Crime as a Social Construction

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how crime arises in poor, lower-income areas where actions that are illegal are often commonplace. The paper relates that lawmakers will consider crime as a creation of the citizens, while many citizens will view crime as something created by the lawmakers who decided to limit civil freedoms by their own moral standards. The paper therefore shows how crime is constructed socially, by people who set rules that are intended to govern societies and who create the possibility of crime, which is defined as the breaking of these rules.

Outline:
High Crime Areas
Laws Often Overlooked or Disregarded
Crime Created by the Lawmaker, rather than the Lawbreaker
Values of Lawmaker and Lawbreaker may Differ
The Emergence of Crime

From the Paper:

"Crime does not naturally occur. It arises due to its necessity in certain areas. In other words, it is socially constructed by the residents of crime ridden areas who live in societies that have criminal abilities. This is due to a number of factors, but most importantly, crime arises in certain places because of the blatant segregation of the rich and poor; people tend to live in areas with other people who make about the same amount of money, and in low income areas, people resort to crime to make a few extra dollars."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Rafter, N. (1990) The Social Construction of Crime and Crime Control. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Vol. 27, No. 4, 376-389.
• Welsh, I. (2005).The Social Construction of Crime. The Agonist. http://agonist.org/story/2005/12/23/121952/67

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• Research Paper # 129095 : "International Treatment of War Crimes"

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