CCJ-3011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Moral Panic, Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences, Ethnic Stereotype
30 Nov 2017
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Document Summary
In addition to crime as a socially constructed meaning, many meanings about crime are socially constructed which have important consequences for how crime impacts social and political life as well as public policy to deal with crime. For example, crime in the united states has been decreasing since 1991. The violent crime rate is down 47 percent and the property crime rate is down 44 percent since 1991. One possibility could be that meanings constructed about crime by social audiences have influenced public opinion and in turn public policy as reflected in the increasing use of incarceration despite decreasing crime. Meanings such as these inform public opinion and public opinion informs them. Before looking at some examples of socially constructed meaning about crime that could be relevant for public policy it is worth asking whether the decrease in crime can be attributed to the increase in incarceration.
