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Slides and resources:. www.millerkonstanz.wordpress.com. Theories of variation in imprisonment. Race/minority threat (conflict theory) Confirmation bias Will dominant groups inevitably punish minority (or less powerful) groups more harshly? Social welfare provision

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  1. Slides and resources: www.millerkonstanz.wordpress.com

  2. Theories of variation in imprisonment • Race/minority threat (conflict theory) • Confirmation bias • Will dominant groups inevitably punish minority (or less powerful) groups more harshly? • Social welfare provision • How might relative levels of social welfare provisions be related to rates of crime and punishment? • What specific welfare features do you think are especially important? • Do levels of social welfare affect imprisonment rates, independent of crime rates?

  3. Causal processes: • Correlation is not causality • Theories of punishment can apply only to punishment, to punishment through crime rates, or can apply to both crime rates and punishment. • Growing minority population dominant group fear of loss policies and practices that target non-dominant groups more than dominant ones • Non-dominant population poorer etc and/or frustrated with obstacles to progress crime policies and practices that treat minorities particularly harshly

  4. How might higher social welfare spending cause lower imprisonment? Which social welfare provisions are especially important? • Is crime a necessary element in the causal chain?

  5. Social welfare, violence and punishment

  6. Homicide rates in the 19th century • England and Wales: homicide rates fell after 1867 and 1884 • 1867 and 1884 Reform Acts extending franchise • Canada: falling rates in core provinces after Independence (1867) but continued to be high in western (unincorporated) frontier. • Frontier conflicts: English Protestants and Irish Catholics; Metis (mixed race) and English/Scots-Irish • Italy: homicide rate plummeted after unification and emergence of strong central government in 1860s • Germany: rapid decline after German unification in 1871 • France: some increase in homicide but constant political turmoil, radically different ideologies, duels, assassinations. • Only in US do homicides grow continuously and dramatically. Why?

  7. Homicide in the north • Loss of economic independence • decline in self-employment, rise of wage labor • Immigration: Irish, Italian, German • Conflict over class/economic opportunity but also religion (most new immigrants were Catholic) • Mexican war/slavery, westward expansion increased hostile feelings of northerners • Anger at govt failure to protect them, decline in fellow feeling, frustrating over limited opportunity for self-employment – decline in political and social legitimacy • Impulsive, petty murders increased, as well as domestic murders, rape murders, neighbor/family murders and murder between different race, class, ethnic groups • Who’s government is it anyway?

  8. Homicide in the south • Less violence in rural/plantation areas – proslavery bond among whites • More violence in southern cities where conflict between Confederacy/Unionists was greater • Confederates murdered Union sympathizers at high rates • Lynching of “peace party” in Texas (TX esp. violent) • Areas that Union lost but South couldn’t control (border areas) especially bad • Even post CW, violence continued: revenge murders, political murders, honorific killings (primarily former confederates) • “Wherever reactionary whites remained in power [former confederates], they killed at the same rate they had before the war. Where they lost power, they killed with abandon” (p. 348) • Lack of effective government in post-war south

  9. Lack of trust and legitimacy in 19th c. U.S. • Immigration: unskilled laborers of Irish, French Canadian, German Catholics and Chinese origin; exclusion and discrimination • Economic hardship: Native-born whites (mostly English and German Protestants) declining standard of living, overflowing tenements, growing economic inequality • Slavery/conquest: White settlement of Native and Hispanic (formerly Mexico) areas; growing conflict between slave masters and abolitionists Polarized politics along class, region, race/ethnicity, religion • Conflict over whether Irish, German, Chinese immigrants would become full citizens, whether slavery should spread into western territories • Decline in patriotism • Increasing sense in many (all?) groups that government wasn’t on their side • Heightened sensitivity about social status and respect Growth in everyday murders from: sexual assault, robbery, property disputes, etc

  10. Firearm homicides, as percent of all homicides, 1980-2008Source: BJS, FBI/UCR

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