AQA CRIME AND DEVIANCE
Crime and Deviance
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- Created by: Raj
- Created on: 10-06-09 20:08
Identify and briefly explain one advantage and one
Advantages
- Researcher does not have to pretend to be .one of the gang.
- More ethical
- Less risk of going native
- Easier to get out at end of research.
Disadvantages
- More difficult to gain access to deviant groups
- Researcher cannot become fully part of the deviant group
- Group is more likely to conceal information
- Lower validity than covert PO.
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Identify and briefly explain one advantage and one
Advantages
- Researcher does not have to pretend to be .one of the gang.: this may be difficult as the researcher may lack the specialist knowledge/skills needed to play the role convincingly.
- More ethical: researcher is not compromised by having to participate in deviant or illegal acts, or by deceiving those being studied.
- Less risk of going native: by being less involved, researcher can avoid becoming over-sympathetic to deviant behaviour and producing a romanticised account of wrongdoing.
- Easier to get out at end of research: deviant groups may expect a high degree of commitment from members and may prevent them leaving, but the overt researcher was never a member and so can leave with less difficulty than a covert member.
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Disadvantages
- More difficult to gain access to deviant groups: because they are likely to be secretive and suspicious/untrusting of .respectable. outsiders such as sociologists.
- Researcher cannot become fully part of the deviant group: eg can.t participate in illegal activities, so can.t truly see things from their .underdog. perspective or obtain such a valid account.
- Group is more likely to conceal information: eg because members fear the negative consequences of exposure.
3 of 10
Identify and briefly explain two ways in which kno
Two marks for each of two appropriate ways identified from one area, such as:
- matrifocal families may fail to socialise boys appropriately, resulting in delinquency
- domestic violence
- mass media may produce .copy-cat. deviant behaviour in audiences
- teachers. negative labelling of pupils as deviant
- educational failure as a cause of crime
- religious movements may reject mainstream norms and values
- internationalisation of crime.
4 of 10
Identify and briefly explain two problems of using
Two marks for each of two appropriate problems identified, such as:
- They may lack detail about the deceased that the sociologist considers important;
- Not all instances of suicide may have been recorded;
- Incorrect categorisation of cases;
- Suicide statistics are a social construct;
- The official definition of suicide may differ from that of the sociologist;
- Some states may not have collected suicide statistics.
5 of 10
Two further marks for each of these satisfactorily explained, such as:
- Matrifocal families may fail to socialise boys appropriately, resulting in delinquency. In the absence of a father, boys lack a normative role model and turn instead to deviant ones.
- Mass media representations of deviance may produce .copy-cat. behaviour in audiences, eg by rewarding such behaviour or by repeated exposure/drip effect producing its normalisation.
- Teachers. negative labelling of pupils as deviant may produce a self-fulfilling prophecy in which pupils. behaviour becomes increasingly deviant, eg through disruption in class, truancy etc.
- Religious movements may reject mainstream norms and values and require their members to behave in ways that wider society regards as deviant or illegal, eg practising polygamy.
6 of 10
Identify and briefly explain two criticisms made o
Two marks for each of two appropriate criticisms, such as:
- It ignores non-utilitarian crime;
- It ignores collective deviance;
- It ignores law-making;
- It wrongly assumes value consensus;
- It takes official statistics for granted;
- It ignores actors. capacity to choose.
Two further marks for each of these satisfactorily explained, such as:
- It ignores non-utilitarian crime: because it sees crime as motivated only by the desire for money success, it fails to explain crimes such as vandalism, violence etc;
- It ignores collective deviance: it fails to see that some deviance is the product of subcultural norms and values, not just individuals striving to achieve societal goals;
- It ignores law-making: by focusing simply on who breaks the law, it fails to consider who makes the law and who benefits from it.
7 of 10
Identify and briefly explain one advantage and one
Advantages:
- gives insight into motivations and causes of crime;
- provides a corrective to, or more valid picture than, official statistics.
Disadvantages:
- respondents lying about offences committed;
- not all offences are included in the questions;
- correctives to official crime statistics may not be generalisable.
8 of 10
Two further marks for each of these satisfactorily explained, such as:
- They may lack detail about the deceased that the sociologist considers important: eg Durkheim found that some French suicide statistics did not record the religion of the deceased, which was of importance to his hypothesis about the causes of suicide;
- Not all instances of suicide may have been recorded: eg an attempted suicide may not come to the attention of officials because the individual survives without official intervention. Other suicides may never be discovered because the body is not found;
- Incorrect categorisation of cases: eg a coroner may categorise a suicide as misadventure to spare the feelings of relatives;
- Suicide statistics are a social construct: they do not represent objective reality or the real rate of suicide, but merely the number of deaths labelled as such by social actors.
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Two further marks for each of these satisfactorily explained, such as:
Advantages:
- Gives insight into motivations and causes of crime: self-report studies allow researchers to ask questions about motives for and attitudes to offending as well as about the offences themselves.
Disadvantages:
- Respondents lying about offences committed: eg some may exaggerate the number of offences committed so as to look .tough.; others may conceal out of shame etc.
- Not all offences are included in the questions: researchers decide what to include, and in so doing limit the number of offences the respondent can report.
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