Room 611: Thursday, February 6. 2025

Today's schedule is DCBA

B Block Criminology - Today, we'll look at your lists of deviance and criminality from yesterday and then, you'll need to take one act from either list and explain why it should be criminalized or why it should be decriminalized. This should be based on an evaluation of harm...in other words how deviant or not is the action? If the action would cause great social harm then perhaps we should criminalize that behaviour. If the action causes minimal social harm then perhaps we should decriminalize that behaviour.

From the 2020 Model United Nations activity regarding the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

As shown above, “the varieties of deviance” (i.e. actions that violate social norms) are considered on three interacting variables: evaluation of social harm, agreement about the norm, and severity of societal response. Homicide is criminal because as a society we believe that taking another life is unacceptable and deviates from the accepted cultural norm that we wish our country to be like. Through law creation these actions are codified, public opinion and society’s morality are expressed, and avenues for social control and the prevention of activity society deems inappropriate are provided.

This will help us understand the Conflict, Interactionist and Consensus views on crime.

BC Open School Intro Sociology text Chapter 7
Relationship between Deviance and Crime (Jlaw)
Cliff Notes Theories of Deviance

Introduction to Sociology - Deviance Crime and Social Control and another version of the topic here

A Block Physical Geography - Today, we'll work on some basics of geography focusing on time zones, latitude and longitude, GPS, and the remote sensing technology of GIS.

From PBS NOVA

It was one of humankind's most epic quests - a technical problem so complex that it challenged the best minds of its time, a problem so important that the nation that solved it would rule the economy of the world. The problem was navigation by sea—how to know where you were when you sailed beyond the sight of land - establishing your longitude. In 1714, following a maritime disaster, the British Parliament offered £20,000 for the first reliable method of determining longitude on a ship at sea (adjusted for inflation that is roughly the equivalent of £5,780,306 today which is $10,457,411 CAD). While the gentry of the 18th Century looked to the stars for the answer, an English clockmaker, John Harrison, toiled for decades to solve the problem. His elegant solution made him an unlikely hero and remains the basis for the most modern forms of navigation in the world today.