Crime and deviance: Functionalism and Labelling

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  • Created on: 26-03-21 10:48
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  • Crime and deviance theory
    • Labelling
      • Howard Becker (1963)- book called 'The Outsiders'
        • Argued the deviant act has to be known, someone has to enforce the rules/draw attention to it and if the person is successfully labelled the consequences will follow
        • Master status- a label that dominates all others e.g. **********
        • Deviant career
          • The marijuana smokers (1963) had a choice and could stop if they wanted to (either turn away or pursue a deviant career
            • people have free will, it is not deterministic
        • Deviance is not the quality of the acta person commits but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions
      • Stuart Hall- black boys labelled as muggers
        • More likely to be stopped and searched
      • Taylor, Walton and Young (1973)- used labelling in their updating of Marxist criminology
      • Lemert (1972)- primary deviance is not important, secondary deviance is significant
        • Primary- deviance that has not been publicly labelled as such
        • Secondary follows once a person has been publicly labelled as deviant
      • Stanley Cohen (1972)- moral panics and folk devils
        • Mods and Rockers
      • Jock Young (1971)- Hippies in London
        • Many people smoked marijuana in small quantities as an occasional leisure pursuit
          • The police believed this would lead to harder drugs and cracked down on drug use
            • Drug users them began to not trust non-drug users and it became a staple of hippie culture
      • Deviancy amplification spiral- labelling can make deviance worse
      • Aaron Cicourel (1976)- class and ethnicity in America, Studied the way delinquency was dealt with in two California states
        • Decisions about deviance based upon interaction and negotiation
          • first stage is the decision by the police to stop and interrogation individual because they looked suspicious then negotiation takes place
            • Typifications tended to guide the decision making
      • John Braithwaite
        • Two types of shaming- disintegrative shaming (publicly labelled) and reintegrative (the crime is acknowledged but the emphasis is more on the criminal act rather than the lack of worth of the individual)
      • Evaluation
        • Provides insight into the nature of deviance not provided by structural theories
        • Removes blame from deviants to those that label them
        • Reveals the importance of stereotyping and the reactions of others
        • Assumes an act isn't deviant until it is labelled as such
        • Doesn't explain the causes of the act
      • Self fulfilling prophecy
    • Functionalism
      • Functions, Universal, Relative, Inevitable
      • Durkheim
        • crime has two sides
          • A positive side that helps society remain dynamic
          • A negative side where too much crime leads to social disruption
        • Anomie- normlessness
        • Egoism- the collective conscience is too weak too restrain people's selfish desires
      • Three functions
        • Boundary maintenance/ reaffirming boundaries-through rewards and punishments
          • modern world- through the media. historically- through public execution
        • Adaptation and change
          • e.g. homosexuals(pride and stonewall), feminists(suffragettes), civil rights(martin Luther King)
            • Women are not equal today(glass ceiling, triple shift), still hate crimes, black people are more likely to be stopped & searched
        • Social cohesion- creates social solidarity
          • community draws together in shared outrage
            • Polarises people e.g.911, Muslims labelled as terrorists, increased islamophobia & hate crimes
      • Robert K Merton (1930s)- strain theory
        • Society puts pressure on people with goals (American dream-power, money status) and means
          • Achievable because it is meritocratic- it is actually a myth
        • Ritualism, Retreatism, Rebellion, Conformity, Innovation
        • Wrongly assumes everyone wants the American dream, he tends to look at white working class white men, doesn't consider groups of people, most people with extreme strain don't turn to crime, fails to explain non-utilitarian crimes
      • Albert Cohen(1955)-status frustration and subculture
        • Cultural deprivation influenced students to gain status from their peers (Alternate status hierarchy)
          • Experience status frustration because they have been denied status in mainstream society
            • Develop alternate distinctive set of values- anti-school subculture
        • lower class children more likely to fail and feel humiliated
          • Miller argues that the WC always had its own independent subculture
        • helps explain working class delinquency as a group response,
      • Walter Miller (1962)- Boys behaviour (focal concerns)
        • Trouble, Excitement, Toughness, Smart(dress, quick-witted, clever)
      • David Matza
        • There were no distinctive subcultural values, all groups in society used a shared set of subterranean values
        • techniques of neutralisation- attempts to explain away actions
      • Katz(1988)- males get drawn into crime because it is thrilling not because of rejection
      • Stephen Lyng (1990)- young males like taking risks and engaging in 'edgework' e.g. jumping out of a plane
      • Travis Hirschi- control theory
        • Four social bonds- commitment, attachment, belief, involvement
        • Social order is based on shared values and socialisation- like Durkheim

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