Crime & Deviance theories

• Structural - source of crime located in structure of society, crime is caused by society
• Social order and cohesion based on value consensus, agencies of social control protect this

Durkheim (1895)

• Anomie causes crime, but crime is functional, certain level is beneficial for society
• 4 positive functions of crime - enables social change, strengthens norms and values, acts as safety valve (stop bigger crimes happening), act as warning device (draws attention to issue)

Merton (1968)

• Strain between goals of society (wealth) and acceptable means of achieving goals (job)
• Some cannot access legitimate means so turn to crime and deviance
• 5 responses to strain - conformity (accept goal and means), innovation (accept goal, reject means), ritualism (reject goal, accept means), retreatism (reject goal and means) and rebellion (new goal and new means)

Evaluation of Durkheim (1895)

• First social explanation of crime and deviance
• Fails to explain why certain groups are more/less likely to commit crime and deviance
• Marxists - Durkheim overestimates value consenus and level of crime
• Not all crime is functional, e.g. 9/11

Evaluation of Merton (1968)

• Tries to show why people commit crime, in terms of dominant cultural values of society
• Evidence to support - more theft/burglary in economic crisis, less access to means
• Assumes value consensus in America, but groups have different values
• American Dream may not apply to UK society
• Assumes a materialistic culture, ignores non-utilitarian crime
• Ignores key variables e.g. ethnicity, gender, age, locality
• Marxists - fails to consider power (who decides goal and means)
• Marxists - ignores white collar crime with no strain experienced

• Developed in 1950s/60s as response to criticisms of functionalism, build upon Merton's work
• Explain deviance in terms of subculture of certain group, not position in the social structure

AK. Cohen (1955)

• Lower working class boys cannot achieve goals due to cultural deprivation
• Suffer from status frustration and turn to delinquency to gain status from peers
• Alternative set of norms and values are adopted - delinquent subculture

Cloward and Ohlin (1960)

• Explain different types of working class delinquency - focus on theft or violence etc
• Those who cannot access legitimate opportunity structure may use illegitimate one
• 3 types of subculture - criminal, conflict, retreatist. Depends on social environment

Miller (1962)

• W/C have unique focal concerns - toughness, smartness, excitement, leads to crime

Evaluation of AK Cohen (1955)

• Explains crime with no monetary reward, involves gaining status rather than money
• Lyng - people get thrill from edgework, not a deliberate rebellion but just for fun
• Box (Marxist) - wrong to assume they originally accepted mainstream values

Evaluation of Cloward and Ohlin (1960)

• Explain w/c deviance not concerned with monetary gain (non-utilitarian crime)
• Ignore overlap between subcultures e.g. criminal gangs often deal drugs, maybe more types

Evaluation of Miller (1962)

• Murray (New Right) - agrees, there's a distinct underclass whose values encourage crime
  
• Little evidence that these focal concerns are restricted to w/c males, over-generalises

Matza's evaluation of Subcultural theories

• Everybody has subterranean values and use techniques of neuralisation, no w/c subculture

• Structural, conflict - source of crime and deviance located in structure of society
• Capitalist infrastructure beneficial to ruling class only, capitalism is criminogenic

Capitalism creates criminal motivation - due to inequalities and poverty 

• Chambliss - capitalism encourages consumer greed, produces relative deprivation
• Gordon - crime is a rational response to the capitalist system, found in all classes

Selective law creation and enforcement - to protect ruling class power and control w/c

• Snider - laws threatening big business unlikely to be enforced beyond minimum level
• Pearce - H&S laws perform ideological function, produce false consciousness

Ruling class crime is hidden - extensive but remains unpunished

• Levi - organisations often don't prosecute to avoid negative publicity
• Clarke - management turn blind eye to theft and allow for it in staff wages
• 4 types: crimes against consumers, against employees, environmental, financial frauds

• Highlights impact of selective law enforcement and how white collar crime is under-policed
• Draws attention to how inequality in society can lead to criminal behaviour
• Not all w/c people who experience poverty commit crime, overpredicts amount of crime and ignores non-class inequalities such as ethnicity and gender
• Romanticises criminals, sees them as 'Robin Hood' figures
• Some groups resist capitalism, too deterministic and ignores free will
• Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates, e.g. Japan and Switzerland
• Not all crimes of the powerful go unpunished, cooperations often do pay for their crimes

• 'New Criminology', uses Marxism and Interactionist approach to understand process
• Considers societal factors, individual motivating factors and interactionist factors
• Criticises Marxism for ignoring victims and harm caused, and having one-dimensional view

Taylor et al

• To fully analyse crime, the wider social and immediate origins of act, actual act, immediate and wider origins of societal reaction and outcomes of reaction should be considered

Hall (1978)

• Studied moral panic over mugging, Britain in 1970s
• Black mugger used as scapegoat for other social ills
• Crisis of capitalism caused high unemployment and fall in living standards
• By making young black men someone to fear it united the fractured white UK society
• Labelling led to process of deviancy amplification, leading to widespread race riots

• Important critique of traditional Marxist economic determinism 
• Big influence on the development of Left Realism
• Marxists - moves too far away from traditional Marxism, over-emphasises independence of CJS from capitalist economy
• Feminist criminologists - too malestream and ignores power of patriarchy in analysis
  
• Left Realists - romanticises view of criminals and ignores w/c victims of street crime
• Methodologically, remains complex and difficult to apply

• Theories of crime ignore women as victims or criminals, too malestream
• Heidensohn suggests it's due to male sociologists, and low levels of female crime

Reasons why women commit less crime

• Smart (1976) - women seen as double deviants, highly stigmatised for crime
• Carlen - patriarchal control discourages female crime, but generates crime against women
• Gender role socialisation, women experience more informal social control

Contributions of feminism

• New focus on female offending and experiences of women in CJS
• Challenge to chivalry thesis and that women enjoy chivalry
• New focus on women as victims
• How women are treated by the CJS in **** cases

• Hirchi's control theory supports Carlen's idea, controls discourage crime
• Contributed to understanding of female criminals and victims
• Challenged long-standing assumptions such as chivalry thesis
• Over-state effect of gender on crime rates, and ignore statistical evidence that most female offenders are w/c

• Most people commit deviant and criminal acts, only some are caught and stigmatised for it
• Focus on understanding reaction and definition rather than causes of act

Becker

• Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people label as deviant, not the actual act
• Moral entrepreneurs create and enforce rules, and impose definitions of deviance
• Police stereotype and use selective judgement to decide how to deal with deviancy/crime
• People are responded to by their master status, and the process is a deviant career

Braithwaite

• 2 types of shaming: disintergrative and re-intergrated
• Type of re-intergrated is restorative justice, remove label and prevent further crime

Lemert

• Primary deviance: not been publicly labelled, has few consequences
• Secondary deviance: publicly exposed, label attached, may lead to more deviance

Cicourel

• Police officer's decisions to arrest are influenced by stereotypes about offenders
• CJS and police show class bias, justice is negotiable

Jock Young

• Response to deviance by police and media can generate increase in deviance
• Stigmatisation leads to isolation and strengthens them in their deviance

Stan Cohen

• Perceptions of crime are created or informed by media
• Moral panics develops due to deviancy amplification
• Groups are labelled as 'folk devils' and stereotyping occurs

• Explains link between media and crime
• Avoids 'us and them' approach - regarding deviant as different to other people
• Helps us understand why some groups are more likely to be labelled than others
• Takes a micro interpretivist approach, understand meanings behind act

Evaluation of Becker

• Process of being labelled is open to negotiation, e.g. self-negating prophecy

Evaluation of Lemert

• Durkheim - beneficial to identify primary deviance, crime is functional
• Some may be more law-abiding after label, punishment was a deterent

Evaluation of Stan Cohen

• McRobbie and Thornton - moral panics idea is outdated, growing sophistication 
• This approach gives offenders a passive victim status

• Examine relationship of crime to places and time
• Study whether physical environment can lead to crime, as higher crime rates in urban areas

Shaw and McKay

• Divided Chicago into five concentric zones, which had different crime rates in each
• Most crime happens in zone of transition due to population turnover, social disorganisation, cultural transmission and high levels of poverty

Clarke

• Opportunity theory, likelihood of offence depends on target attractiveness and accessibility
• Theory is used by Right Realists, encourage use of situational crime prevention

Hobbs et al (2002)

• Crime rates vary according to time, nocturnal economy is when most crime takes place
• 3/4 of all violent crimes in urban areas occur during weekend between 9pm and 3am

• Influential in govenment and policing policies - strong links to Right and Left Realism
• Explanations enabled police and local authorities to adapt policing strategies e.g. changing licensing hours of local pubs and bars
• Doesn't explain reasons why people commit offences
  

Evaluation of Shaw and McKay

• Confuse where people live with where they commit the crimes
• Bottoms - model doesn't fit most European cities, British research failed to repoduce clear patterns on concentric zones

• Societies can only exist if there is some social order and stability, or would be social chaos
• Less complex societies rely on informal control as have sense of community

Hirschi (1960)

• Agrees with Durkheim that social order is based on shared values and socialisation
• 4 social bonds why people don't commit crime, and conform to society's rules
• Belief - people share moral beliefs and respect for others
• Attachment - people have stake in conformity, don't want to risk loss of job or money
• Commitment - sensitive to and interested in wishes of others e.g. friends, family, community
• Involvement - Involved and kept busy in activities, no time or opportunity for crime

• Society is rapidly changing and marked by chaos, uncertainty and risk
• Fragmented into huge diversity of groups with different lifestyles and interests
• Crime is social construction, outdated definition, doesn't reflect diversity of modern society
• Go beyond legal definition of crime, develop wider notion of crime based on justice and respect for people's chosen identities and lifestyles

Henry and Milovanovic

• Not just about breaking laws but about using power to show disrespect by causing harm
• 2 forms of harm: harms of reduction and harms of repression
• Harms of reduction - power is used to cause immediate loss or injury
• Harms of repression - power is used to restrict future development e.g. hate crimes

• Evaluates other theories e.g. studying crime in terms of social structure and core values which the criminal deviates from
• Society is now characterised by fragmentation of this social structure
• Each crime is individual and expresses whatever identity an individual chooses
• Crime is motivated by individual causes, including intangible emotional reasons e.g. the need for a thill - Lyng's study of edgework

• Dispute theories that claim crime is social construction
• Find practical ways to tackle crime and trust official statistics
• Criticise theories e.g. about moral panics, need to take crime seriously
• Criticise theories which romanticise criminals e.g. labelling and Marxism

• Develop practical policies to tackle crime, 
• By tackling poor parenting and educational failure, less w/c youth will commit crime

Lea and Young

• 3 causes of crime: relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation

Crime control and prevention

• Address causes of crime by implementing social/community crime prevention strategies

Social policies

• PACT, community groups, SureStart, youth clubs
  

Kinsey et al (1986)

• Police need to improve clear-up rates to deter offenders, improve community relations and restore confidence in police by spending more time investigating crime

Evaluation of Lea and Young

• Explain social causes of crime by tackling inequalities
• Recognise most victims are w/c, and tackle fear of crime
• Explain why most crime happens in deprived inner city areas, explain crime patterns
• Neglect other responses to relative deprivation and marginality, e.g. Merton's ideas
• Relied on victim surveys but these tend to over-report or under-report some crimes

Evaluation of Left Realist crime prevention strategies

• Hirschi - agrees that less crime will occur if there is more social control
• Focus on low level street crime or violent crimes, ignore crimes of powerful or environmental
• Right Realists - almost treat victim as offender, too 'soft' on crime
• Many of these measures are very costly, SureStart cost £1 billion a year between 2001-10

• Reduce impact that crime has on people's lives, aim to reduce crime by tackling criminals
• People are naturally selfish, crime will always exist, value consenus and shared morality

Clarke

• Rational choice theory, individuals choose to commit crime
• Crime has increased due to poor policing, weak community controls and lenient punishment 

Crime control and prevention

• Designing out crime (situational crime prevention)
• Target hardening (situational crime prevention)
• Wilson and Kelling - Broken windows theory (environmental crime prevention)
• Heavier/stricter policing and punishment (increased social control)
• Encouraging communities to take more responsibility (increased social control)

Evaluation of Clarke

• Hirschi agrres that people won't commit crime if risks outweigh benefits e.g. bonds
• Postmodernists e.g. Lyng - deviance isn't always rational, often spontaneous and for thrills

Evaluation of situational crime prevention 

• Marxists - ignores white collar crimes and true cause of crime: capitalism
• Those living in deprived areas most likely to be victims, least likely to afford target hardening

Evaluation of Wilson and Kelling

• It is lack of investment and not 'incivillities' that cause neighbourhoods to decline
• Left Realists - reduces solutions to crime to short-term fixes, rather than long-term economic improvement in deprived communities to generate jobs

Evaluation of heavier/stricter policing and punishment

• Very expensive, may 'displace' crime to areas with less strict policing, may form subcultures