Clara,+Laura


 * Who is **guilty**? This is a very complex question which requires a complex answer.

//Guilt is a socially defined concept, there is no such thing as black and white guilt. Yet sometimes a doctor will help a patient die. Therefor is all about socially defined guilt.//

Showing a sense of guilt //-// __But why are guilty criminals conviced they are right?__ __Definitions__
 * Guilty:** responsible for or chargeable with a reprehensible act; or marked by guilt
 * Crime:** the breaking of rules that have been made into laws by the rulers or government of a society.
 * Deviance:** behaviour that most or all people disaprove of in the society. Such beahviour will not conform to the society's norms and values.
 * Norms:** unwritten rules for behaviour.
 * Delinquency:** behavious by young people that is disapproved of. Mostly it is deviant, but sometimes delinquents break laws as well, and this becomes commiting a crime.
 * Rules:** Norms that are often written down and tell people how to behave in many different situations.
 * Victim survey:** Asking a representative sample of people what crimes they have been a victim of.
 * Dark figure:** unrecorded crimes. the dark figure is several times larger than the recorded crime figured.
 * Self report study:** asking opeople what crimes they have commited

__Varaibles of guilt__ -age -gender -ethnic minority -biological/psychological -background


 * 1) Age: []

crime: more shops, offices, businesses, cars, houses etc. of 21 / 22 than working class youth. excitement as well as money. Opportunity possibility of jail time becomes a relatively more-serious matter because of the impact it will have on the perpetrators life and responsibilities. opportunities for these crimes. partner for example) which makes them consider the effect their behaviour might have on people they love / value. have to consider others. usually fairly low-level and do not involve having authority over others. They are more likely to be managed at work rather than being a manager.
 * More young people (aged 14 – 25 – the peak ages for criminal activity) live in urban areas which provides more opportunities for
 * Fewer opportunities for serious work-related crimes because young are rarely in positions of authority.
 * More opportunities for work-related crime for older people.
 * Middle and upper class youth have fewer opportunities for crime because they are more-likely to be in full-time education up to age
 * Working class youth more-likely to be in low-paid, low skill work (or unemployed). Criminal behaviour may be used as a source of
 * Women will have fewer opportunities to commit crimes if they have a home / children to look after.
 * After age 25 we see a steep drop in criminal activity as people take-on new roles such as wage-earner, parent, spouse etc. The
 * Given that the vast majority of crime is relatively petty, older people may cease to follow a lifestyle (clubbing…) that gives them
 * As people get older they take-on more personal responsibilities (work / career for example) and social responsibilities (children or a
 * Lack of responsibilities might also lead to the opposite happening – more crime being committed because the perpetrator doesn’t
 * Young people are rarely in a position to commit major work-related crimes (such as computer fraud) because their work roles are
 * The lifestyles of the middle-aged and the elderly may be more-focused on the home (watching TV…) than outside the home.

2. Gender: []

 Gender is the single best predictor of criminal behavior: men commit more crime, and women commit less. This distinction holds throughout history, for all societies, for all groups, and for nearly every crime category. The universality of this fact is really quite remarkable, even though many tend to take it for granted. Most efforts to understand crime have focused on male crime, since men have greater involvement in criminal behavior. Yet it is equally important to understand female crime. For example, learning why women commit less crime than men can help illuminate the underlying causes of crime and how it might better be controlled.

Read more: [|Gender and Crime - Similarities In Male And Female Offending Rates And Patterns, Differences Between Male And Female Offending Patterns] [] Explanations for Patterns of Crime: Gender (violence by females tends to occur within the family, mainly as a final response to male violence), they are involved in a wide crosssection of crime. I n terms of the ratio of conviction between females and males, where women have similar opportunities for criminal behaviour in relation to males, their respective patterns of crimes appear to be broadly similar: For example, where female crime most-closely approximates to male crime is in relation to shop-lifting and it's no coincidence that in this area of their social lives women have similar opportunities for crime to men. laws'' For example, burglary is predominantly a male crime and one way of explaining the difference is that this type of crime tends to be a relatively solitary pursuit that takes place late at night. A female alone late at night is both more-likely to:
 * Female involvement in criminal activity is not restricted to a few areas. While females do not tend to commit crimes of violence
 * Therefore, while, in theory, women have similar opportunities as men to commit crime these may be limited by other factors
 * Marsh ("Sociology In Focus: Crime", 1986): "In areas where females have similar opportunities to men they appear as likely to break

and / or
 * Attract attention **
 * Involve some degree of personal danger **

Women tend to occupy less powerful positions within an organisation. They are more-likely to be subject to close supervision, have less opportunity for acting on their own initiative, unsupervised and so forth. Hence, they generally have less opportunity for committing "white-collar" crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, etc.
 * Employment related crime: Fewer women than men work, therefore, less opportunity exists.
 * Women are more-likely than men

3. Ethnicity Link from IGCSE coursework: [] []

Ethnic minorities are more likely to be victims of crimes and serious threats than whites. type of area they live in. police; and in some cases they are actually more likely to do so. However, minority victims are much less satisfied with the police response. incidents in the preceding year was four per cent for Afro-Caribbeans, five per cent for Indians and eight per cent for Pakistanis. to 70% in the case of threats. The average figure for Indians was lower, at just under a fifth; for Racially motivated incidents are more likely to be reported to the police by Indians than other types of crime; but both Afro-Caribbeans and Pakistanis are less inclined to report these incidents. report than with the police response to other types of crimes and threats. other relevant factors.
 * The main reasons for this are their age structure, their socio-economic characteristics and the
 * In general, minority victims in all groups are no less likely than whites to report offences to the
 * The proportion of // all // minority respondents in the BCS who had been victims of racially motivated
 * Nearly a third of Pakistani victims said that incidents were racially motivated and this rose
 * Afro-Caribbean victims it was 14%.
 * Victims are even less satisfied with the police response to the racial incidents they
 * Fear of crime is higher among the Asian groups than whites even when allowance is made for
 * In areas where racial attacks are // perceived // as a problem, both minority and white respondents tend to have higher levels of fear of crime.

4. Biological reasons Link from [] and info from __Active Sociology for CGSE__ text book.

Cesare Lombroso: italian doctor that believed that criminals had distinctive physical features. It was possible to tell who was a criminal by looking at the person. Some of the physical features were: large jaws, large ears, dark skin, flat nostrils, thick hair... (all of these seem similar to a black/coloured/dark-skinned person- theory linked to racism!). He also proclaimed they had the inability to blush and possesed insensitivity to pain. Non-europeans are most likely to be criminals.

Genetic explanations claim that individual can inherit genes that predispose them. However, this theory is then stating that a person who commits crime is not entirely guilty for commiting the crime- they were kind of 'set up' to do it. 

5. Psychological reasons Info from __Active Sociology for GCSE__ text book. They explain crime by the criminal's personalty and mental stability. Hans Eysenck believed that there are two basic types of personality: based on this, extroverts are more likely to be criminals
 * introverts: shy and quiet
 * extroverts: confident and outgoing

of a law as a means of enforcing the law.
 * Sanction definition:** the detriment, loss of reward, or coercive intervention annexed to a violati

For crime, sanctions can range from prison sentences to death.