SOC 2700 PREP EXAM QUESTIONS
WITH ALL DETAILED ANSWERS 2026-
2027 UPDATED.
HENRY AND MILOVANOVIC (2005): Postmodernist Criminology: - Answer - truth is unknowable
- rational thought is merely one way of thinking
- knowledge is not cumulative
- facts are only social constructions
- criticism assumes an alternative truth that can be found
ARRIGO (2003): Postmodern criminological thought (3) - Answer 1) The centrality of language
2) Partial knowledge and provisional truth
3) Deconstruction, difference and possibility
THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY - Answer "wholesale improvement in social conditions resulted not in
a drop in crime but [rather] the reverse"
Objections:
1) structural functionalism
2) deterministic treatment of crime
"Central to our concerns is the explanation of law and criminality in terms of the dominant
mode of production and the class nature of society"
LEFT REALISM - Answer - Origins, nature and impact of crime in the working class
- Study of victimology
--> geography and social dimensions
--> risk rate of vulnerability
Left realism is a reaction to "left idealism" which are extra positions that radical/critical
criminology regard crime and criminology.
- early on, left realists were primarily focused on predatory street crime, such as robbery, almost
to the exclusion of interest in crimes committed by the working class against fellow members of
the working class
,CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY:
Jeff Ferrell argues power / domination stems from: - Answer - structures of knowledge
- perception
- understanding
- Was created by Jeff Ferrell, an American
- the focus is on cultural forces and factors in crime where members of a society carry out and
view their everyday life with a range of symbolic meanings of actions and words. It is part of
critical criminology, as it is against orthodox criminology.
- In this theory there are parts of symbolic interactionism, social constructionism, verstehen,
social disorganization, anomie, subcultures, labeling, conflict, and many other
sociological theories.
-
Culture: - Answer refers to the values, norms, beliefs, moral evaluations, symbolic meanings,
and normative orientations shared or professed by members of a social system (society,
community, etc.)
Cultural Criminology: - Answer - emphasizes culture as the symbolic environment occupied by
individuals and groups and involves threads of collective meaning that wind in and around
everyday troubles of social actors (perpetrators, police, victims, parole violators, etc.) the
negotiation of cultural meaning intertwining with the immediacy of criminal experience.
Left Idealism: - Answer - mean the tendency in many radical and Marxist critiques of capitalist
society and its oppressive criminal justice system to overlook the reality of pain and suffering
generated by criminal offenders who victimize their fellow human beings, usually the poor and
powerless.
- Left idealists "treat crime as an epiphenomenon, with the criminal conceived of as a sort of
socialist homunculus or proto-revolutionary being viewed as determined and blameless,
punishment as unwarranted or amplificatory"
Culture is not viewed as stable or static traditions but as ... - Answer meanings and symbols of
crime and societal reactions "constructed" by offenders (particularly as found in subcultures) by
criminal justice and social control agents, and others in society.
Cultural criminologists particularly object to.. - Answer - present-day rational choice and
routine activities theory (see Chapter 2), described as removing everything from criminological
consideration except the individual's cold calculus of risks and costs.
,rational choice theory: We are rational people with free will who make decisions that will better
our lives o What is going to give us the most pleasure for the least pain
routine activities theory: Crime happens within our routine activities in our daily life
In cultural criminology, crime as individual choice does not exist outside of its ... - Answer -
constructed social and situational context. But cultural criminologists also condemn the
"positivism" they find in almost all criminological theories; even rational choice theory is
dismissed as a "form of market positivism"
- Positivism: social phemonmen should only be studied is using the methods of the natural
sciences.
Cultural criminology is presented as ... - Answer as an alternative perspective to both rational
choice and positivist theory that is inductive and qualitative and more attuned to the social
reality of crime. It is built on participant observation, interviews, ethnography, content analysis,
analysis of the mass media and its role in the fuzzy interplay between what is "real" and what is
"virtual" in crime and justice, visual sociology, and other non-quantitative methods of
investigating crime, deviance, and policy.
PEACEMAKING CRIMINOLOGY: - Answer - Designed by Pepinsky and Quinney, who liken crime
and its control to war and declare that its time to try peace between offenders, victims, police,
and the community. Peacemaking criminology advocates for mediation, conflict resolution,
reconciliation, and reintegration of the offender into the community. It comes from religious,
humanist, feminist, Marxist and critical traditions.
- It involves Christianity and Buddhism where it is a spiritual, transcendental and visionary
preaching of nonviolence and to end suffering
- If suffering can be ended than crime can end, where the CJS is organized on the principle of
violence. This should be replaced with principles of love and nonviolence as the only solution to
crime. It has not been tested with empirical evidence yet and is quite new to criminology. It is
considered more of a philosophy than theory right now
Constitutive criminology, postmodern, left/critical realism, cultural criminology, and
peacemaking criminology have all been identified as ... - Answer varieties of critical or radical
criminology. All offer a critique of criminology as practiced by others and a critique of society
and the criminal justice system
Constitutive criminology rejects ... - Answer the search for causes of crime and views it as the
product of "discursive practices" among offenders, controllers, and victims.
, Left/critical realism rejects ... - Answer this kind of reasoning and policy as unrealistic and
proposes reform in the criminal justice system to deal with the real pain and suffering caused by
crime in society.
Symbolic Interactionism - Answer - Roots of labeling are symbolic interactionism
- Labelling has its roots in symbolic interactionism - this is when society is given life
through the interactions with people, how we relate to one another is based on how
we have experiences with one another and how they will make us feel and to act
- They are micro-level through small groups or on an individual basis not a large crowd
- They happen in social situations
- Not just stimulus --> response, but stimulus --> interpretation --> response
LABELING THEORY (3) - Answer - Primary Deviance: We all are engaged in this, we have done
something that is seen as deviant by someone
else but they done really affect us in our daily lifestyle (ex. smoking, drinking underage) (one
time thing)
- Secondary Deviance: It starts to affect our relationships, opportunities, life chances and
ourselves. The affects that society reaction has on the individual, criminal charge, etc. (Ex: you
stole something once, and now everyone accuses you of stealing their stuff )
- Master Status: we only see these people through the label given to them, nothing else (Ex:
someone that is 85 is seen as old not someone who a PhD in biological science). This is the lens
that we see them through
LABELING THEORY DEFINITION: - Answer - is named after the informal and formal application
of stigmatizing deviant 'label's or tags by society on some of its members.
- The labels can be a dependent variable (effect) and independent variables (cause.).
- Dependent variable when it attempts to explain why certain behaviour is socially defined as
wrong and certain people are selected for stigmatization and criminalization.
- Independent variable when it hypothesizes that discrediting labels cause continuation and
escalation of the criminal or delinquent behaviour.
- The agents of control, who function on behalf of the powerful in society, impose the labels on
the less powerful. The powerful decide which behaviour will be banned, criminal, deviant, etc.
Self-fulfilling prophecy - Answer - when we have a shift from primary to secondary deviance
WITH ALL DETAILED ANSWERS 2026-
2027 UPDATED.
HENRY AND MILOVANOVIC (2005): Postmodernist Criminology: - Answer - truth is unknowable
- rational thought is merely one way of thinking
- knowledge is not cumulative
- facts are only social constructions
- criticism assumes an alternative truth that can be found
ARRIGO (2003): Postmodern criminological thought (3) - Answer 1) The centrality of language
2) Partial knowledge and provisional truth
3) Deconstruction, difference and possibility
THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY - Answer "wholesale improvement in social conditions resulted not in
a drop in crime but [rather] the reverse"
Objections:
1) structural functionalism
2) deterministic treatment of crime
"Central to our concerns is the explanation of law and criminality in terms of the dominant
mode of production and the class nature of society"
LEFT REALISM - Answer - Origins, nature and impact of crime in the working class
- Study of victimology
--> geography and social dimensions
--> risk rate of vulnerability
Left realism is a reaction to "left idealism" which are extra positions that radical/critical
criminology regard crime and criminology.
- early on, left realists were primarily focused on predatory street crime, such as robbery, almost
to the exclusion of interest in crimes committed by the working class against fellow members of
the working class
,CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY:
Jeff Ferrell argues power / domination stems from: - Answer - structures of knowledge
- perception
- understanding
- Was created by Jeff Ferrell, an American
- the focus is on cultural forces and factors in crime where members of a society carry out and
view their everyday life with a range of symbolic meanings of actions and words. It is part of
critical criminology, as it is against orthodox criminology.
- In this theory there are parts of symbolic interactionism, social constructionism, verstehen,
social disorganization, anomie, subcultures, labeling, conflict, and many other
sociological theories.
-
Culture: - Answer refers to the values, norms, beliefs, moral evaluations, symbolic meanings,
and normative orientations shared or professed by members of a social system (society,
community, etc.)
Cultural Criminology: - Answer - emphasizes culture as the symbolic environment occupied by
individuals and groups and involves threads of collective meaning that wind in and around
everyday troubles of social actors (perpetrators, police, victims, parole violators, etc.) the
negotiation of cultural meaning intertwining with the immediacy of criminal experience.
Left Idealism: - Answer - mean the tendency in many radical and Marxist critiques of capitalist
society and its oppressive criminal justice system to overlook the reality of pain and suffering
generated by criminal offenders who victimize their fellow human beings, usually the poor and
powerless.
- Left idealists "treat crime as an epiphenomenon, with the criminal conceived of as a sort of
socialist homunculus or proto-revolutionary being viewed as determined and blameless,
punishment as unwarranted or amplificatory"
Culture is not viewed as stable or static traditions but as ... - Answer meanings and symbols of
crime and societal reactions "constructed" by offenders (particularly as found in subcultures) by
criminal justice and social control agents, and others in society.
Cultural criminologists particularly object to.. - Answer - present-day rational choice and
routine activities theory (see Chapter 2), described as removing everything from criminological
consideration except the individual's cold calculus of risks and costs.
,rational choice theory: We are rational people with free will who make decisions that will better
our lives o What is going to give us the most pleasure for the least pain
routine activities theory: Crime happens within our routine activities in our daily life
In cultural criminology, crime as individual choice does not exist outside of its ... - Answer -
constructed social and situational context. But cultural criminologists also condemn the
"positivism" they find in almost all criminological theories; even rational choice theory is
dismissed as a "form of market positivism"
- Positivism: social phemonmen should only be studied is using the methods of the natural
sciences.
Cultural criminology is presented as ... - Answer as an alternative perspective to both rational
choice and positivist theory that is inductive and qualitative and more attuned to the social
reality of crime. It is built on participant observation, interviews, ethnography, content analysis,
analysis of the mass media and its role in the fuzzy interplay between what is "real" and what is
"virtual" in crime and justice, visual sociology, and other non-quantitative methods of
investigating crime, deviance, and policy.
PEACEMAKING CRIMINOLOGY: - Answer - Designed by Pepinsky and Quinney, who liken crime
and its control to war and declare that its time to try peace between offenders, victims, police,
and the community. Peacemaking criminology advocates for mediation, conflict resolution,
reconciliation, and reintegration of the offender into the community. It comes from religious,
humanist, feminist, Marxist and critical traditions.
- It involves Christianity and Buddhism where it is a spiritual, transcendental and visionary
preaching of nonviolence and to end suffering
- If suffering can be ended than crime can end, where the CJS is organized on the principle of
violence. This should be replaced with principles of love and nonviolence as the only solution to
crime. It has not been tested with empirical evidence yet and is quite new to criminology. It is
considered more of a philosophy than theory right now
Constitutive criminology, postmodern, left/critical realism, cultural criminology, and
peacemaking criminology have all been identified as ... - Answer varieties of critical or radical
criminology. All offer a critique of criminology as practiced by others and a critique of society
and the criminal justice system
Constitutive criminology rejects ... - Answer the search for causes of crime and views it as the
product of "discursive practices" among offenders, controllers, and victims.
, Left/critical realism rejects ... - Answer this kind of reasoning and policy as unrealistic and
proposes reform in the criminal justice system to deal with the real pain and suffering caused by
crime in society.
Symbolic Interactionism - Answer - Roots of labeling are symbolic interactionism
- Labelling has its roots in symbolic interactionism - this is when society is given life
through the interactions with people, how we relate to one another is based on how
we have experiences with one another and how they will make us feel and to act
- They are micro-level through small groups or on an individual basis not a large crowd
- They happen in social situations
- Not just stimulus --> response, but stimulus --> interpretation --> response
LABELING THEORY (3) - Answer - Primary Deviance: We all are engaged in this, we have done
something that is seen as deviant by someone
else but they done really affect us in our daily lifestyle (ex. smoking, drinking underage) (one
time thing)
- Secondary Deviance: It starts to affect our relationships, opportunities, life chances and
ourselves. The affects that society reaction has on the individual, criminal charge, etc. (Ex: you
stole something once, and now everyone accuses you of stealing their stuff )
- Master Status: we only see these people through the label given to them, nothing else (Ex:
someone that is 85 is seen as old not someone who a PhD in biological science). This is the lens
that we see them through
LABELING THEORY DEFINITION: - Answer - is named after the informal and formal application
of stigmatizing deviant 'label's or tags by society on some of its members.
- The labels can be a dependent variable (effect) and independent variables (cause.).
- Dependent variable when it attempts to explain why certain behaviour is socially defined as
wrong and certain people are selected for stigmatization and criminalization.
- Independent variable when it hypothesizes that discrediting labels cause continuation and
escalation of the criminal or delinquent behaviour.
- The agents of control, who function on behalf of the powerful in society, impose the labels on
the less powerful. The powerful decide which behaviour will be banned, criminal, deviant, etc.
Self-fulfilling prophecy - Answer - when we have a shift from primary to secondary deviance
