Crime and Deviance: Assess sociological explanations of ethnic differences in the patterns of crime and deviance.

... Crime and Deviance: Assess sociological explanations of ethnic differences in the patterns of crime and deviance. Statistics show that there is a profound difference in crime rates between black people and white people, they are over represented in prisons and they fear crime more than white people. Sociologists have many explanations for these findings some suggesting that they are accurate and try to explain why, others that assume they are inaccurate and try to explain how. The traditional approaches such as Shaw and McKay in 1931 believed that the statistics were correct and tried to explain why. They linked racial minorities and crime simply because they were more likely to live in areas that were socially disorganised. Messner also looks along the lines of location and believes that black people live in areas of social deprivation and that this frustrates them so they turn to crime as a way of getting

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