SOC205H5 Lecture 1: SOC205 1st lecture
Document Summary
Think about politics of crime and punishment. There are diff ways of focusing on it. Criminological theorists focus on individual level of why ppl commit crime. A good theory should be easy to predict and should be about which ppl are likely to commit crime and the mechanisms push them to do so. Which individuals commit crime and why they commit it. Another approach to looking at is looking at social construction, they argue that other theorists argue there"s only one universal def of crime. They believe there are few action that are few action considered universal across time, there is variation across time and from place to place. Something considered crime now may not be in the future. Ex adultery and this is bc laws changed. There is no natural list of activities that is bad or worse than others, they say who cares what crime ppl commit but why that action became a crime.
