Who and when
Eduqas GCSE Sociology C200QS
Socialisation, Culture and Identity
Families
Education
Sociological Research Methods
Social Differentiation and Stratification
Crime and Deviance
Applied Methods of Sociological Enquiry
Crime and Deviance
- 5 subtopics
- 15 things to know
- Component 2
What Crime and Deviance covers
Crime and Deviance is examined in Component 2, Understanding Social Structures. It covers social construction of crime and deviance, social control, police and courts, patterns of crime by class, gender, ethnicity and age, theories of crime and deviance and sources of data on crime.
Where it is assessed
Component 2
Understanding Social Structures, a 1 hour 45 minute paper worth 50% of the GCSE.
Check the Eduqas specification ↗The 5 subtopics
Each one has its own page.
- Social construction of crime and devianceCrime and deviance, how definitions change across time, place and situation, moral entrepreneurs and Mary Whitehouse, positive deviance, and the Marxist view of who makes the law.Open →
- Social control, police and courtsInformal control by family, peers, school, religion and media, the police, courts and sentencing, youth justice, and Heidensohn's feminist control theory.Open →
- Patterns of crime by class, gender, ethnicity and ageWhite-collar and corporate crime, offending by age and gender, the chivalry thesis and double deviance, Carlen's class and gender deals, the Lammy Review, stop and search, left realism and Hall's Policing the Crisis.Open →
- Theories of crime and devianceDurkheim on the functions of crime, Merton's strain theory, Albert Cohen's status frustration, Chambliss's Saints and Roughnecks, Marxist differential enforcement, and Becker's labelling theory.Open →
- Sources of data on crimePolice recorded crime, the dark figure, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, self-report studies, the Macpherson Report, the typical offender, moral panics and invisible crime.Open →
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Your recallNot started
Key term
How can a label lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy and a deviant career?
Numbers
What do interactionists mean by the typical offender?
Key term
What is crime?
Key term
What do official statistics suggest about social class and crime?
Key term
What is deviance?
Key term
What are unwritten rules, and why does breaking them count as deviance?
Key term
Why might middle-class crime be under-represented in official statistics?
Key term
How do consensus and conflict theories differ in explaining crime?
Numbers
What long-term trend in crime does the Crime Survey for England and Wales show?
Key term
Give an example of an act that is deviant but not criminal, and one that is criminal but rarely seen as deviant.
Key term
How does informal social control help prevent crime?
Numbers
What is white-collar crime, and who coined the term?
Numbers
Why did Durkheim argue that crime is normal and inevitable?
Key term
What are official crime statistics?
Take Crime and Deviance further
The same content, four other ways.
Commonly confused
Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.
White-collar crime vs Corporate crime
White-collar crime: offences by high-status individuals in the course of their own jobs. Corporate crime: offences committed by or on behalf of a company for its profit.
Unreported crime vs Unrecorded crime
Unreported crime: offences that victims or witnesses never tell the police about. Unrecorded crime: offences police are told about but do not log officially.
Victim survey vs Self-report study
Victim survey: research asking people which offences they have suffered. Self-report study: research asking people which offences they have committed.
Questions from this topic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What is crime?
Model answer
Crime is behaviour that breaks the criminal law and can be punished by the state. Theft, assault and fraud are examples.
- 2
What is deviance?
Model answer
Deviance is behaviour that goes against the norms and expectations of a social group. Deviant acts may or may not be illegal.
- 3
Give an example of an act that is deviant but not criminal, and one that is criminal but rarely seen as deviant.
Model answer
Shouting during a funeral service is deviant but not illegal. Driving a few miles an hour over the speed limit is illegal but widely tolerated.
- 4
Why do sociologists say crime and deviance are socially constructed?
Model answer
Sociologists argue no act is deviant in itself. An act becomes crime or deviance because a society defines it that way, and those definitions change.
- 5
How does the law on homosexuality show that crime varies over time?
Model answer
Sex between men was a crime in England and Wales until the Sexual Offences Act 1967 partly decriminalised it. Hostility based on sexual orientation can now make a sentence tougher, under section 66 of the Sentencing Act 2020, which replaced the Criminal Justice Act 2003 provision.
- 6
Give two examples of acts that have become crimes more recently in the UK.
Model answer
Smoking in enclosed public places such as pubs was banned in England in 2007. The Serious Crime Act 2015 made controlling or coercive behaviour in a relationship an offence.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Crime and Deviance revision questions
- What does Crime and Deviance cover in Eduqas GCSE Sociology?
- 5 subtopics: social construction of crime and deviance, social control, police and courts, patterns of crime by class, gender, ethnicity and age, theories of crime and deviance and sources of data on crime. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.
- How is Crime and Deviance organised?
- By the Eduqas C200QS specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.
Every question in Crime and Deviance, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
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