SOC 500 Chapter Notes - Chapter Articles: Visible Minority, Innocent Victims, Social Disorganization Theory

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 500
• Professor: Anastasia Jones

Document Summary

Disproportionate minority contact in canada: police and visible minority youth (fitzgerald & carrington, 2011) Research consistently suggests that aboriginal people are over-represented in the criminal justice system in canada; also, black canadians, and arab and west-asian. Early stages of criminal justice system including police stops, searches and arrests also show over-representation. The differential involvement hypothesis asserts that higher rates of police contact among minority youth are brought about by their higher rates of involvement with crime. Looking at the differential treatment hypothesis requires the identification of risk factors for contact with the police; routine activity theory (youth who are unsupervised), single- parent family, single mothers, socio-economic status, delinquent friends, socially disorganized neighborhoods being over-policed. Urbanization theory and social disorganization theory propose that larger cities experience a breakdown in informal social controls > higher crime rate. Low-risk black youth are more likely to receive police attention than low-risk white youth, but similar between races for high-risk youth; good behavior protects youth.