SOC 2760 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Actus Reus, Social Inequality, W. E. B. Du Bois

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2760
• Professor: Rob Shearer

Document Summary

Criminology and the sociological perspective (ch 1)- steven barkan. U. s crime rate has declined since the early 1990s, the prison and jail population stands at more than 2. 3 million (the highest rate of incarceration in the western world) Criminal justice system costs more than billion annually. Crime is one of our most important social problems and one of the least understood: most of what we know (society) comes from the media and what we read (gives a distorted image) Crime is misunderstood because the popular sources that provide us with our knowledge of crime have little to say about its social roots. Crime is an individual and social phenomenon. Individuals commit crime but their social backgrounds shape the likelihood of them committing more. If crime is rooted in the way our society is organized, then our crime reduction efforts will only succeed to the extent that they address the structural roots of the crimes.