Introduction to Crime and Deviance

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Crime and Deviance

There has been major changes in the way Sociologists perceive and study crime.

Female criminality was once all but ignored, with some feminist sociologists arguing that Criminology had nothing valuable to say on the subject of women at all.

Lombroso, the ‘father of Criminology,’ regarded female crime as rooted in hormonal imbalances, an inability to reproduce, or a sign of ‘evil.’

Strange to say that such Social Scientists fell into ‘common sense’ traps as soon as they were confronted with the issue of female criminality!

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Crime and Deviance

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Crime and Deviance

Sociologists also tended to concentrate on working class crime, particularly ‘juvenile delinquency.’ Ring any bells?

It is only recently that issues such as White Collar Crime have become of concern.

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Next Week…

We will be considering a number of individual theories over the next weeks; Left Realism, Marxism, Interactionism and Labelling, all of which can be found in Haralambos ‘Themes and Perspectives’ in the Crime and Deviance chapter, as well as on the ‘Sociology at Hewett’ web-site.