Social Problems
• What is Sociology?
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions--Paradigms
Dualistic Nature--Subjective/Objective
• What is a Sociologist?
Peter Berger’s Invitation to Sociology
Social Problems
• What is the Sociological Perspective?
Personal Experience as a Way of
Understanding the World
1. No Knowledge of other
Cultures/societies
2. Masks Larger Social Patterns
3. Accept Errors of Fact
Social Problems
• Leon Festinger’s “Need to Know”
Typifications
Fritz Heider’s “Naïve Psychology”
• People fall victim to their own attitudes and
perceptions, which are based on personal
experience
Social Problems
• C. Wright Mills’s “Personal Troubles vs.
Public Issues
• What is the Sociological Perspective?
1) Removes us from the Familiar
2) Forces us to Critically Examine
Phenomenon
3) Conscious Effort to Question the
Obvious
Social Problems
• What is a Social Problem?
Elements:
1) Influential Group Defines a Social
Condition as Threatening its Values
2) When Condition Affects a Large # of
People
3) When the Condition can be Remedied
by Collective Action
Social Problems
• Life Cycle of a Social Problem
1) Defining a Social Problem: Moral
Entrepreneurs
2) Transformation into a Public Issue
3) Debating Causes and Solutions
Personal Attribution
Systemic Attribution
Social Problems
4) Role of Power
• Main Perspectives in Sociology
Structural Functionalism
Conflict
Symbolic Interactionism
Crime as a Social Problem
• Why is Crime Bad?
Harm
Costs
• The Social Distortion of Crime
James Q. Wilson’s Crime as Box Scores
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Crime as a Social Problem
3. Credit Cards
4. Central Park Jogger
II. Unable/Unwilling to Control/Contain
Crime
A) Lack of Reporting
B) Our own involvement as Offenders
1. 40% Burglaries
Crime as a Social Problem
2. Large % of Homicides
3. Rapes
C. Lack of Consensus on Punishment
1. Disparity in Sentencing
D. Build More Prisons
1. Taxes
2. NIMBYISM
Crime as a Social Problem
E. Focus on “Wrong” Issues
1. War on Drugs
2. More Cops=Less Crime
3. Ban Guns=Less Crime
Measuring Crime
A. Uniform Crime Reports
B. National Crime Survey
C. Self-Report Studies
Crime as a Social Problem
Homicide
A. Interactionist Perspective
1. Jack Katz’s Seductions of Crime
B. Culturalist Perspective
1. Marvin Wolfgang’s Subculture of
Violence hypothesis
Crime as a Social Problem
C. Structuralist Perspective
1. Anomie
2. Racial Inequality
3. Identity
Mass Murder
1. Criminal Gangs
2. Family Killing --Suicide by Proxy
3. Multiple Murderer (all at once/serial)
Criminal Justice as a Social
Problem
I.Criminal Justice System
A. Police
B. Courts
C.Corrections
Is it Really a System at all?
A. The Police
1. Patrol
Criminal Justice as a Social
Problem
I.Criminal Justice System
A. Police
B. Courts
C.Corrections
Is it Really a System at all?
A. The Police
Criminal Justice as a Social
Problem
Other functions:
1. Fighting Crime
2. Maintaining Order
3. Providing Social Service
Preventive Patrol--Rationale
Does it Work?
1. Amount of Time Spent on Patrol
Criminal Justice as a Social
Problem
2. Questions about Effectiveness
Inside vs. Outside Crimes
How Likely are Officers to Encounter
Crimes in Progress?
• Kansas City Preventive Patrol
Experiment (1974)
Police and Policing
• Kansas City Preventive Patrol
Experiment (1974)
Divide southern portion of city
Matched police beats.
1. Doubled/Tripled patrol
2. Eliminated Patrol
3. Control Group
Police and Policing
• Effects of K.C. Study
Crime-- UCR and Victimization Surveys
Fear of Crime
Reporting Crime
Prevention of Crime by residents
Response time by police
• Think of cost involved of adding one 24
hour patrol
Police and Policing
• Community Policing
• Problem Oriented Policing
SARA model
Does it work?
• Community Crime Prevention
Passive/Active Programs
Block Watch
Operation ID
Community Crime Prevention
• Active Programs
The Guardian Angels
Kenney’s Study
• One Ray of Hope
Crime Prevention Through Environmental
Design
Community Crime Prevention
• Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space
Territoriality, Surveillance, Image,
Milieu
• Contemporary Applications
Community Crime Prevention
• The Panacea Phenomenon--Jim Finckenaur
Bandwagon
Early Success
Exaggeration
Program
Evaluation
Frustration
Community Crime Prevention
• Crime Displacement
Temporal
Spatial
Method
Target
Crime Type
Sexual Deviance
• Where are we with regard to
sexuality/morality in this country?
• Three main areas of discussion
Pornography
Homosexuality
Prostitution
Sexual Deviance
• Prostitution has always existed…and we’ve
always said it has been wrong.
• American Social Hygiene Association 1904
Prostitution is immoral
Prostitution corrupts innocent women
Prostitution is a public health issue
• Existence of Red Light Districts
Sexual Deviance
• Police: District Zone Strategy
• Crusade against vice led to dispersion of
prostitutes
• Extent of problem today—what does history
teach us?
• UCR= 90,000 arrests and 175 million dollar
industry
Sexual Deviance
• Police think of prostitution as a nuisance crime,
but….district zone strategy
• Some community crime prevention tactics used by
residents to thwart prostitution
• Where do the feminists weigh in on this issue?
• Sociologically, how can we understand
prostitution?
Kingsley Davis’s Functionalist .View of
Prostitution
Sexual Deviance
• Should we legalize prostitution? Would that
solve the problem?
• What about the rise and interest in
gentlemen’s clubs? Is this sex for the
millenium or is it prostitution and organized
crime in a different package?
Sexual Deviance
• Male Prostitution—what are they and why would
anyone study them?
• What about Male Prostitution in New York City?
• What do we know about Male Prostitution
History of family abuse, sexual abuse,
Low educational achievement, sex at an
early age, first encounter in hustling.
What is their sexual orientation?
Sexual Deviance
• Hustling in Times Square—the study.
• So what do we know? What is the social
organization of hustling?
• What are the three main issues related to the study:
Crack
AIDS
Urban Redevelopment
Sexual Deviance
• What about gay hustlers? How are they different
from “straight” hustlers?
• Finally, how are hustlers different from
transvestites, cross dressers, and transsexuals?
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crossdressers/transvestites/transgenderist/transsexual|