theoretical perspectives of crime

• Merton strain theory:

  • Clear goals in any social structure valued by society
  • Regulate members to strive and achieve hard work
  • Promotes meritocracy and value consensus
• Crime occurs when goals are overemphasized and stressed

  • More likely for people to find loopholes and access alternative ways to achieve goals
  • Results in anomie, breakdown of value consensus and strain
• White working-class males more likely to commit crimes and have the most strain

  • Crime leads to five modes of adaptations
  • Retreatism: struggle with success, isolate themselves, become deviant
  • Rebellion: reject society's standards, form their own
• Cohen status frustration:

  • Teenage boys desire status
  • Working class boys aware of mainstream values, cling to system for success
  • Status frustration leads to deviant subculture, invert values
• Cloward & Ohlin, illegitimate opportunity structure:

  • Working class males experience blocked opportunities to access valued goals
  • Turn to illegitimate means, crime and deviance
  • Three ways of using illegitimate means: criminal, conflict, retreatists cultures
• Miller, focal concerns:

  • Working class have their own focal concerns
  • Working class boys don't strive for mainstream values, value being in trouble and acting tough
  • Links to Harding's concept of street capital
• Merton strain theory:

  • Clear goals in any social structure valued by society regulate members to strive and achieve hard work
  • Crime occurs when goals are overemphasized and stressed, leading to anomie and a breakdown of value consensus
  • White working-class males are more likely to commit crimes and have the most strain
  • Crime leads to five modes of adaptations, including retreatism and rebellion
• Cohen status frustration:

  • Teenage boys desire status
  • Working class boys form deviant subcultures to deal with status frustration
  • Invert mainstream values, leading to involvement in crime and deviance
• Cloward & Ohlin, illegitimate opportunity structure:

  • Working class males turn to crime and deviance due to blocked opportunities to access valued goals
  • Three ways of using illegitimate means: criminal, conflict, or retreatist cultures
• Miller, focal concerns:

  • Working class boys have their own focal concerns, not striving for mainstream values like academic success
  • Participate in deviance to survive, with crime being the norm for some depending on their class
• Interactionism:

  • Crime statistics are a social construction by the police and criminal justice system
  • Deviance is a social construct, with acts becoming deviant when labelled as such
  • Effects of labelling can lead to a master status and self-fulfilling prophecy
  • Society's reactions to behavior are more significant than the behavior itself
• Marxism:

  • Crime benefits the powerful, reflecting ruling class values
  • Capitalism is crimogenic, creating a society forced into crime due to greed, law, and poverty
  • Control of the proletariat is maintained through the repressive and ideological state apparatus
  • White-collar crime is committed by high-status individuals and often goes unpunished
• Radical Criminology:

  • Criminality occurs through unequal distribution of power and wealth
  • People are not puppets of the economy, and crimes can be politically motivated
  • Moral panics and societal reactions contribute to crime and deviance
  • Combining Marxism and interactionism provides a full social theory on the origins of crime and societal reactions