SOCIOLOGY CRIME

FUNCTIONALIST = DRURKHEIM 

see crime as inevitable , universal - crime is in all societies because

-not everyone is equally effectivily socialised into shared norms and values so some individuals will be more prone to deviate 

-diverisity, lifestyles/values different groups devleop their own subcultutues  with distictive norms&values  and what the members of that subculture regard as normal, mainstream culture may see it as deviant 

- modern societies have a complex specialised division of labour which leads to individuals becoming increasingly different from one another this weakens the shared culture and collective consciousness resulting to higher levels of deviance 

Boundary maintenance

• Criminal and deviant behaviour helps to reinforce the value consensus of society
• Some behaviours help to reinforce people's belief in the collective conscience - society's moral code
• Society unites to condemn the wrong-doers and this leads to a collective agreement that the behaviour is wrong and should not be repeated - moral panics bring people together 

• Adaptation and Change
  • Deviant behaviours demonstrate a changing attitude of the population to the established way of doing things (push limits change laws and attitudes)
  • As small groups deviate, others in society will accept these behaviours as the norm
  • As the behaviours become the norm for more people, they cease to be deviant and society accepts the change

  eg = Nelson Mandela changing laws 

Social solidarity = reinforces commitment to shared normas and values 

Other functions of crime

• Crime acts as a safety valve - warning that there are issues in society that need to be addressed
• Other functionalists have suggested criminal and deviant behaviour can act as a release - Polsky and Davis suggested that prostitution and *********** reduce tension
• Evaluations of Durkheim
  • Difficult to measure the 'optimal amount' of crime that can exist in a societv
  • In contemporary society, has deviance led to social changes or have other social institutions acted to nullify movements? E.g. climate change protests, Black Lives Matter protests in USA

MERTON 

Deviance - is the result of strain between = the goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve, what the institutial structure of society allows them to achieve legimitmately 

the Ideology of American dream tells Americans that their society is meritocratic one where anyone who makes effort can get ahead there are opportunities for all. However the reality is different many disadvantage groups are the denied opportunities achieve legitimately, e.g. poverty, inadequate school and discrimination which can block opportunities for many minority ethnic groups and lower classes.

Strain between cultural goal of money, success, and the lack of legitimate opportunity to achieve a produces fustration creates a pressure to resort to illegitimate mean such as crime and deviance

• Merton's views of crime and deviance were that they were a product of dysfunction in society
• Suggested that society was structurally unequal and that the inability of some members to achieve the 'American Dream' led to a strain to anomie
• Merton Strain Theory = Merton suggested that people would react in different ways to the American Dream
• 1)Some…