SOC205H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Due Process, Restorative Justice, Deinstitutionalisation
Document Summary
Purpose of punishment is to treat and reform. Study of crime is objective; value neutral. Attempts to explain all crime leads to over prediction. Positivist: focus on what causes crime, focus on individual factors rooted in biological, psychological or social. Ignore the criminalization process. explanations: assume society is based on consensus, assumes social scientific work is value-neutral. Critical theories: focus on definition of crime and the criminalization of behaviour, focus on social relations that affect power and inequality, assume society is based on conflict, assume all research reflects power relations. Critical criminology (cid:494)critical criminology is a contested umbrella term that encompasses a range of theories that question how power differentials, hierarchies, and inequalities contribute to crime, punishment and society. No behaviour is wrong until someone says it is. Crime in not about what you do it is a product of how others see it. Labeling theorists question the idea that behaviors are somehow inherently criminal or deviant.
