Explain what the British
Crime Survey is
The British Crime Survey
is a victim study – it asks
people if they’ve been a
victim of crime
Explain what a self-report
study is
Self-report studies ask
people if they’ve been a
victim of crime
Explain what official crime
figures/Home Office crime
figures are
It is the crime data
complied from police and
court records to provide
an official figure
 What criminological perspective is the
following statement located in:
 “Deviance could no longer be viewed
as a pathological act that violated
consensual norms, but rather as
something that was created in the
process of social interaction, which
some people who commit deviant acts
come to be known as deviants and
other do not”
 Interactionism and labelling
What is fundamental to
Charles Murray's Right
Realist argument on crime
 That an underclass is emerging in modern
Western societies. For Murray the
underclass are a group of people namely,
single mums, unemployed young males,
who deliberately seek to avoid work. These
characteristics are then passed on to their
offspring – they’re socialised into an
underclass attitude. So crime is integral to
the underclass
What did Wilson and
Hernstein mean by their
term ‘rational choice
theory’?
 Their Right Realist position sees
the individual as making a rational
choice to become a criminal.
Therefore preventative measures
should include more CCTV
surveillance and increased security
Why is Durkheim’s study
of suicide useful in
understanding crime &
deviance?
 Durkheim argument was that sociologists
needed to uncover ‘social facts’. Durkheim’s
study into suicide showed it to be a product
of social facts – an external force acting on
the individual.
 He found a statistical relationship between
suicide rates and religion, location, age and
family situation – he applied a specific
methodology to his research
Explain Cicourel’s
research
Cicourel studied the
criteria from which police
and probation officers’
labelled young people as
being ‘typically delinquent’
Identify some of the
methodological problems
with the British Crime
Survey
 It validity could be questionable due to its
75% response rate
 Respondents are asked to recall events
from over a 12 month period and so their
memory might not be perfect
 Defining what a crime actually is varies from
person to person (known as problems of
operationalisation)
 There could be representative problems as
respondents are only householders, people
who are homeless are never questioned
What type of
criminological research do
left-realists identify as
being the most useful and
what was their survey
called?
 The British Crime Survey, as it
looks at the victims of crime. This is
in contrast to labelling theory and
radical criminology which leftrealists say ignores the plight of
working-class people.
 The Islington Crime Survey was
commissioned by left-realists
Why are Albert Cohen
and Robert Merton’s
views on deviance seen
as functionalist?
 Albert Cohen sees deviance as a safety valve for
example prostitution performs a safety valve
function by protecting the family
 It acts as an indicator of discontent within society.
So increasing truancy from school shows
problems within the education system
 For Robert Merton the ‘strain to anomie’ results
from a failure to achieve the American Dream
 He identified 5 possible ways people are able to
react living in a ‘success’ driven society