Sociology of Crime

Kalyfornyah – part 1 & 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVOTG_jL8o8&feature=PlayList&p=04BAE9B96F17CE61&index=11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiPE0r3Mj9c&feature=PlayList&p=04BAE9B96F17CE61&index=12

This article was featured in the New York Times on April 22nd, 2009 on page A22 of the New York eduition. This article gives a story about two business partners who hoped to open a bar room in downtown New York City. The hopes of these two men slowly slipped away during the financial crisis and eventually owed the leasing company $267,000 in back rent. When the two learned of their debt they franticly tried to find out how to not only repay their debt but also how to repair their dream of opening their bar room. In an effort to gain this tremendous amount of money the business partners, Schwartz and Giamongas, conspiricied with SoHo security officer Gogoladze. This conspiricy consisted of a planned kidnapping of a real estate agent. The group kidnapped this man then forced him to give them seven signed blank checks that they would hope to provide a relief of debt.

This story is interesting for a few reasons. First this article is very interesting showing that “stranger” danger still exists. The victim, a real estate agent, had no connection to the offenders. This is a very unlikely circumstance that occurs at very low rates according to class discussion. Antother intersesting topic about this crime is that the offenders were of relatively high ages for criminal acts. The mean age of the three offenders was 46 years old with two men being 35 and the eldest being 70 years old. As we’ve learned in class many offenders tend to “phase” out of crime but these offenders seem to break the pattern. Also the very controversial inclusion that the three offenders were recent immigrants. This tries to point the finger away from American citizens and aims to provide the public with a “black sheep” that they can blame their problems on. All three of the offenders were either on a work visa or alledgely illegal immigrants.

Although the offenders only got away with cashing one of these checks for $25,000 they will certainly being paying this sum back and serving time for their actions. However repayment and incarceration won’t fix this problem thats facing America. Today more and more Americans are weary of job loss so these cases may become more frequent. This common belief is what I feel that this article tries to target. By showing these people as illegal immigrants and “Aliens” of immigration it tends to give the imagery that Americans wouldn’t ever commit an act like this. At a time of hardship the media tries to pull the population together under one united cause and the attack of immigrants is most likely a source that we will utilize considering the recent development of a fence between Texas and Mexico and an even more recent development of swine flu that’s continuely connected to “Mexican Dirtyness”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22arrest.html?_r=1

This article from the New York times describes a strange and frightening situation in which a man was kidnapped, threatened, and coerced into handing over blank checks to his assailants.  The back story behind the crime was that a bar owner who was having difficulty paying his rent requested that a rather sizeable man go and kidnap this agent and they would then threaten him with torture and possible death in order to steal his checks.  Police have aprehended the accused parties and they are now being charged with kidnapping and robbery.

This account seems similar to the concept of occupational crime described in Coleman’s book in that the crime was committed in order to further the business.  However, there should be question here of how respectable or “white-collar” the profession involved is.  This leads to a question that Coleman addresses; just how white-collar does the crime have to be in order to be concidered as such? This crime seems to involve a group of thugs extorting an innocent man in order to pay their overdue and expensive rent, but it seems possible to argue that the crime could fall under the category of an organizational crime.  After all, it was perpetrated in order to allow for the criminals to pay their rent and open a bar.

The most important distinction here is that the crime was not perpetrated during ordinary business transactions. The parties involved where not all members of the company and, for the most part, the purposes served by the crime are far more individual than they would be in Coleman’s examples of organizational crime.  While this is an interesting case, it is a much better example of desperate men robbing a person in an attempt to break even. So, I would have to say this isn’t exactly white-collar crime by Coleman’s definition but it does blur the lines between white-collar crime and ordinary street crime. This is a problematic factor in Coleman’s conceptualization of white-collar crime and he acknowledges it. When does a street criminal recieve enough recognition and respect that the crime becomes a white-collar one?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22arrest.html?_r=1

This article looks at the crime committed by Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev who were both sentenced to life in prison without parole on Tuesday.  The victim’s wife was convicted of ordering Mr. Mallayev to kill her husband.  As the article begins readers are informed that Mr. Malakov (thirty four) was murdered in front of the couple’s four year old daughter at a playground in Forest Hills.  This is a reflection of the news scripts from Gillian and Iyengar from our class notes on February 2nd; the media first announces that a crime has occurred, then transports to the scene and gives a description of the setting, and then identifies the suspects and the efforts of the law enforcement (court sentencing).  Other notes from that day discuss those patterns of reporting which occur in criminal acts; first involving crime and criminals Gilliam and Iyengar also found that our media mainly portrays violent criminal acts and disregards other crime such as white-collar crime.  They found that 83% of these new stories are dedicated to violent crime and that people of color are dangerous with data showing that whites account for 41% of all perpetrators while people of color are 59% of perpetrators.  In this particular case we see patterns of reporting in relations to victims; they say that anyone can be a victim at any time and that the ideal victim is a respectable person engaged in an innocent activity.  Mr. Malakov did nothing harmful to justify his murder and his wife was only mad after a judge awarded him temporary custody of their daughter.  Since this involved a case of homicide the courts have to look at the definitions which vary by state; in the traditional definition first degree would be with malice, intentional, and premeditated.  Specifically in New York first degree murder is only involving special circumstances which could be murder of a police officer, judge, fireman, etc and second degree murder is with malice, intentional, and premeditated (class notes, March 16^th).  From class notes on March 4^th we looked at the role that weapons play in crime and it was reported that in 21% of all violent crime weapons are used, and one-third of those weapons are firearms mainly handguns, strangers are also more likely to use weapons than non- strangers.  On that same day we found out that men are much more likely to be involved in violent crimes (except for rape) as women only account for 15% of violent crime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22dentist.html?_r=1

This article is about the attempted robbery of a woman offering lap dances in a hotel in Rhode Island. The man tied the woman up but thankfully her husband came into the room before anything could happen. The assailant fled and the husband chased him but was unsuccessful. This attack is believed to be committed by the Craigslist Killer who is the suspect in a murder case and a robbery.
I actually found this article in a different way. My mom had told me about the Craigsist killer so I googled it to learn more and found this article. My mom told me because this past summer I had replied to a bunch of job opportunities I found on Craigslist and my mom was saying that she didn’t want me to do that anymore. This killer has made her extremely worried. This reminds me of the panic that crime can cause which we discussed in class. I’m sure my mom is not alone in her worries and I bet many other people will be deterred from using Craigslist in the future. Craiglist is a very popular site and I would be interested to see how this case affects how many people will visit their site in the future which would be a good testament to whether it caused a panic or not. Also I think there was another murder recently unrelated to these where a woman responded to a babysitting ad on Craigslist and was then murdered and I wonder if this guy got the idea from him. The idea of killing someone who responds to an ad as opposed to someone who posts an ad is much scarier to me because that is what I did and for it to be so random ads another level of fear. I think it is interesting though how much scarier things are the more directly they are related to ones life. Like as soon as I found out this man was responding to masseuse ads, etc. I was immediately less scared because I thought “Oh I would never post a thing like that.” But the babysitting case was in the realm of things I have and would do so it feels way more real to me.
Another thing that interests me is that the killer only murdered one of the victims, robbed from the other, and attempted to rob from the third. Since this article is about the attempted robbery I don’t know a whole lot about the other cases but I would like to know the details of the murder case because it seems like it was not quite the pattern. I wonder if the woman was maybe fighting him and he killed her because it seems weird to me to have the mid set to kill just one victim and not the others. Because this case is receiving so much publicity and because the police have some pictures of the man I feel fairly confident that he will be caught.