30 marker plans

• Strain theory and crime - paragraph one?

  Merton's strain theory

  • Adapted Durkheim's anomia to explain crime
  • American dream is a prime example
  • Merit is rewarded with a house / promotions
  • Meritocracy is a myth
  • Winning the game is more important than playing by the rules
  • Marxists argue he doesn't take into account whos interests these goals are in (the bourgeoisies')
• Strain theory and crime - paragraph two?

  • Merton - 5 responses to strain
  • Individuals respond differently depending on which goals and means they accept
  • Five types: rebellion / ritualism / innovation / conformity...
  • Retreatism: reject both goals and means, social dropouts eg drug addicts
  • Doesn't explain non-utilitarian crime
• Strain theory and crime - paragraph three?

  • Cohen - status frustration
  • Alternative status hierarchy, delinquent subculture inverts mainstream society
  • Whatever society condemns, they praise
  • Regular school attendance - vandalising property / truancy, offers boys an alternative way to seek opportunity
  • Good for explaining non-utilitarian crime
  • Assumes everyone shares the same values
• Strain theory and crime - paragraph four?

  • Cloward and Ohlin - three subcultures
  • Not just unequal opportunity to legitimate opportunities but illegit too
  • Not every school failure is an expert safecracker
  • Leads to criminal / conflict / retreatist subcultures
  • Retreatists - illegal drug use, double failures
  • Boundaries drawn too sharply
  • Drug trade is a mix of disorganised crime / conflict and professional mafia crime / disorganised crime
• Strain theory and crime - paragraph five?

  Miller - working class subculture

  • Working class has an independent subculture with its own values, doesn't value success
  • Members not frustrated by failure
  • Wider deviance in this class, but an attempt to achieve their own goals, not mainstream ones
  • Durkheim: crime is inevitable, not everyone is equally socialised into norms and values, but they are all shared
• Labelling theories and crime - paragraph one?

  • Deviant career / master status
  • Once labelled, one accrues a master status
  • Deviant career suggests the labelling process and societal reaction creates a self-fulfilling prophecy (Becker)
  • Malinowski's study on incestual islanders
  • Too deterministic - doesn't recognise the personal choice in crime / not everyone accepts their label
  • Right realists - rational choice theory
• Labelling theories and crime - paragraph two?

  • Selective law enforcement
  • Labelling theory - agencies of social control use considerable discretion / selective judgement in deciding whether and how to deal with illegal / deviant behaviour
  • Becker: police operate with preconceptions
  • Leads highly policed areas to feel targeted, hostile and thus deviant
  • Cicourel: police arrest on their view of a 'typical delinquent'
  • Fails to explain why they have this image, the New Right suggest it is just true
• Labelling theories and crime - paragraph three?

  Primary and Secondary deviance

  • Acting in an isolated way is primary deviance
  • Societal reaction can lead to secondary deviance
  • Label applies and internalised, subsequent deviance is secondary
  • Lemert - stuttering in Native American communities
  • Stuttering was an act of secondary deviance
  • Emphasis on it happening caused it to happen
  • Cohen - deviance is a sign an institution is failing
• Labelling theories and crime - paragraph four?

  Interactionist view on media

  • Media labels through symbols (race, leather) and chooses what to report
  • Exaggeration / distortion / predictions are used to make more interesting news
  • Cohen - moral panics - mods and rockers
  • McRobbie and Thornton: late modernity - moral panics are now routine, less impact
  • Little consensus on what is deviant eg single parenthood so harder to make a moral panic
• Labelling theories and crime - paragraph five?

  Interactionist policy

  • Labelling theorists: rule-breaking is widespread and largely inconsequential until labelling
  • Once labelling occurs, offending is likely to become more harmful
  • Proposes reducing labelling through decriminalisation and reducing secondary deviance
  • Braithwaite: reintegrative shaming
  • Critics suggest effects of reintegrative shaming are dependant on cultural / individual factors - it is not always applicable
• Strain theory esssay?

  • Merton's strain theory - American dream
  • Merton's 5 reponses
  • Cohen's status frustration
  • Cloward and Ohlin
  • Miller - working class subculture
• Labelling theory?

  • Deviant career / master status
  • Selective law enforcement
  • Primary and secondary deviance
  • Interactionist view on media - moral panics
  • Interactionist policy