Marxist Theories of Crime and Deviance

• Marxists argue that infrastructure determines superstructures
• Gordon argues that crime is a rational response to the capitalism system, and statistics attempt to make it appear as mainly a working class issue
• Gordon says crime is inevitable in capitalism and capitalism is criminogenic
• Gordon says that poverty, consumer goods and alienation and a lack of control causes crime
• Gordon says profits encourage capitalists to commit crime
• However, Gordon can't explain crime in communist societies
• State and Law-making is not created to server everyone but protect the interests of the capitalist class
• Chambliss argues that all laws ultimately benefit the ruling class, namely private property laws, which is the corner stone of capitalism
• Chambliss argues crime happens all over social classes, but most prisoners are from lower social classes
• Reiman argues that the criminal justice system applies laws selectively
• Reiman says poorer and oppressed social groups are more likely to be criminalised
• Reiman found the more likely a crime is to be committed by a wealthy person the less likely it is to be treated as a criminal offence
• Box said that most people convicted of serious crimes are;

  • Young
  • Uneducated
  • Often unemployed
  • Impoverished Neighbourhoods
• Box says that street crimes are increasingly common because of deteriorating living conditions for certain groups
• Box found that the media, law enforcement and academics focus on street crime as the primary crime problem
• Box says that the focus on street crimes brings attention away from the crime of the wealthy
• The ideological function for capitalism that laws fulfil is to make it appear as if the laws are to benefit of the working class
• For example, workplace safety laws serve capitalism rather than the working class
• Pearce argues that laws benefit the ruling class by making it appear they are caring when in fact workplace safety laws are just to keep workers fit for work
• The Ideological Function of Law is to create a false class consciousness for workers
• Despite the corporate homicide law being passed in 2007, the first 8 years only had one successful prosecution of a UK company
• The ruling class control the values of society in two ways;

  • Socialisation
  • Threat of force
• The Ideological Function of crime aids the ruling class ability to manipulate values of all members of society
• Socialisation is persuading people of the rightness of family through agencies (ie School/Media)
• Threat of Force means if socialisation fails the group are threatened with harsh punishments for breaking the laws, protecting the powerful
• However, Pearce has been criticised for being too deterministic as not all capitalist countries have high crime rates, ignoring CJS prosecutes the wealthy sometimes, and ignores intra-class crime