Take this Exam: A-Level Sociology: crime and deviance | Zestly

Question 1

If a victim survey shows a significantly higher rate of crime than police-recorded statistics, what does this discrepancy tell us?

Accepted Answer

There is a 'dark figure' of unreported or unrecorded crime that the police do not capture.

Answer

Victims are always more accurate than the police in every instance.

Answer

The victim survey is the only objective measure of criminal activity.

Answer

The police are intentionally falsifying all records to make crime appear lower.

Question 2

A sequence: a group of young people is identified as a threat; newspapers report their behaviour repeatedly and in the strongest terms; public concern rises; police and magistrates respond more severely; and the resulting arrests are reported as proof that the concern was justified. What is this called, and where is the trap in it?

Accepted Answer

A moral panic — and the trap is that the reaction manufactures its own evidence: more attention and more arrests produce more recorded cases, which are then read as confirmation that the problem was growing.

Answer

Deterrence working as designed — the sequence shows the system identifying a threat and suppressing it.

Answer

A crime wave — a straightforward rise in offending which the press merely reported as it happened.

Answer

A moral panic — and the trap is that the press must have invented the original incident.

Question 3

Women are convicted of far fewer offences than men, and of a different range of them. Which statement best describes what the conviction figures can settle?

Accepted Answer

They settle nothing on their own. Lower conviction rates are consistent with women offending less, with their offences being less visible or handled informally, and with courts treating them differently — and the same figures fit all three.

Answer

They are useless, because official statistics never bear any relation to what actually happens.

Answer

They settle it: women commit less crime, and the figures are a straightforward record of that fact.

Answer

They show only that the courts are lenient towards women, since offending rates between the sexes must be equal.

Question 4

What can a disparity in stop-and-search rates between different ethnic groups establish on its own?

Answer

It confirms that the police are entirely free from any form of institutional bias.

Answer

It provides a complete and final explanation for all criminal behaviour in society.

Answer

It proves that one group is inherently more criminal than another.

Answer

It demonstrates a statistical difference in police interaction, but not the underlying cause.

Question 5

A council responds to car crime on an estate in two ways: it installs lighting, cameras and better locks on a car park, and it funds a youth project and an apprenticeship scheme. What is the difference between the two responses?

Answer

The first is the only one with any evidence behind it; social schemes have never been shown to affect offending.

Answer

The first designs out the opportunity, which can work quickly but may displace the offending elsewhere; the second addresses a cause, which is slower and does not move the problem next door.

Answer

The first addresses a cause and the second designs out the opportunity.

Answer

They are the same approach described in two ways, since both are funded by the council.

Question 6

A young man has been taught, like everyone else, that success means money, a car and a house of his own. The work available to him — shifts at a warehouse, no security, no progression — will never pay for any of it. He begins selling stolen goods, and does well at it. In terms of the strain between a society's goals and the means it distributes, which adaptation is this?

Answer

Rebellion: he rejects both, and works to replace them with different ones.

Answer

Ritualism: he has given up the goal and holds on to the rules.

Answer

Innovation: he keeps the goal his society taught him and reaches it by means that society does not approve.

Answer

Retreatism: he has abandoned both the goal and the approved means.