CCJS 105 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Social Capital, Ecological Fallacy, Concentrated Poverty

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Course: CCJS 105
• Professor: Kiminori Nakamura

Document Summary

Social structure: how society is organized by social institutions (family, educational, economic, religious, and political) and stratified on the basis of various roles and statuses. Proposition that society prepares the crime, and the guilty are only the instruments by which it is accomplished. Structural criminologists tend to assume that human nature is socially constructed, all human traits are specific to cultures, unconstrained vision. Follow one of two models: consensus perspective or conflict perspective. Consensus perspective: a view of society as a system of mutually sustaining parts and characterized by broad normative consensus. When an organ in the body that keeps the whole body healthy (heart, lungs, brain, etc. ) malfunctions, the whole body is negatively affected. Social integrations are part of a larger whole, so any part affects the functioning of the entire social system. Law said to reflect society"s deeply held values and is deemed legitimate by almost all segments of society.