Crime and Deviance Theory

Durkehim argued crime is an inevitable feature of social life.

- Boundary Maintance: if an individual witnesses a punishment, they will be put off by the idea of committing that crime 

- Adaptation and Change: deviance is necessary to allow new ideas to develop e.g. homosexuality

- Safety Valve: releasing stress in society e.g. prostitution

- Warning Light: shows when something isn't working properly e.g. high truancy rates would show something is wrong with the education system

Merton argues that in an unequal society, not all individuals have the same opportunity of realizing these goals by approved means because of things such as unempoloyment, low pay and lack of educational success. 

This means they face a sense of strain and anomie, as the dominant rules about how to achieve success don't meet their needs. He argues there are different 'modes of adaptation' to this situation:

Conformity - accept means and goals

Innovation - doesn't accept means but accepts goals

Ritualism - give up on achieving goals but stick to means

Retreatism - drop-outs who give up all together

Rebellion - create new means and goals

Cohen argues that WC youth believe in the success goals of mainstream culture, but their experience of failure in education, living in deprived areas and having theworst chances in the job market.

They feel denied status in mainstream society, and experience status frustration. They react to this by developing alternative distinctive set of values - a delinquent subculture. 

This gives WC youth an opportunity to achieve some status in their peer group which they are denied in the wider society.

+ Helps explain WC delinquency as a group response rather than focused on individuals

- Assumes that WC delinquents accept the mainstream values as superior and desirable 

They suggest the varied social cirumstances in which WC youth live give rise to 3 types of subcultures:

Criminal Subcultures are charaterized by useful crimes, such as theft. They develop in more stable WC areas where there is an established pattern of adult crime. This provides a learning oppertunity.

Conflict Subcultures emerge in socially disorganised areas where there is a high rate of population turnover and a consequent lack of social cohesion.

Retreatist Subcultures emerge among those lower-class youth who are 'double failures' - they have failed to succeed both in mainstream society and in the crime and gang culures of the criminal subcultures.

+ Helpful as it gives insights into why WC delinquency may take diffferent forms in different social cirumstances

- However, they exaggerate the differences between the three types of subculture, as there is overlap between them

Miller explains deviance and crime in terms of a distinctive WC subculture which he suggests has existed for centuries.

This subculture revolves around central characteristics that Miller calls 'focal concerns'.

These focal concerns include an emphasis on toughness, masculinity and a search for thrills.

Such values carry with them the risk of law-breaking. These values become exaggerated in the lives of young people, as they search for peer-group status.

It is therefore over-conformity to lower WC subculture, rather than the rejection of dominant values, that explains WC delinquency.

1) They generally assume there is some initial value consensus, from whihc people deviate in some way. 

2) Subcultural explanations only explain WC delinquencys, and do not explain white-collar and corporate crimes.

3) They rely on the pattern of crime shown in official crime statistics.

4) Matza criticises subcultural theories for making the delinquent out to be differen from other people.

Hirschi believes that social order is based on shared values and socialisation through institutions intergrating individuals into society. Instead of asking what drives people to commit crime, Hirschi asks why people do not commit crime.

Control theorists argue that all human beings suffer from weaknesses which make them unable to resist temptation to turn to crime, but there are social bonds with other people that encourage them to exercise self-control.

He identified 4 social bonds:

1) Commitment  - people have commitments such as working, raising a family and buliding for the future meaning that they wouldn't want to risk losing this through crime

2) Attachment - people are attached to those around them meaning they are interested in their needs

3) Belief - people share moral beliefs, such as respect and rights of others

4) Involvement - people are involved and kept busy meaning they have no time to commit crime

+ It recognises the importance of socialisation and social control in maintaing a cohesive society

- It assumes that those who commit crime and deviance have broken away from the bonds tying them into mainstream values, but Merton's theory suggest criminals are committed to those values

- It doesn't explain why some have weaker bonds than others

- It doesn't explain the variety of forms of deviance and crime

- It doesn't recognise that it is possible to be deviant and have tight social bonds

Marxists like functionalists see people's behaviour moulded by the social structure, but Marxists regard this structure as based on conflict between social classes, with social inequlality as the driving force behind crime

1) Capitalist Society is Criminogenic: Crime is 'in-built' and 'natural' outgrowth of a capitalist society. Crime is a rational response to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies. Gordon suggests that what is surprising in these circumstances is not that WC commit crime, but that they don't commit more of it.

2) The Law Reflects Ruling-Class Ideology: Box argues that what is defined as serious crime is ideologically constructed. Serious crime is identified as offences such as property or violence crime which are mainly committed by the WC. Whereas, envrionmenal crime such as oil spills, is ignored.

3) Selective Law Enforcement: Chambliss suggests there's one law for the rich and another for the poor, with crime control focused on the WC. 

Neo-Marxists argue that TM theories are too deterministic in suggesting people are driven into crime by forces beyond their control. They suggest no one is forced to commit crime.

WC criminals are seen almost as Robin Hood figures, taking forms of political action against inequlities in power and wealth.

The New Criminology was developed by Taylor et al in the 1970s. They suggest that to fully understand crime and deviance, it's necessary to draw on both structural and interactionist appraoches. The wider socail origins of the deviant act, the immediate origins of the deviant act, the actual act and what it means to the deviant, the immediate origins of societal reaction, the wider origins of societal reaction and the outcomes of the societal reaction on the deviants' further action

This was applied by Hall et al. Crime was used to reassert the dominance of ruling-class hegemony at a time when it was under threat to to political crisis. This was achieved by diverting people's attention away from wider structural causes.

- They over-emphasise property crime, and don't have much to say about non-property crime like raple and domestic abuse.

- They over-emphasis class inequality in relation to crime.

- Feminists regard many Marxist theories of crime as malestream, for focusing mainly on male criminality.

- It is difficult to interpret all laws as reflecting ruling-class interests: there are many that are in everyone's interest such as traffic laws.

- They pay little attention to the victims of crime.

Many people involve themselves in some deviant behaviour, so it is hard to sustain a distinction between deviants and non-deviants. Labelling theory focuses on:

1) The interaction between deviants and those who define them as deviant

2) The process whereby rules are selectively enforced

3) The consequences of being labeleld 'deviant'

4) The circumstances in which a person becomes set apart and definded as deviant

5) An analysis of who has the power to attach deviant labels and make them 'stick'

Becker suggests that an act only becomes deviant when others perceive and define it as such.

Cicourel suggests law-enforcers subcjective perceptions and stereotypes can affect whether criminal labels are attached, and how these lead to the social constructions of crime statistics.

In his study of two US cities, he found juvenile crime rates to be consistently higher in WC areas than MC areas.

He found this was because police viewed the behaviour of MC and WC juveniles differently even when they were engaged in the same behaviour. 

Lemert distinguishes between primary and seconday deviance.

Primary deviance is deviance that has not been publicly labelled as such. For example, people might break traffic laws. This has few consequences.

However, once an offender is discovered and publicly exposed and the label of 'deviant' is attached, secondary deviance might occur.

Becker points out that the attachment of the label may have major consequences for the individual's view of themselves. This is because the deivant label can become a master status. 

A master status is a status that overrides any other characteristic which the individual may possess. For example, if caught downloading child ****, other identities such as father, son, husband etc become displaced by labels such as 'sex offender' 

+ It provides insights into the nature of deviance

+ It shows the importance of the reactions of others in defining and creating deviance

+ It reveals the way official crime statistics are a product of bias in law-enforcement

+ It shows how the deviant label can affect self-concept

- It tends to remove the blame for deviance away from the deivant and onto those who define them as deviant

- It doesn't explain the cause of deviant behaviour

- It assumes an act isn't deviant until it is labelled as such

Developed in the 1980s and identified with Lea and Young

They try to explain crime using three key concepts:

1) Relative Deprivation: Seeing themselves as deprived relative to others they compare themselves with. This can genderate discontent and resentment as their expectations are not met. E.G. Seeing someone with an IPhone X

2) Marginalisation: Some groups experience marginality, as they find themselves politically and economically 'on the edge' of mainstream society, and face social exclusion throught factors like poor education and lack of involvement in community.

3) Subcluture: WC deviant subcultures emerge as group solutions to the problems of relative deprivation and marginality arising from social inequalitty, though they take different forms over time

Young has more recently developed Left Realism and argues that late modern societies are media saturated, adn everyone, even the poorest, is included in consumer culture through constant exposure to advertising of consumer goods and media-genderated lifestyles.

However, this cultural inclusion is accompanied for those at the bottom of the  class structure by social and economic exclusion, which means they cannot afford to actively participate in consumer society. Young argued this process whereby cultural inclusion was combined with social and economic exclusion was creating a 'bulimic society'.

They suggested it is necessary to examine the inter-relationships between four elements of what ahs been called 'the square of crime':

1) Social structural factors and formal social control by state. 

2) The public and the extent of informal social control

3) The role of victims

4) The offenders

+ Draws on a range of theories

+ Sees the importance of community solutions of crime

+ Does not glamorise crime

- Negelcts other responses to relative deprivation and marginality apart from crime

- Neglects gender as a significant issue

- Doesn't pay much attention to white-collar crime

1) Value consensus and shared morality underpin society: social order is crucial, and individuals should be able to live their lives without fear of crime

2) People are naturally selfish: Have their natural tendency to take shortcuts by committing crime regulated by the agencies of socialisation

3) Community control: it is poor socialisation and lack of community control that lie behind crime. Murray suggests underclass is characterised by welfare dependency. Meaning parents fail to properly socialise and control their children

4) Rational choice and opportuinity: Cornish and Clarke suggested that people choose to commit crime because they decide that the benefits are greated than the potential costs

5) Crime will always exist: there will always be people whose natural selfishness and greed will slip through other controls

+ It addresses the immediate causes of crime

+ It recognises the importance of community control

- It doesn't address the wider structural causes of crime

- Doesn't pay attention to white-collar crime

They argue that society is changing so rapidly that it is marked by undercerainty and risk, and society is diverse and fragmented, with a huge variety of groups with different interesnts.

They view crime as a social construction, based on narrow legal definition, reflecting an outdated metanarrative of the law which does not reflect the diversity of postmodern society. 

A Transgressive Approach: Henry and Milovanovic

They suggest that crime should be reconceptualised as people using power to show disrespect for, and causing harm of some sort to, others whether or not it is illegal, embracing all threats and risks to people pursuing increasingly diverse lifestyles and identities.

1) Harms of reduction: power is used to cause a victim to experience some immediate loss or injury

2) Harms of repression: power is used to restrict future human development

Katz and Lyng studied crime as 'edgework', with individuals committing crime for the excitement and thrills they get from the risk-taking involved and from living 'on the edge' as they explore the boundries between legal and criminal behaviour.

They also argue that people commit crime to get a 'thirll'. Committing crime may be gratifying, seductive adventure and generating a buzz of emotion from the risk taking. 

+ Recognises that there are other dimensions to the causes of crime beyond the more structural theories 

+ Provides a fuller picture of the pattern of crime 

- Doesn't explain why most people dont use their power to harm others

- Fails to recognise that the consumer good, can lead to resenment among those who can't afford to participate