white collar crimes
Crimes committed while doing business, such as cheating on taxes, bribery, and embezzling funds from a company.
victimless crimes
Crimes that don't have a clear victim. Some of the crimes that fall into this category are prostitution, illegal drug use, and gambling
strain theory
Explores different ways that a person might react to cultural goals and the institutionalized means, or ways of reaching those goals.
stigmas
Very powerful negative labels that change's a persons identity.
social control
Refers to the ways that a society keeps people from breaking laws and norms.
ritualism
Occurs when people reject the goal, but continue to use the accepted means of reaching the goals.
retreatism
Happens when the individual rejects the cultural goal and the means.
recidivism
Crimes committed by someone who has already been convicted of another crime.
rebellion
Merton defined this as choosing to identify new goals and new means to reach them.
police
Help maintain peace and public order by enforcing the formal laws within a society.
Robert Merton
Sociologist who developed strain theory.
Cesare Lombroso
An Italian physician who argued that certain body features, such as low foreheads or long arms, could be used to identify those with criminal tendencies.
labeling theory
States that deviance occurs not because of what people do but how people respond to those actions.
innovation
In strain theory, this means accepting the goal but using unacceptable, or deviant, ways of reaching that goal.
Travis Hirschi
The sociologists who developed control theory.
deviance
The violation of a culture's norms.
deterrence
Discouraging crimes because of the consequences.
criminal justice system
Society's formal response to crime.
crimes against the person
Crimes that involve direct violence or threat of violence to another person. Such crimes are often called violent crimes.
crimes against property
Crimes that involve the theft of something that belongs to someone else. These crimes are also known as property crimes.
crime
Breaking one of society's official criminal laws.
courts
Determine whether the individual is innocent of guilty of the charge.
control theory
Identifies four different types of social control that keep people conforming to society's norms. The theory was developed by Hirschi.
conformity
Merton defined this as meaning that the person accepted the cultural goal and used acceptable ways of trying to reach this goal.
Howard Becker
A sociologist that argued that deviant behavior is only deviant because people label it as deviant.