Functionalism and Crime

- Durkeim argued that crime increases during time of rapid social change characterised by anomie

-Some crime and deviance is necessary for society to function properly

- There are letent functions of crime

- The functions it serves are: 1) Reaffirming the boundaries- All societies respond to breaking rules by attempts to enforce formal sanctions 2) Creating positive social change 3) social cohesion

- He says 'yesterdays deviance is todays normality' which means in order for things to change you need to break the law

- In a 'society of saints' such high standars of behaviour would make the smallest act of deviance stick out like a sore thumb. 

• Merton argued 'anomie' occurred when people were unable to acheive 'the american dream' 
• Crime is the result of a strain between an individuals goals and the means of acheiving them
• There are institutionalised means which are education and careers and this is the coventional way to acheive 'cultural goals' 
• This results in different ways of people reacting to these goals there are:

1) Conformists- Accept the institutionalised means and goals 

2) Innovators- Create their own means through robbery etc

3) Ritualism- Reject the goals but go along with the insitutionalised means

4) Retreatism- Reject both the goals and the institutionalised means this group often descents into alcoholism

5) rebellion- seeks to replace the cultural goals and means with new ones that meet norms and values of a particular group

- Hirshi asks the key question of 'why don't people commit crime?' 

- He focuses on the social bonds that bind us together

- He says that criminsl activity occurs when people attachment to society is weakened ( this idea links with the previous labour governments aim of social inclusion) 

The 4 social bonds are:

Attatchment- To what extent do we care about other peoples opinions and wishes

Committment- What do we have to lose?

Involvement- How busy are we in society

Belief-  How strong is someones moral code

- Looks at deviance amongst working class boys- he beleives that in the education system they face an anomie because it is middle class dominated

- He beleives they do not have the skills to acheive and end up at the bottom of the heirachal structure

- They suffer from status frustration

- In response to this they reject the middle class views as they struggle to adapt to their new status

- They form subcultures with others in the same situation 

- An alternative status heirachy is created where they create their own norms and values

Gang behaviour is seen as a collective response to blocked oppurtunity, there are 3 types of delinquent subcultures:

- The criminal subculture: Where youths are provided with criminal careers in ulitarian crime. Youths are being provided with criminal role models 

- The confilct subculture: High level of population turnover, little opportunity to succeed legitametly or illegitimately- They focus on gaining respect

- The retreated subculture: Thise who have failed in gangs and form own gangs bases in drug use

- Crime is the result of the fact that there is a lower class subculture with different norms and values to the rest of society. They are socialised into subcultural values which he called  focal concerns and these differed from m/c values.

The focal concerns are:- 

Toughness- People within the lower class subculture value being tough as an important trait, however this can manifest itself in assault and violence

Smartness- This culture value the ability to outfox each other.This can lead to people pickpocketing in 'clever ways' 

Excitement- The culture constantly searches for excitement and thrills which can lead to gambling and gangs. 

Miller said the mix of focal concerns can lead to a culture which accepts crime and deviance

- He adopts an interactionist critique to the subcultural theory

- Everyone has deviance in them and delinquents aren't actually in opposition to societys norms and values 

- Matza said that delinquents convince themselves that they aren't actually breaking the law, this allows them to commit crimes while still accepting societys norms and values

- Matza talks about a ' Delinquency drift' and explains how its a phase adolescents grow out of as they get older.