SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Participant Observation, Uniform Crime Reports, Corporate Crime
Document Summary
Scared straight took kids and put them in a room with prisoners in order to have these guys scare them so much that it will deter them from committing crime. So deterrence is based on certainty, severity, and celerity. Thus the goals of these shows appeal to people"s fear of the severity. Maybe in the moment, but not in the long run. People who went through scared straight programs actually had higher recidivism rates. It is a private phenomenon and people don"t usually advertise their criminality. Certain types of deviance is public and expressive (like punks), but other types of crimes and deviance aren"t. Deviants have little insight into the broader nature and extent of their behaviour. Thus, they aren"t able to give much insight about their crimes in general. Access to deviants is costly, time consuming, and often only partial. It costs a lot to do large scale projects.
