Watergate events and issues 3. Social and political responses I. Corruption of the Nixon administration A. Richard Nixon reclaims presidency B. Actions within the Watergate scandal II. Rise of the media for political propaganda A.
Examining realist theories Using material from item A and elsewhere assess the value of the right realist approach to crime and deviance (21) Right realism is a conservative and extreme functionalist view of crime. They see it as a growing problem that destroys societies. Sociologists such as James Q Wilson have stressed the point that it cannot be tolerated. The right realist views closely correspond with those of the neo-conservative views in the 70s and 80s. They both argue that ‘nothing works’ right realists are more concerned with solving crime rather than understanding the causes.
According to Packers theory, the crime control model also leans more toward the idea that the costs associated with providing criminals “rights” are wasteful and would be better applied towards building new prisons and hiring more police officers (Packer, 1968). Under the due process model, law enforcement roles are dramatically reduced as this model leans more towards the constitutional rights of criminals and reduces the amount of officers in a given area. The attention here is put towards spending the money to rehabilitate the offenders instead of towards the hiring of more officers and building more prisons. What roles do the prosecutor and courts play? The crime control model is thought of as the “conveyor belt” of justice.
Determinate sentences involve sentences that have a fixed or flat time (Jirard, 2009). Determinate sentences play a large part in the increasing number of individuals in prison, which, as you can imagine, puts more strain on prisons financially. In the past two decades, we have become increasingly “tough on crime” which has helped to decrease crime to a certain extent. According to an article in the New York Times (2008), the US has fewer than five percent of the entire world’s population, but almost twenty five percent of the world’s prisoners (Liptak & , 2008). The author of the article goes on to say that people in the US are sentenced to do time for crimes that would not produce such a sentence in other countries.
Outline and evaluate marxist explanations of crime (45) The Marxist theory in general splits society in half, the rich and the poor. With the poor being exploited by the rich. This theory appears to be the basis for all Marxist perspective including the Marxist explanations of crime and deviance. Karl Marx stated that crime was the product of poverty and the traditional Marxist view regarding the cause of crime amongst the working classes is competition and the desire to become wealthy and live a middle class life. The working class want the ‘things’ that they see the middle classes with but they can't afford them so they resort to crimes such as stealing as a means of getting what they want.
Using material from item A and elsewhere, assess different Marxist views of the relationship between crime and social class. (21) The traditional Marxists believe that the main cause of crime is the capitalist society. They believe that crime is inevitable because capitalism is criminogenic, by it’s very nature it causes crime. David Gordon argues that crime is a rational response to the capitalist system and hence it is found in all social classes, even thought the statistics make it seem to be a largely working class phenomenon,. Poverty may mean that crime is the only way that the working class can survive, as crime may e the only way that they can obtain the consumer goods encouraged by the capitalist advertising, resulting in utilitarian crimes such as theft.
Burglaries ended 10,969 cases in 2009. When one crime rate seems to go down just a little another one reaches high rates. Thefts had 37,941 cases in 2009. The percentage was too high of unsolved crimes. http://www.usa.com/philadelphia-pa-crime-and-crime-rate.htm When will these crimes decrease, where the residents will feel safe again?
Marxist theory provides an explanation of how crime is dealt with in society, in order to maintain the status quo. Capitalist plays a big part in this, as they divert attention of the masses away from the try causes of their situation and the criminal justice system helps capitalist play on this as society sees young, working class black/white males as the criminal groups. Moral panic occurs in society when, once again, the upper class journalists write only cases where black youths have ‘mugged’ a white upper class person and that the fact they are wearing a ‘hoody’ shows they are lower class and looking for trouble. People in society will watch the news and read newspapers
The origin of social disorganization theory can be traced to the work of Shaw and McKay, who concluded that disorganized areas marked by divergent values and transitional populations produce criminality. Strain theories view crime as resulting from the anger people experience over their inability to achieve legitimate social and economic success. These theories hold that most people share common values and beliefs but the ability to achieve them is differentiated throughout the social structure. The best known strain theory is Merton's, which describes what happens when people have inadequate means to satisfy their needs. Cultural deviance theories hold that a unique value system develops in lower class areas.
In addition, it is believed that as many as half of all burglaries go unreported, which might account for the low clearance average clearance rate of 14 % in the U.S. A significant factor related to the low clearance rate is that about 65 percent of residential burglaries investigated do not produce enough evidence or information about the crime, therefore making it one of the most difficult crimes to solve (Weisel, 2004, p. 1). The official rate of residential burglary, as measured by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Burglary rates increased in the United