Crime + Deviance

• Functionalism in crime theory includes Durkheim’s key ideas that crime is inevitable and necessary to society, crime has positive functions, and the perfect amount of crime will keep society healthy and avoid anomie.
• Ian Taylor, a Marxist, argues that globalisation has allowed capitalism to create more crime by exploiting workers abroad and creating fraud on a larger scale.
• According to Taylor, manufacturing products abroad has led to a lack of jobs and opportunities for the working class, which leads them to crime.
• Hobbs and Dunham argue that crime is no longer local but 'Glocal', meaning it involves networks of people across the globe.
• Positive functions of crime include re-marking social boundaries, media coverage as a warning to others, social bonds strengthened as we unite in disapproval, and safety value.
• Crime and society theory suggests that society is only healthy when social order is maintained through the police and courts.
• Criticisms of the goal of success theory include what is the perfect amount of crime and explaining the functions of crime doesn’t explain what caused them in the first place.
• Criticisms of the means theory include that only a small minority will be self-interested and commit crime.
• Subcultural strain theory includes a group with its own distinctive norms and values, sometimes although not always deviant.
• Albert Cohen’s status frustration theory in subcultural strain theory argues that lower class people are frustrated because they want to be successful but lack the qualifications and skills to do so.
• Cloward and Ohlin’s opportunity structures theory in subcultural strain theory is more concerned about the different types of crimes groups commit.
• Criminal subcultures are available in areas of criminal hierarchy.
• Conflict subcultures arise due to low social cohesion and high population turnover.
• Retreatists subcultures are the result of being unsuccessful in society and the other two subcultures.
• Walter Miller’s theory of lower class subcultures is not a strain subculture, each social class doesn’t feel any strain but just has different focal concerns which lead to different criminal activity.
• Deviancy amplification spiral theory suggests that sensationalist reporting by the newspapers distorts the act of crime or deviance and increases public awareness.
• White collar crime is very difficult to prosecute due to problems of who is responsible and who is a victim.
• Labelling theory suggests that public pressure is put on the police and courts to act, creating a moral panic where certain acts or groups are seen as a threat to social order.
• The lower class experience a lack of excitement at work which leads to the desire to look for excitement in things like joy-riding.
• Strain theory suggests that strain produces frustration which creates a pressure to deviate, what Merton calls the strain to anomie.
• Labelling theory suggests that a label is attached by police and courts and becomes a master status, overriding other statuses such as sibling, friend etc.
• Merton's five adaptations to strain are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion.
• Labelling theory argues that no act is intrinsically deviant but relies on its context to determine its acceptability.
• Occupational crime refers to crimes carried out at the expense of companies like fraud.
• Labelling theory suggests that a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when we act in accordance with a label, whether the label was true or not.
• Labelling theory focuses on the process of a person and act getting labelled as deviant.
• Merton's key idea is that people engage in deviant behaviour when they are unable to achieve socially approved goals.
• Labelling theory suggests that the labelled person accepts the label because how we see ourselves relies on how others see us.
• White collar crime refers to crimes committed by office workers, these are often hidden from public view.
• Strain theory suggests that lower class and ethnic minorities are more likely to commit criminal acts because of their position in the social structure.
• Corporate crime refers to crimes carried out on behalf of a company such as tax evasion or toxic waste dumping.
• The working class get harsher punishments compared with those who commit white collar crimes.
• Left realists don't believe that racism in the police can account for higher crime because black people have a higher offending rate than Asians.
• Neo-Marxist Paul Gilroy argues that black people commit more crime because they resent the cultural experience of colonialism, which causes resentment in young black males which makes them commit crime.
• Neo-Marxist Stuart Hall et al (Policing the crisis) combine Marxism and Labelling theory, arguing that economic conditions in the 1990’s led to a moral panic about young black males, resulting in them being labelled and harsher punishments.
• White collar crime is very difficult to prosecute due to problems of who is responsible and who is a victim, and often white collar crime is not dealt with criminally but administratively by external agencies like the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the Trading Standards Agency.
• People from mixed ethnic backgrounds were more likely to be victims of crimes.
• Marxism argues that the working class are no more criminals than anyone else, however the law protects the bourgeoisie so the working class become easier to criminalise.
• Increased terrorism has increased our awareness of the international risks we face and increased security at our national borders, airports, ports and train stations.
• Ethnic minorities commit more crime because of racism and economic exclusion such as high unemployment and poor housing.