...Enforcement, and the Legacy of Racial Violence Ryan D. King University at Albany-SUNY Robert D. Baller University of Iowa This article investigates the association between past lynchings (1882 to 1930) and contemporary law enforcement responses to hate crimes in the United States. While prior research indicates a positive correlation between past levels of lynching and current social control practices against minority groups, we posit an inverse relationship for facets of social control that are protective of minorities. Specifically, we hypothesize that contemporary hate crime policing and prosecution will be less vigorous where lynching was more prevalent prior to 1930. Analyses show that levels of past lynching are associated with three outcome variables germane to hate crime policing and prosecution, but the effect of lynching is partly contingent on the presence of a minority group threat. That is, past lynching combined with a sizeable black population largely suppresses (1) police compliance with federal hate crime law, (2) police reports of hate crimes that target blacks, and in some analyses (3) the likelihood of prosecuting a hate crime case. Our findings have implications for research on law and intergroup conflict, historical continuity in the exercise of state social control, and theories that emphasize minority group threat. Steven F. Messner University at Albany-SUNY onflict theories of crime and criminal law posit that the state largely serves the interests of...
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...Christopher McCormick’s (2010), Constructing Danger: Emotions and the Mis/ Representations of Crime in the News, is a collection of news media excerpts that McCormick analyses in relation to archived police reports and statistics, victimization and self-report surveys, along with condensed versions of ‘professional’ lectures given at a conference about how the media reports crime. Before I elaborate on how McCormick structured his analyses throughout his book and its relevance to his critiques, I will begin by discussing his main arguments. From this, I am able expand on the pedagogical relevance of his work to my own feminist critiques regarding some problems I found in the organization of his book and his methodologies. I argue, that we also need to question where McCormick got his ‘facts’ to make comparisons and the implications that individual subjectivities have in the ‘knowledge(s)’ about crime and articulations of identity. McCormick argues that Constructing Danger is a pedagogical piece that encourages readers to think critically about the ways in which crime is represented in the news media. McCormick focuses on the use of emotion in the ideological and discursive production of crime in the news and the implications it has on how individuals, see, hear and read the news. McCormick suggests, that the news media is not free from ‘bias’, for the news represents crime in a way that simultaneously exorcises and triggers emotion, which in turn, effects the ways in which individuals...
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...\\server05\productn\C\CPP\8-2\CPP204.txt unknown Seq: 1 5-JUN-09 8:30 Racial profiling and searches: Did the politics of racial profiling change police behavior?* Patricia Y. Warren Florida State University Donald Tomaskovic-Devey University Massachusetts, Amherst Research Summary Scholarly research has documented repeatedly that minority citizens are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested relative to their baseline populations. In recent years, policymakers have brought increased attention to this issue as law-enforcement agencies across the United States have faced allegations of racial profiling. In the 1990s, the politics generated by accounts of racially biased policing placed heightened pressure on law-enforcement agencies. However, to date, few studies have explored whether the increased social and political scrutiny placed on police organizations influenced or changed their general pattern of enforcement among black and white citizens. Using data in the search and citation file from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study, this research specifically examined whether the politics generated by the media coverage of racial profiling and racial profiling legislation in North Carolina influenced the search practices of officers of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol’s drug interdiction team. The findings suggest that media accounts and the passage of new legislation were particularly powerful influences, which thereby reduced ...
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... However, you will be penalised for ‘overuse of the item’, so don’t just copy it out. You can use short quotes or statistics from the item though. | Question: | What to include: | Assess the view that ethnic differences in crime rates are the result of the ways in which the criminal justice system operates. | This question is essentially about the presence (or not) of institutional racism in the police, courts and penal system. You will need to compare the importance of this as opposed to explanations that argue that ethnic minorities do commit more crime - either as a result of relative deprivation (left realism) or poor upbringing, absent fathers, etc (new right). * Try to include some stats, reference to patterns of offending, stop and search, ethnic make-up of prisons. There may well be some in the item for this question. * Black people make up 2.8% of the general population, but 11% of the prison population. 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than the white population. * Police racism – Phillips and Bowling – oppressive policing of ethnic minority communities – leads to these communities having less faith in the...
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...There have been some major changes in the police response to domestic violence however there are still many areas that need improving. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the relative response made by the police to crimes of domestic violence by examining the theories and statistics from the study of various criminology scholars as well as scrutinising the impact of any changes or improvement that may have since occurred in policing. The Government defines domestic violence (DV) as "Any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality." This includes issues of concern to black and minority ethnic (BME) communities such as so called 'honour killings' [homeoffice.gov.uk]. In analysing the adequacy of police response to domestic violence, it is vital to firstly understand the scale of abuse against victims of DV. Several statistics, such as Stanko’s study in the year 2000, found that police in the UK received one call every minute for support concerning domestic violence. According to Dodd et al (2004), only 40.2% of actual domestic violence crimes are reported to the police. Moreover, 20 incidents of DV may have occurred before it is reported [Walby and Myhill, 2000]. As of 2005, 17% of all reported crimes were of Domestic Violence (Nicholas et al). What's more, even though the concept of domestic violence...
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...Di Wu 2010–06–04 Chapter 6 native Americans In this chapter, we learn about history and development of Native American. This chapter consist of three parts , history of native; how federal polices effect on native American ; what situation the native American in today. After reading this chapter, I think racism is a very painful problem in the United States. of the first acts of racism in American was against the Native Americans. At first, the Native Americans were the Europeans’ friends. The Native Americans showed the Europeans how to farm, hunt and live off the land in this new America. As time went by and the Europeans became comfortable, they no longer need the Native American people. The Native American people were in the way, they had land that the growing population of the Europeans wanted and needed. This was the start of many treaties that the American Government would make the Native people, and the start for racism against them. Out of all the treaties that the American Government made with the Native People, they kept all of them, but the United States only kept half of the treaties. For federal policies, American government gives an immense amount of respect to such diverse cultures and groups, but where is the respect for the Indians. When the United States first became an independent nation, it adopted the European policies towards these native peoples, but over the course of two centuries the U.S. adapted its own widely varying policies regarding the changing...
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...A2 Sociology ASSESSMENT PACK 2015-16 A2 Level Sociology Student Tracking Sheet | |Current Grade |Target Grade |Lates |Attendance | |September | | | | | |November | | | | | |January | | | | | |March | | | | | |May | | | | | | |Families |Education | |UMS | | | |Grade | | | | |Handed in on |Mark |Grade |What is the target for my next piece of work? |Above/ On/ Under Target | |Assessment/Homework |time...
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...Abstract - Study examines two days of US tv news coverage of the May 1, 2007- immigration rights rally in LA. Evaluated 51 television news reports frim three networks and five local stations using three complementary analyses: Framing Visual coding Critical spoken discourse analysis - News reporters on the ground at the time framed the events as a police attack. Blamed the victims by reframing the events as a violent provocation. Manipulated public opinion about domestic immigration policy. Introduction - The great May Day marches of 2007 began a new social movement on the issue of immigration. Its outpour forced US citizens to consider the existence of immigrant workers in society. Moral legitimacy The nations perception of immigrant-rights marchers is a crucial factor that helps shape national attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policy. How TV depicted the assault by Alabama police and state troopers with truncheons and tear gas on 600 nonviolent civil right marchers in Selma in 1965. - May Day 2007- two separate marches took place in LA Morning- took place as normal without any incident Afternoon- ended violently. LA police suddenly attacked 7000 peaceful demonstrators. Paralleled an earlier episode of LA police misconduct- Marked a turning point in Chicano Moratorium - 40 years ago the nations perception of the marchers was not crucial Today, the medias portrayal of immigrant rights is key to the public perception and to the ultimate success...
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...neighborhoods like The Gold Coast and River North. Over the last couple of years though, the spotlight has been shifted from all of Chicago’s wonderful things to its poverty stricken neighborhoods, rising crime rate, murders, and drug problems. All of these things can be linked to what many consider Chicago’s biggest problem, street gangs. But today the city seems to be far more segregated and full of poverty in neighborhoods that are home to minorities. Many adults turn to the streets to make a living and children see their elders and in return do the same. These same poor neighborhoods have a failing public education system for the youth along with a bad relationship with police. According to the Chicago Crime Commission, “a 2012 Chicago Police Department gang audit found there are more than 600 gang factions in the city, with a minimum combined membership of 70,000” (cbsnews.com). With the large number of gang members in the city there is a lot of fighting going on over turf for control of drug distribution. This is mainly a problem occurring in minority communities all throughout Chicago. “201 of the 259 homicide victims were African-American” (chicagotribune.com). While blacks make up about 33 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for nearly 78 percent of the homicide victims through the first sic months of 2012. Gangs are nothing really new in Chicago with the famous work of Al Capone throughout the city during the prohibition era. But those gangs seemed to have more structure...
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...any other cultural factor. It can also be defined as a shared cultural heritage, typically involving common ancestors language and religion. Sociological insight into the patterns of ethnicity and crime may highlight things such as, demographic factors (age and socio-economic composition of ethnic communities), prejudice in the police force, links to colonial struggle and marginalization. It is important to emphasize that none of these explanations adequately explain the complex patterns of ethnicity and crime, and also tend to overlook the amount of different experiences within each ethnic group (i.e. not all young back unemployed men turn to crime). Due to societal prejudice and stereotyping some ethnic groups have come to be related with crime. For example, in Kenya, the Kikuyu community are judged as criminals. Other ethnic communities have come to believe that they are the only ones who commit crimes. This is not true as other communities also commit crimes, it has reached a point that people from other ethnic groups forge identity cards with kikuyu names; this justifies the stereotype. On the other hand, in Kenya most crime reports or analyses show that most criminals come from the stereotyped ethnic group, the Kikuyu. Because prejudice is hard to change...
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...Necessity knows no law. Bần cùng sinh đạo tặc. In December 2008, just a few months after the U.S. financial system imploded, New York City was hit by a flurry of bank robberies. On the Monday before New Year’s, four banks were attacked in an hour-and-a-half; one daytime raid took place just steps from the Lincoln Center in downtown Manhattan. The week before, San Diego had seen four bank holdups in a single day. Criminologists wondered if the holiday spree was the first sign of a looming crime wave in recession-battered America. Take an uptick in poverty and economic misery, toss in budget cuts to police departments across the country, and that should be a blueprint for chaos—right? Except, as it turns out, the exact opposite occurred. According to FBI statistics, crime rates went down across the board in 2009. Way down. Murder, rape, robbery, assault, auto theft—plummeted, one and all. Then, this week, the FBI released preliminary data for the first six months of 2010, and again the same pattern emerged. Violent crimes and property crimes alike have been falling in every region of the country. What gives? Have experts just completely misunderstood what causes people to commit crimes? There's certainly no shortage of theories for why crime rates have gone down over the past two years. The simplest is that crime just isn’t closely related to economic conditions. Consider, after all, the two big crime epidemics in the twentieth century—the first took root in the late 1960s...
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...Justice: Why Force is Used The question of why police may or may not use force in a particular encounter is difficult to answer. A number of scholars have attempted to answer this question explicitly and have theorized a number of different explanations to answer this question. The question of why police decide to use force, may be harder to answer than originally anticipated because of the gap that exists between theoretical versus practical police work, coupled with the vast differences in environmental factors. Currently, the answers remain convoluted at best. The purpose of this document is to shed light on research that has been previously completed in regards to trying to better answer the question of why law enforcement...
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...many ways that children can experience abuse. Children exposed to devastating and potentially traumatic events early in their lives are considered risk for problems in adjustment. Yet it is not known whether it is the age of first exposure (AFE) to violence or the amount of violence that the child witnessed in their lifetime that has the greatest impact on adjustment. For a sample of 190 children ages 6 to 12 exposed to intimate partner violence, their mothers reported that the average length of their abusive relationship was 10 years. The majority of children were first exposed to family violence as infants at 64 percent, with only 12 percent first exposed when school aged. However, in deterioration analyses controlling for child sex, ethnicity, age, and family environment variables, increasing violence exposure accounted for greater variance in adjustment than did the age of first exposure. Furthermore, cumulative violence exposure mediated the relationship between the age of first exposure and expressing behavior problems, indicating that the increasing exposure to intimate partner violence outweighed the age of first exposure in its effect on child adjustment (Grahama Bermann & Perkins, 2010). Domestic violence can sometimes go unobserved, and can sometimes be missed if it is not visible. Sometimes it can be seen in their actions and how they interact with the other children....
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...Crime and Deviance AN INTRODUCTION TO CRIME AND DEVIANCE Definitions * Crime- An act which breaks the criminal laws of society. * Deviance- refers to the behaviour which is disapproved of by most people in society and which does not conform to society's norms and values. TOPIC 1: FUNCTIONALIST, STRAIN AND SUBCULTURAL THEORIES Durkheim's functionalist theory: * Socialisation and Social control are two key mechanisms which allow social solidarity to occur in society. The inevitability of crime: * Functionalists see too much crime as destabilising society. * They also see crime as inevitable and universal- Durkheim, 'crime is normal... an integral part of all healthy societies.' * There are two reasons why C&D are found in all societies; 1.Not everyone is equally effectively socialised into the shared norms and values. 2. Different groups develop their own subculture and what the members of the subculture regard as normal, mainstream culture may see as deviant. * Durkheim also discusses that in modern societies there is a tendency towards anomie (normlessness). The diversity of modern societies means that the collective conscience is weakened, and this results in higher levels of C&D. The positive functions of crime: * For Durkheim, crime also fulfils two important functions; boundary maintenance and adaptation. * Boundary Maintenance- In Durkheim's view, the purpose of punishment is to reaffirm society's shared rules and reinforces...
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...that no material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award and is solely my own work Signature of Candidate Type of Award School ___PhD_________________________________ ___Centre for Professional Ethics___________ 1 Abstract It was long assumed that both multiculturalism and feminism are connected to progressive movements and hence have comparable and compatible goals. However, both in academia and in popular media the critique on multiculturalism has grown and is often accompanied with arguments related to gender equality and/or feminism. According to political scientist Susan Moller Okin for example there are fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equality and the desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions. If we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, she argues, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices. Okin’s claims led to a complex and highly important debate both in academia and in public debates. The main aim of this thesis is to explore in depth the different discourses about multiculturalism and feminism and develop a more inclusive and nuanced...
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