimes.
B) the reports focus on embezzlement, a crime typically committed by the middle class.
C) the reports accurately reflect crime rates but do not include noncriminal deviance.
D) the reports do not accurately reflect crime rates because they include only those crimes reported to law enforcement agencies.

Question 38

From the perspective of labeling theory, deviance is seen as:

A) a process of interaction between deviants and non-deviants.
B) a set of characteristics of individuals or groups.
C) freely chosen.
D) an act that is universally wrong.

Question 39

A survey of homeless youth in Canada shows a strong correlation between hunger, lack of shelter, and unemployment, on the one hand, and theft, prostitution, and even violent crime on the other. Whose theory of delinquency best explains this relationship?

A) Howard Becker's
B) Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin's
C) Edwin H. Sutherland's
D) Travis Hirschi's

Question 40

Offenses committed by large corporations in society are called:

A) elite crime.
B) bureaucratic crime.
C) corporate crime.
D) crime syndicate.

Question 41

A food manufacturer puts false nutrition information on its product labels. This is an example of:

A) organized crime.
B) white-collar crime.
C) corporate crime.
D) networked crime.

Question 42

An experiment by sociologist Devah Pager showed that when applying for jobs, a black man with no criminal history had the same success as:

A) a white man with a felony conviction.
B) a white man with no criminal history.
C) a black man with a felony conviction.
D) a white man with no work experience.

Question 43

The New Jim Crow argues that a caste system that disproportionately disadvantages African Americans has been created by:

A) mass incarceration.
B) rising poverty rates.
C) housing discrimination.
D) increased crime among African American youth.

Question 44

According to the textbook, the prison population has grown so much that what is being done to accommodate it?

A) Inmates are being kept in prison longer to avoid future recidivism costs.
B) The building and administration of prisons has become partially privatized.
C) The maintenance of federal prisons is being passed on to the states.
D) Inmates are being transferred from prisons to local jails.

Question 45

According to the textbook, police work traditionally consisted of controlling crime. Increasingly, however, police officers are more accurately described as:

A) deviants who are committing rather than preventing crime.
B) corrections officers who are herding criminals to prison.
C) knowledge workers who are mapping, predicting, and reporting on risk within the population.
D) safety patrollers who are guarding the health and welfare of citizens.

Question 46

Which of the following countries has the highest incarceration rate?

A) China
B) Japan
C) France
D) United States

Question 47

Which of the following is an example of the organized crime Manuel Castells described?

A) Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme
B) heroin networks that stretch across Asia
C) prison gangs
D) inner-city youth gangs

Question 48

Forms of activity that have some of the characteristics of orthodox businesses but are illegal are called:

A) white-collar crime.
B) corporate crime.
C) index crime.
D) organized crime.

Question 49

A renewed emphasis on crime prevention rather than law enforcement to reintegrate policing within the community is called:

A) organized policing.
B) corporate policing.
C) community policing.
D) target hardening.

Question 50

In Punished, what does Victor Rios note about policies like "stop and frisk"?

A) They catch the most violent criminals, leaving their neighborhoods much safer.
B) They compromise the relationships young Latino and African American men have with teachers, neighbors, and authority figures.
C) They create advantages for young Latino and African American men by keeping them motivated to avoid drugs and other criminal activities.
D) Having regular interactions with policemen and authority figures helps young people feel safe.

Question 51

Which theory served as the basis for new policing strategies in the late 1980s and 1990s that aggressively focused on minor crimes such as traffic violations and drinking or using drugs in public?

A) control theory
B) broken windows theory
C) conflict theory
D) differential association theory

Question 52

Putting locks on mailboxes is an example of:

A) deviance control.
B) differential control.
C) New Left realism.
D) target hardening.

Question 53

Which theory best explains why a neighborhood that had only minor problems, such as abandoned cars and graffiti, began to see an increase in other more serious types of property crime?

A) control theory
B) broken windows theory
C) conflict theory
D) differential association theory

Question 54

Which of the following statements concerning beliefs about capital punishment is true?

A) The United States is the only liberal democratic nation in which the majority of citizens support capital punishment.
B) The majority of citizens in the United States and in many European nations support capital punishment.
C) The United States is the only liberal democratic nation in which the majority of citizens oppose capital punishment.
D) The majority of citizens in the United States and in many European nations oppose capital punishment.

Question 55

The term that describes practical measures used to limit a criminal's ability to commit crime is:

A) deviance control.
B) differential associating.
C) broken windows fixing.
D) target hardening.

Question 56

When laws allowing capital punishment are compared internationally, we can see that:

A) the United States is one of the few Western countries that still legally permits this practice.
B) the majority of Western countries permit capital punishment.
C) neither the United States nor most other Western countries legally permit this practice.
D) most Western countries except the United States legally permit this practice.

Question 57

Which of the following best illustrates community policing?

A) severely punishing even minor crimes, such as public drunkenness
B) local organizations, government agencies, and businesses working together
C) the installation of burglar alarms
D) communal public shaming of offenders

Question 58

Which of the following best describes Americans' beliefs about capital punishment?

A) The majority of Americans have always supported capital punishment.
B) The majority of Americans have always opposed capital punishment.
C) The majority of adults supported capital punishment in 2012.
D) Most adults supported capital punishment in 1965.

Question 59

According to the textbook, a key reason that New York's "stop and frisk" policy was banned by a federal judge was that:

A) it was not being applied in the high crime neighborhoods for which it was intended.
B) it was most often applied only to young men and was determined to be ageist.
C) it was costing the city too much revenue in law suits.
D) it violated citizens' rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Question 60

According to Michelle Alexander, understanding mass incarceration requires understanding that:

A) African American inmates are treated worse than other inmates.
B) people who are considered criminal are marginalized by the justice system and other policies and practices.
C) the prison population cannot re-enter society and must remain incarcerated for its own well-being.
D) the prison population is overcrowded and creates long-term stress responses.

Question 61

In three to five sentences, explain how deviance is functional and draw on at least two specific examples to illustrate your argument.

Question 62

Assessing the overall impact of crime and incarceration in the United States, we can draw which of the following conclusions?

A) The number of people behind bars has decreased in the past decade.
B) The cost of the criminal justice system is increasing.
C) Few of us are affected by the high cost of crime.
D) State governments are doing a good job of ensuring that prisons are adequately staffed and resourced.

Question 63

Why have efforts to significantly decrease the supply of illegal drugs in the United States failed?

Question 64

Compare and contrast labeling theory with the new criminology perspective. Which theory do you think better explains crime? Please explain your answer in three to five sentences.

Question 65

In two to three sentences, apply control theory to explain why people in their late teens are more likely to commit crime than older people.

Question 66

Describe a real or hypothetical scenario in which a "stop and frisk" approach is taken by police, including an account of the characteristics detainees are likely to have, according to your textbook. Apply this scenario to a brief discussion of Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow and Victor Rios's book Punished to examine why this policy has been so controversial.

Question 67

How might shaming work to rehabilitate an offender?

A) It locks the offender in a permanent state of shame.
B) It lets the offender deny any wrongdoing.
C) It processes the shame in the offender in such a way that social bonds between the offender and the community can be rebuilt.
D) It processes the shame in the offender such that he or she will be much more fearful of committing another crime.

Question 68

What is the biological view of deviance? What are some of the weaknesses of this approach? Please explain in three to four sentences.

Question 69

Compare and contrast differential association theory with control theory. Which theory do you think better explains crime? Please explain your answers in three to five sentences.

Question 70

A way of punishing criminal and deviant behavior based on rituals of public disapproval rather than incarceration is called:

A) deviance control.
B) differential control.
C) target hardening.
D) Shaming.

Question 71

In three to five sentences, explain how Robert Merton understood crime. How would Merton's strain theory explain the crimes committed in the inner city?

Question 72

How is it possible that a person can be both a conformist and a deviant? Please explain your answer in two to three sentences.

Question 73

Compare the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) with victimization surveys, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Which method gives a better indication of the level of crime in the United States? Please explain in three to five sentences.