CRIME AND DEVIANCE NAMES
DIFFERENT THEORIES OF CRIME, DEVIANCE, SOCIAL ORDER AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Functionalist
Durkheim – The inevitability of crime
Socialisation:
- Not everyone is equally effectively socialised into the shared norms and values – some will
be prone to deviate.
Complex modern societies:
- Diversity of lifestyles and values
- Group develop subcultures with distinctive norms and values – what members regard as
normal, society may regard as deviant.
- Anomie (normlessness) – rules governing behaviour are weaker and becoming less clear cut.
- Due to societies’ complex, specialised division of labour = individuals become increasingly
different
- Diversity = collective conscience weakened = higher levels of crime and deviance
- Sees anomie as major cause of suicide in modern societies.
Positive functions of crime:
Boundary maintenance:
- Crime produces reaction from society = unity in condemning wrongdoer and enforcing
commitment to norms and values
- Explains role of punishment -> not to make wrongdoer suffer/reduce crime but to reinforce
shared ruled and social solidarity.
- Courtrooms dramatize wrongdoing + publicly stigmatise offender = re affirming of the value
of rule abiding
- Cohen – media ‘dramatizes evil’ media coverage created ‘folk devils.
Adaptation and change:
- All change starts with an act of deviance tf individuals with new ideas, values and ways of
living must not be completely stifled by weight of social control -> must be scope to
challenge existing norms and values.
- Authorities persecute religious visionaries who exposure a new message or value system.
- Long run – these values may give rise to new culture and morality – if repressed, society will
stagnate.
Too much crime threatens to tear bonds of society apart.
Too little means society is repressing and controlling its members, stifling individual liberty and
preventing change.
Cohen – agreed with positive function.
- Deviance acts as a warning that an institution is now performing properly.
- High rates of truancy may tell us that there are problems with education system =
authorities should make policy led change
Davis – positive function
- Prostitution acts as a safety valve for the release of men’s sexual frustrations without
threatening monogamous nuclear family
Polsky – positive function
- Pornography safely channels sexual desires away from alternatives like adultery which poses
a greater risk to the family
,Erikson – positive????
- If crime and deviance perform positive function, then society is organised to promote
deviance.
- True function of agencies of social control, like the police, may be to sustain a certain level of
crime rather than get rid of it.
Sowing wild oats:
- Demonstrations, carnivals, festivals, student RAG weeks – license misbehaviour otherwise
punished.
- May be to offer a way of coping with strains of transition from childhood to adulthood
Functional strain theory
Merton – strain theory
Strain:
- Strain between goals a culture encourages individuals to achieve.
- And what the institutional structure allows them to achieve legitimately
American dream:
- Americans expected to pursue goal by legitimate means – self-discipline, study,
qualifications, hard work.
- American dream ideology -> society is meritocratic.
- But – disadvantages groups denied opportunity to achieve legitimately (poverty, inadequate
education etc)
- Strain between cultural goal of money success + lack of legitimate opportunities = frustration
and pressure to resort to illegitimate means (C+D)
- PRESSURE TO DEVIATE = STRAIN TO ANOMIE
- Increased by pressure and emphasis on success at any price – winning game more important
than following rules.
Patterns of deviance:
- CONFORMITY – individuals accept culturally approved goals and strive to achieve
legitimately, most likely M/C with good opportunities – Merton sees as typical American
behaviour
- INNOVATION – accept goal of money success but use ‘new’ illegitimate means (theft/fraud)
– lower end of class structure = greater pressure to innovate
- RITUALISM – give up on trying to achieve goals, have internalised legitimate means so follow
ruled for own sake. Typical of lower m/c office workers in dead-end routine jobs.
- RETREATISM – reject goals and legitimate means = dropouts. ‘Psychotics, outcasts, vagrants,
tramps, chronic drunkard and drug addicts’
- REBELLION – reject existing goals and means. Replace with new ones in desire to bring about
revolutionary change and create new society. Political radicals and countercultures like
hippies
Functional Subcultural Strain theories
Albert Cohen – status frustration
Cultural deprivation:
- Face anomie in the m/c dominated school system – not everyone gets academic status.
- Cultural deprivation and lack of skills to achieve.
- Inability to succeed in m/c world leaves them at bottom of social status hierarchy.
Status frustration:
- Face a problem of adjustment to the low status they are given by mainstream society.
- Resolve frustration by rejecting mainstream m/c values and turn to other boys in same
situation, forming/joining a delinquent subculture
- Low education = no legitimate means = adult crime
, - Delinquent subcultures in school have close connection to out of school subcultures = adult
crime
Alternative status hierarchy:
- Delinquent subculture inverts values of mainstream society
- Mainstream = regular school attendance + respect for property
- Delinquency = truancy and vandalism
- Failed in the legitimate opportunity structure = creating own illegitimate structure where
they can win the status of their peers through delinquent actions
Cloward and Ohlin – three subcultures
- Like Merton, explains M/c crime in terms of goals but disagrees with Merton that
delinquents share goals with rest of society.
- Lower w/c delinquents share own deviant subcultural values.
- Blocked opportunities = no achieving goals legitimately
- Develop illegitimate ways to meet values = innovator rebels
Criminal subcultures:
- Goal is to get rich.
- Through organised crime – drug dealing/theft/fraud – through an established network/
hierarchy
- Mafia/ the Kray twins
Conflict subcultures:
- Goal is to protect turf for status (territory)
- Do this through violence with other gangs.
- Nottingham NG triangle
Retreatist subcultures:
- Goal is for general survival (drugs)
- ‘Double failures’ – failed in legitimate structure and illegitimate turn to Retreatist subculture
based on illegal drug use
- Homeless
Relativistic theories: interactionist theories (labelling and phenomenology)
Becker – labelling theory of crime
- Moral entrepreneurs, someone having to enforce the rules that sees certain behaviours
labelled as deviant, these usually have a vested interest in the issue.
- Sarah’s law, making the pedo register public to view. Mother sara Payne worked with sun
newspaper as moral entrepreneurs.
- Moral crusade – movement to pass laws, belief you are correct. (The process of labelling a
behaviour) – stonewall protests.
Effect of a moral crusade-
- Creation of new group of ‘outsiders’ – outlaws and deviants who break the rule (in Beckers
cannabis study, outsiders are those who used cannabis)
- Creation of expansion of power held by the social control agency that enforces the rule and
imposes the label (Bureau successful in outlawing growing and use of drug = expanded
power)
Master status-
- Person labelled as deviant will see themselves as bad = master status
- Once labelled, all other qualities become unimportant.
- Responsed to solely in terms of master status
- (Mason freewood – jimmy Saville)
- = self-fulfilling prophecy
DIFFERENT THEORIES OF CRIME, DEVIANCE, SOCIAL ORDER AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Functionalist
Durkheim – The inevitability of crime
Socialisation:
- Not everyone is equally effectively socialised into the shared norms and values – some will
be prone to deviate.
Complex modern societies:
- Diversity of lifestyles and values
- Group develop subcultures with distinctive norms and values – what members regard as
normal, society may regard as deviant.
- Anomie (normlessness) – rules governing behaviour are weaker and becoming less clear cut.
- Due to societies’ complex, specialised division of labour = individuals become increasingly
different
- Diversity = collective conscience weakened = higher levels of crime and deviance
- Sees anomie as major cause of suicide in modern societies.
Positive functions of crime:
Boundary maintenance:
- Crime produces reaction from society = unity in condemning wrongdoer and enforcing
commitment to norms and values
- Explains role of punishment -> not to make wrongdoer suffer/reduce crime but to reinforce
shared ruled and social solidarity.
- Courtrooms dramatize wrongdoing + publicly stigmatise offender = re affirming of the value
of rule abiding
- Cohen – media ‘dramatizes evil’ media coverage created ‘folk devils.
Adaptation and change:
- All change starts with an act of deviance tf individuals with new ideas, values and ways of
living must not be completely stifled by weight of social control -> must be scope to
challenge existing norms and values.
- Authorities persecute religious visionaries who exposure a new message or value system.
- Long run – these values may give rise to new culture and morality – if repressed, society will
stagnate.
Too much crime threatens to tear bonds of society apart.
Too little means society is repressing and controlling its members, stifling individual liberty and
preventing change.
Cohen – agreed with positive function.
- Deviance acts as a warning that an institution is now performing properly.
- High rates of truancy may tell us that there are problems with education system =
authorities should make policy led change
Davis – positive function
- Prostitution acts as a safety valve for the release of men’s sexual frustrations without
threatening monogamous nuclear family
Polsky – positive function
- Pornography safely channels sexual desires away from alternatives like adultery which poses
a greater risk to the family
,Erikson – positive????
- If crime and deviance perform positive function, then society is organised to promote
deviance.
- True function of agencies of social control, like the police, may be to sustain a certain level of
crime rather than get rid of it.
Sowing wild oats:
- Demonstrations, carnivals, festivals, student RAG weeks – license misbehaviour otherwise
punished.
- May be to offer a way of coping with strains of transition from childhood to adulthood
Functional strain theory
Merton – strain theory
Strain:
- Strain between goals a culture encourages individuals to achieve.
- And what the institutional structure allows them to achieve legitimately
American dream:
- Americans expected to pursue goal by legitimate means – self-discipline, study,
qualifications, hard work.
- American dream ideology -> society is meritocratic.
- But – disadvantages groups denied opportunity to achieve legitimately (poverty, inadequate
education etc)
- Strain between cultural goal of money success + lack of legitimate opportunities = frustration
and pressure to resort to illegitimate means (C+D)
- PRESSURE TO DEVIATE = STRAIN TO ANOMIE
- Increased by pressure and emphasis on success at any price – winning game more important
than following rules.
Patterns of deviance:
- CONFORMITY – individuals accept culturally approved goals and strive to achieve
legitimately, most likely M/C with good opportunities – Merton sees as typical American
behaviour
- INNOVATION – accept goal of money success but use ‘new’ illegitimate means (theft/fraud)
– lower end of class structure = greater pressure to innovate
- RITUALISM – give up on trying to achieve goals, have internalised legitimate means so follow
ruled for own sake. Typical of lower m/c office workers in dead-end routine jobs.
- RETREATISM – reject goals and legitimate means = dropouts. ‘Psychotics, outcasts, vagrants,
tramps, chronic drunkard and drug addicts’
- REBELLION – reject existing goals and means. Replace with new ones in desire to bring about
revolutionary change and create new society. Political radicals and countercultures like
hippies
Functional Subcultural Strain theories
Albert Cohen – status frustration
Cultural deprivation:
- Face anomie in the m/c dominated school system – not everyone gets academic status.
- Cultural deprivation and lack of skills to achieve.
- Inability to succeed in m/c world leaves them at bottom of social status hierarchy.
Status frustration:
- Face a problem of adjustment to the low status they are given by mainstream society.
- Resolve frustration by rejecting mainstream m/c values and turn to other boys in same
situation, forming/joining a delinquent subculture
- Low education = no legitimate means = adult crime
, - Delinquent subcultures in school have close connection to out of school subcultures = adult
crime
Alternative status hierarchy:
- Delinquent subculture inverts values of mainstream society
- Mainstream = regular school attendance + respect for property
- Delinquency = truancy and vandalism
- Failed in the legitimate opportunity structure = creating own illegitimate structure where
they can win the status of their peers through delinquent actions
Cloward and Ohlin – three subcultures
- Like Merton, explains M/c crime in terms of goals but disagrees with Merton that
delinquents share goals with rest of society.
- Lower w/c delinquents share own deviant subcultural values.
- Blocked opportunities = no achieving goals legitimately
- Develop illegitimate ways to meet values = innovator rebels
Criminal subcultures:
- Goal is to get rich.
- Through organised crime – drug dealing/theft/fraud – through an established network/
hierarchy
- Mafia/ the Kray twins
Conflict subcultures:
- Goal is to protect turf for status (territory)
- Do this through violence with other gangs.
- Nottingham NG triangle
Retreatist subcultures:
- Goal is for general survival (drugs)
- ‘Double failures’ – failed in legitimate structure and illegitimate turn to Retreatist subculture
based on illegal drug use
- Homeless
Relativistic theories: interactionist theories (labelling and phenomenology)
Becker – labelling theory of crime
- Moral entrepreneurs, someone having to enforce the rules that sees certain behaviours
labelled as deviant, these usually have a vested interest in the issue.
- Sarah’s law, making the pedo register public to view. Mother sara Payne worked with sun
newspaper as moral entrepreneurs.
- Moral crusade – movement to pass laws, belief you are correct. (The process of labelling a
behaviour) – stonewall protests.
Effect of a moral crusade-
- Creation of new group of ‘outsiders’ – outlaws and deviants who break the rule (in Beckers
cannabis study, outsiders are those who used cannabis)
- Creation of expansion of power held by the social control agency that enforces the rule and
imposes the label (Bureau successful in outlawing growing and use of drug = expanded
power)
Master status-
- Person labelled as deviant will see themselves as bad = master status
- Once labelled, all other qualities become unimportant.
- Responsed to solely in terms of master status
- (Mason freewood – jimmy Saville)
- = self-fulfilling prophecy
