Page 203 - Essencials of Sociology

176 cHAPteR 6 Deviance and social control

Cultural Diversity around the World

“Dogging” in england

In some places in England, people like “dogging.” This is
their term for having sex in public so others can watch. The
sex often is between strangers who have arranged to meet
through the Internet. u.S.a.
“Dogging” is a strange term, and no one knows its origin.
The term might come from voyeurs who doggedly follow
people who are having sex. Or it might refer to the similarity
to female dogs in heat that have sex with any dog around.
Or it might even come from the statement “I’m just going to
walk the dog,” when they are really going out to do some-
thing else entirely. After listening to citizen complaints, the County Council
Regardless of the term’s origin, frolicking in the fields is Cabinet wanted to know if anyone had practical solutions.
popular. Internet sites even lay out basic rules, such as “Only One suggested that the police patrol the site with dogs.
join in if you are asked.” Another said they should fill the field with bad-tempered
The Internet sites also rate England’s dogging locations. bulls.
The field in Puttenham, a village an hour’s drive from London, Distressed at such inconsiderate reactions, one empathetic
is ranked Number 2 in England. The field is mostly used by cabinet member said, “If you close this site, they wouldn’t
homosexuals during the day, with heterosexuals taking over have anywhere else to go. There might be an increase in
at night. suicides.”
One motorist who stopped his car to use the bushes for a The citizens and Council members reached a compromise:
bathroom break was startled when a group of eager men sur- They would put up a sign. “Don’t have sex here” seemed too
rounded him. He said that he took the quickest pee in his life. direct for the English, so the sign, much more polite and cir-
Dogging isn’t legal, but the police mostly ignore it. The cuitous, says, “Do not engage in activities of an unacceptable
police have even warned the public, but in a discreet English nature.”
way. They have designated the field in Puttenham as a “pub-
lic sex environment.” Source: Based on Lyall 2010.
Some village residents are upset at the litter left behind,
from condoms to tea cups. Others are upset that the dog- For Your Consideration
ging field is just 400 yards from the village nursery school. A ↑ What do you think the police would do if there were a
woman who went to the police to complain showed them a “dogging” field in your town? What do you think the pub-
pink vibrator she had found in the field. “What should we do lic’s reaction would be? Why do you think the police are so
with it?” asked the officer. Seeing that she was going to get “heavy handed” in the United States while those in England
nowhere, she said they could just put it in Lost and Found. take such a lighter approach?

Street Crime and Prisons
Let’s turn back to the United States. Figure 6.2 on the next page shows the surge in the
U.S. prison population. Arrests and convictions have increased at such a torrid pace that
the states and federal government haven’t been able to build prisons fast enough to hold
all of their incoming prisoners. To keep up, they hired corporations to operate private
prisons for them. About 130,000 prisoners are held in these “for-profit” prisons (Source-
book of Criminal Justice Statistics 2010:Table 6.32.2009). Actually, the United States
has even more prisoners than shown in Figure 6.2, since this total does not include jail
inmates. If we add them, the total comes to about 2.3 million people—about one out
of every 135 citizens. Not only does the United States have more prisoners than any
other country in the world but it also has a larger percentage of its population in prison
(Massoglia et al. 2013). Another way of putting this is that the United States has only
5 percent of the world’s population but about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners
(Brayne 2013).
As you can see from Figure 6.2, the number of prisoners peaked in 2009. In 2010,
there was a slight decrease of prisoners (1,000), with a larger drop of 16,000 in 2011.