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Culture and Crime
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Culture and Crime
Culture
Culture refers to the values, customs, and beliefs of a specific group/. People sharing the same culture in most cases tend to behave in a particular manner (Ramone 2016). The way they communicate, treat each other, dress among other things heavily relies on the expectations of the culture. This raises the importance of having people understanding different cultures, in order to accept and appreciate others (Newman & Wolfgang 2017).
Role of culture in shaping human behavior
Culture plays an important role in shaping human behavior (Chen et al 2018). As much as most people would argue that human behavior is heavily influenced by the mental state of the person, the surroundings also matter. People and even children tend to do what other people do around them. Just to prevent them from being different. The way children are trained to handle different things they tend to stick to that up to their later stages in life (Helmreich & Merritt 2017). Some of the factors like urbanization are among the things that influence people to turn away from their culture. But then they would still end up practicing the urban culture. Basically, culture has a powerful control over how human beings behave.
“Crime is a social construct”
Behaviors become a crime, through the social construction process. This means that whether the behavior is good or bad, in order for it to be termed as a crime relies on the social response (Dowler et al 2006). There are certain activities which are accepted to a certain group of people or countries but when the same activities are performed anywhere else it becomes a great deal. Simply because it does not meet the social expectations of that particular area. Basically, for an action to be viewed as a crime, there is a great social responsibility that must be involved. People decide what a crime is and what is not. For this reason, we can say the Crime is a social Construct” (Chakraborti & Garland 2012).
References
Chakraborti, N., & Garland, J. (2012). Reconceptualizing hate crime victimization through the lens of vulnerability and ‘difference’. Theoretical Criminology, 16(4), 499-514.
Chen, H. Y., Yarnal, C., Chick, G., & Jablonski, N. (2018). Egg white or sun-kissed: A cross-cultural exploration of skin color and women’s leisure behavior. Sex Roles, 78(3-4), 255-271.
Dowler, K., Fleming, T., & Muzzatti, S. L. (2006). Constructing crime: Media, crime, and popular culture. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 48(6), 837-850.
Helmreich, R. L., & Merritt, A. C. (2017). Culture at work in aviation and medicine: National, organizational and professional influences. Routledge.
Newman, G. R., & Wolfgang, M. E. (2017). Comparative deviance: Perception and law in six cultures. Routledge.
Ramone, J. (2016). Reading takes place: reading and the politics of space in Leonardo Padura’s Havana quartet. Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, 4(1), 99-118.
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