sociology notes on masculinity and crime

The chivalry thesis claims that women are let of relatively lightly by the predominately male police, judges and courts ect. in the criminal justice system.

Some self report studies have implied that female offenders are more likely to escape conviction than males.

In the cautioning of offenders, there is apparent evidence of chivalry. - Campbell (1981) pointed out that female suspects were more likely than male suspects to be cautioned rather than prosecuted.

Allen (1987) also found evidence that women sometimes escape prison in very serious cases (including manslaughter), where a male offender might have been expected to recieve a prison term.

Simon Winlow studied the relationship between violence and masculinity. - He is a postmodernist who believes that deindustrialisation has left men without a valid way to express their masculinity.

Winlow argued that in the time of heavy industry men could prove their masculinity with doing heavy labour.

With the decrease of traditional employment and the rise of the female worker, their masculinity has been threatened.

The emphasis on violence remains and can lead to criminal subcultures. - Links to crisis of masculinity.

Hernstein and Wilson claim there is a biological element in causing crime.

They argue some men are born with a predisposition towards crime. - Their potential for criminality is more likely to be realized if they are not properly socialized.

They also say that low intelligence can be a factor in causing crime.

Fatherless families!

Charles Murray believes that crime is caused by cultural and not economic factors.

He blames what he sees as declining moral standards and a lack of respect for authority for the rise in crime,

Lone mothers are ineffective socialization agents, especially for boys.

Absent fathers means that boys lack parental discipline and appropriate role models.

As a result, young males turn to other role models on the street and gain status through crime

Police have an ideological conception of both crime and criminals, which they use a a guide line in their work.

The more that the idea of association between young males and crime becomes established, the more the process of criminalization begins to resemble a self-fulfilling prophecy:

1. Young males need to be policed because of their heavy involvement in crime. - The police know they are heavility involved in crime because large numbers are arrested and convicted.

Therefore the more young men are closely policed, the more any involvement in crime is picked up.

2. Men more likely than women to be on the streets at night (inviting greater police suspicion / investigation)

Parsons traces differences in crime and deviance to gender roles in the conventinal nuclear family. (Instrumental and expressive roles)

This means that boys reject feminine models of behaviour that express tenderness, gentleness and emotion.

Instead, boys seek to distance themselves from such role models by engaging in compensatory compulsory masculinity through aggression and anti social behaviour which can slip into delinquency.

They suggest that youthful criminal activity is motivated by edgework rather than material gain

The pleasure of thrill seeking and risk taking and the buzz generated by the excitement involved in acts such as vandalism, drug taking and fighting is a gratifying adventure.

This pursuit of excitement is usually seen in young men, they can gain peer group status from it.

Merton's strain theory suggests that the struggle to achieve shared goals pushes men into crime.

They experience a frustration with their status and they seek to gain status within an illegitimate career structure.