The book:
Crime, Justice, and Social Control, Revised Second Edition Edited by Stuart Henry, Jeffrey Vandersip, and Desiré J.M. Anastasia, 2020. Cognella Academic Publishing.
PROMPT
Step 1: Post your response to the following:
Question #1 -- In regard to public perceptions about the severity of various offenses, Americans do not share a consensus about all of the behaviors that are defined under the law as "crimes." In this discussion you are asked to examine your own perceptions about the definitions of crimes and explore the moral and political issues underlying crime definitions by discussing whether the following actions should be crimes:
a. Exchanging money for sex between two consenting adults
b. Playing poker for money with friends
c. Taking a candy bar from a store without paying for it
d. An industrial company pouring pollution into a river
e. Attempting suicide
f. Public drunkenness
g. An employee taking a ballpoint pen home from the office for personal use
h. Calling someone an ethnically/racially derogatory name.
Choose at least two from the above list and discuss whether you perceive them to be a crime. Explain your answer.
Question #2 -- Legal sociologist Donald Black (1976, 1984, 1989) argued that societies with strong informal social controls have less need for formal social control, and conversely, societies with weak informal social controls have greater need for formal social control. Why do you think this is? Give examples to support your reasoning?
Question #3 -- Include your own overall question that you had about the readings.