Chapter 5 Sociology

Chapter Five Summary There are comparatively few rules to violate, and people are socialized into long standing traditions in a communal society. Because associated societies are complex, they require many laws and rules. Also, they are impersonal, and tradition is not adequate to prevent deviance. However, many associational societies are diverse, and the mix of ethnicities, language, and regional differences requires coordination, which in turn requires laws and rules. The focus in an associational society is on the offender when determining suitable punishment, while command societies pay more attention to the victim. This is why communal societies are the most likely to use a restorative rationale in determining punishment. In all societies, authorities criminalize acts that upset the social order. A violation of a widely held norm is known as deviance. Meanwhile not all crimes are acts of deviance and not all deviant acts are crimes. Internal social controls are located within the individual and are learned through socialization. External social controls rely on social mechanism to prevent deviance. External social controls are relied upon whenever internal social controls cannot be relied on. The Federal Bureau of Investigation collects data from police departments in the United States, and these are compiled into the Uniform Crime Report. This tracks eight index crimes that include personal and violent crimes, and also property crimes. Another type of data is the National Crime Victimization Survey that is based on interviews conducted with a random sample of American households. The victimization rates in the NCVS with the UCR indicate that the UCR probably underreports particular types of crimes. The federal government collects data on hate crimes and there are thousands of these crimes a year. Elder abuse is becoming an prominent issue, and the National Center on Elder Abuse gathers data from states on that important topic. The United Nations have