Definition Of Crime From The Social Constructionist Perspective

Hall jerome general principles of criminal law 1947.

Definition of crime from the social constructionist perspective. The past decade has witnessed considerable research that in varying degree uses or is relevant to the social constructionist or definitional view. 8 18 has defined crime as legally forbidden and intentional action which has a harmful impact on social interests which has a criminal intent and which has legally prescribed punishment for it. According to social constructionists what counts as crime varies depending on who is defining it. Social constructionism is the theory that people develop knowledge of the world in a social context and that much of what we perceive as reality depends on shared assumptions.

In this essay i. From a social constructionist perspective many things we take for granted and believe are objective reality are actually socially constructed and thus can change as society changes. Crime and deviance as social constructions. From a social constructionist perspective a given act or behavior abortion drunk driving domestic violence race or ethnic bias becomes a social problem through a process of successful claims making by social movements or groups that advance a particular definition of a problem and seek to mobilize particular kinds of social response such as psychiatric evaluation medical treatment or imprisonment.

Related quotation we can say that an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of the collective consciousness. Types of social constructionism a. A noun social constructionist studies adjective social constructionistic or adjective social constructionistical topics adverb social constructionistically. The social constructionist perspective offers a way to define understand and study social problems that is decidedly distinct from previous perspectives.

The starting point of the social constructionist critique is to challenge the veracity of the legal definition of crime as an intentional act or omission in violation of criminal law statutory and case law committed without defense or justification and sanctioned by the state as a felony or misdemeanor tappan 1947 p.