Crime and Violence: Cultural Beliefs and Biases
Religion and Stereotyping
Diverse sociocultural customs promote diverse forms of aggression; e.g., the conventional idea that males are authorized, by nature, to discipline or control females renders the latter susceptible to sexual abuse and spousal violence. Societal tolerance towards such hampers external intervention, preventing victims from protesting and seeking support. Sexual abuse reporting is also hampered by the stigma certain cultures attach to victims. Further, the powerful link between violence and drunkenness implies societies' and cultures' alcohol utilization trends and the related impacts also promote and warrant violence. Several nations report alcoholism accounting for sixteen percent of female and twenty-six percent of male DALYs (disability-adjusted life-years) loss due to murders. Initiatives challenging socio-cultural customs supporting aggression are normally combined with other strategies (WHO, 2009).
Prior studies have revealed a consistent association between religious participation and positive conduct in society among youngsters. Religious organizations help reduce criminality through numerous potential means. Firstly, they transmit morals and aid youngsters in internalizing ethical standards and messages. Further, religious heads and group members supervise youngsters' behavior, besides themselves acting as fine examples for them. Lastly, they offer an institutional context accompanied by youth activities which divert youngsters from negative influences and conduct. For some reason, kids and parents clearly prefer engaging in religious activities (Pope, Price, & Lillard, 2009).
Right Realism
According to Right Realists, offending thrives when societal control collapses. They believe all societies have some individuals who have a penchant for misbehaviour, including littering, rowdiness, or vandalism. Community members usually deter such individuals through negative remarks and action. In effect, the frequency and level of misbehaviour is curbed by fellow societal members' reactions. But in societies where deviance is overlooked, the whole social order collapses and the society slowly shifts towards more severe, recurrent offending. That is, when felonies are ignored the first time, they will proliferate in the long run (Talbot, 2009).
Social Roles
Criminal
Research reveals the following negative familial factors potentially impacting criminality: ineffective parenting, domestic dissension, family size, abuse, antisocial parents, punitive disciplining and disagreements. Sufficient studies suggest peer pressure as adversely impacting deviancy among youngsters. But the risk...
Finally, factors like profession, income, and educational qualification strongly affect people's inclination towards criminality and violence. One out of five kids belonging to poor households are found guilty of offending by the time they reach twenty-four years of age, as opposed to sixteen percent belonging to middleclass households and twelve percent from high-class households (CCLS, 2014).
Victim
Violent behavior adversely affects parenting capacity because of victims' physiological and psychological distress. Criminal victimization breaks or disturbs intimate relations owing to changes in victims' capacity of functioning as an intimate partner. Criminal victimization also adversely affects the capacity of obtaining and maintaining profitable employment (Hanson, Sawyer, Begle, & Hubel, 2010).
Social Inequalities
Social Stratification
For long, social inequity is believed to be linked to offending. Criminality is probably high within prejudiced communities with underprivileged population groups exhibiting disproportionately high crime rates. In America, high aggression and offending rates are linked to highly underprivileged urban inner-city localities, as opposed to rural and posh urban localities (Matsueda & Grigoryeva, 2012).
Conflict theory reveals economically-privileged communities prefer fairly high law enforcement strength levels as law enforcers protect unbalanced exchange relationships from getting disturbed. If law enforcement is not strong enough, such exchange associations may be harder to sustain. Not giving this fact any consideration may result in concurrent equation bias as well (Greenberg, Kessler, & Loftin, 1986).
Intersectionality
There is some evidence connected to crime-class linkages by racial background and gender. Personal income had an appreciable adverse impact on criminality among men while household income appreciably impacted criminality among women. Societal class influenced criminality among non-whites (Barak, 2009).
Social Issue
Overcrowded Prison Systems
Overpopulated state prisons are a huge issue in US's penal system, being overlooked by lower courts, the media, and policymakers for years. Parole and probation authorities are clearly largely responsible for this. Furthermore, parole and probation breaches resulted in swift sentencing. Issues in this area served to invigorate recidivism, which further aggravated prison overpopulation (Campers, 2012).
Economic Limitations
Income disparity greatly affects crime rates but increasing GDP rate exhibits an appreciable crime-decreasing effect. As income distribution and growth rates mutually govern poverty decreases, it follows that penury alleviation rates decrease offending (Fajnzylber, Lederman, & Loayza, 2002).
Creating Connections
Cultural Beliefs and…
