Perspectives of Social Problems and Social Responsibility Within criminology there has been multiple theories suggested to explain the numerous motives behind why crime exists in our world. The two most central arguments surrounding criminal activity is whether the crime is the individuals fault, or if it is the fault of the society that they grew up in. These views are termed social responsibility and social problems, and will be discussed in this paper along with their respected perspectives that withhold why their view on criminology is the paramount reason on why criminals commit crimes. The view of social responsibilities approach to crime termed by Schmalleger essentially states that crime is an individual responsibility, and in terms of the criminal, victim, and justice system we all play a role within the social aspect of criminal behavior. Although he feels that this way of looking at crime is not fair to the victim or the justice system, but that the media over the years has influenced this way of thinking, giving the conception that certain conditions surrounding when, where, or how the crime took place may be the factor in why it happened in the first place.
A good term for this is called “Social Desirability Bias” which means that you reply in a manner that is socially acceptable and desirable. The main purpose of this study is to allow the participants to describe the crimes in their own words instead of implying from observing participants. Honesty in these self-report studies help many different groups to better understand crime and criminal behavior. They use these reports to gather information to put them into statistics. The reports that are used are collected from the NIBRS (National Incident-Based Reporting System) and NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) and published by FBI in their yearly UCR ( Uniform Crime Report.)
The problem for any society is that these boundaries are unclear and change over time. While a certain, limited amount of crime may perform positive functions for society, according to Durkheim, too much crime has negative consequences. His most well known concept was that of 'anomie', which has been widely used in sociology. According to Durkheim, society is based on people sharing common values which form the basis for actions. However, in periods of social change, people may be freed from the social control by collective conscience and start to look after their own self need rather than following social values.
Another factor is that it depends on how attractive the target is in that how much will the individual gain from committing the crime or how easily the crime can be implemented such as robbing from a bank will have a high risk factor. Cohen and Felson support these theories through their own on routine activities as offenders and victims are more likely to coincide in certain ways and where there is little formal or informal social control on preventing the crime from happening. As crimes are more likely to happen when there is no ‘guardian’ e.g. police, and at specific times and places e.g. mugging someone returning from work due to the offender having knowledge of their routine walk home.
This theory is also sociological in its emphasis on the role of social forces in creating deviance. Deviant behavior can consist of different definitions. Some believe that deviance is the violation of any social norm and other feel that you can be deviant without breaking any rules or behavior that does not conform to a social norm which may be disapproved. Some people feel that getting away with something and not being punished will be an excuse for deviants to continue to commit a crime. In other words, I think that people feel that if they get away with it once they can get away with it again.
These theories are different in determining factors that cause criminal behavior. The theories have played a role in different policies we have in place in the criminal justice system. I will explain the three theories of social structure before going into how they play a role in pelican bay state prison; war zone. Social disorganization theory which depicts social change, social conflict, and lack of social consensus as the root causes of crime and deviance (Schmalleger, 2012). This theory focuses on the lack of social control, gang activity, disadvantaged neighborhoods and the many conflicting social values as factors that cause people to commit crime.
When a crime has been reported into the system it is very difficult to try and take the data out; as a result, sometimes crimes do not get reported. Clearance rates are calculated by separating the number of crimes cleared by the number of crimes reported. These calculations are used by law enforcement groups as a measure of crime activity solved by the police. Crime rate is the percentage of crime in an area to the population of the area. Clearance rates are numbers of cases cleared or closed, crimes are also considered cleared or closed.
This information also shows where and when individuals are most likely to become victimized. Victim surveys also provide more detailed information on crime events than did national data systems based on police records. These surveys would ask respondents to provide information on themselves, the offenders, the nature of the crime, and the context in which it occurred. While this type of information may have been available in local police files, it was not assembled nationally by agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in a form that allowed easy access. Moreover, the detail available in police files varied substantially, depending on the willingness of police officers to ask victims systematically for the specifics of crime events.
From the nineteenth century to the twentieth century practitioners and scholars used the assumption that the true measure of crime in society was judicial statistics. In addition, there are some drawbacks to using arrest to measure crime. This is because it does not reflect numbers of people who could have been arrested more than once in the same year. Of course with crime
Although this might be true, reporting the crime gives the police the opportunity to figure out what areas need more patrolling. Reporting the crimes also help the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to create a data base for all crimes reported within the United States. The information collected