Functionalism, strain and subcultural theories

• Functionalist theory of crime

  Durkheim's theory
• Functionalist view of society

  • Stable system based on value consensus-shared norms, values, beliefs and goals
  • Produces social solidarity, binding individuals together into a harmonious unit
• Mechanisms for achieving social solidarity


  • Socialisation instils shared culture
  • Social control mechanisms include rewards for conformity and punishments for deviance
• Crime is inevitable and universal
• Anomie


  Normlessness in modern societies due to highly specialised division of labour and diversity of subcultures
• Functions of crime


  • Boundary maintenance - crime produces a reaction from society, uniting its members against the wrongdoer and reinforcing their commitment to the value consensus
  • Adaptation and change - all change starts as deviance, which challenges existing norms and allows necessary adaptive changes
• Durkheim claims society requires a certain amount of deviance to function but offers no way of knowing how much is the right amount
• Durkheim and other functionalists explain crime in terms of its function, eg. to strengthen solidarity. But just because crime does these things doesn't necessarily mean this is why it exists in the first place
• Merton's strain theory


  Explains deviant behaviour as the result of a strain between the goals a culture encourages individuals to aim for and what the structure of society actually allows them to achieve legitimately
• The American Dream


  • Emphasises 'money success' as a goal, but in reality poverty and discrimination block opportunities for many to achieve this by legitimate means
  • American culture puts more emphasis on achieving success at any price than upon doing so by legitimate means
• Deviant adaptations to strain

  • Conformity
  • Innovation
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Rebellion
• Merton's theory explains how both normal and deviant behaviour can arise from the same mainstream goals
• Merton's theory explains patterns shown in official statistics, such as most crime being property crime and working-class crime rates being higher
• Subcultural strain theories


  See deviance as the product of delinquent subcultures that offer their lower-class members a solution to the problem of how to gain the status they cannot achieve by legitimate means
• A.K. Cohen's theory


  • Criticises Merton for seeing deviance as an individual response and for focusing only on utilitarian crime for material gain
  • Explains how working-class boys face status frustration in the middle-class education system and form a subculture that provides an alternative status hierarchy where they can gain status through delinquent actions
• Cloward and Ohlin's theory

  • Agree with Merton that working-class youths are denied legitimate opportunities, but identify three types of subcultures that result - criminal subcultures, conflict subcultures, and retreatist subcultures - based on the different illegitimate opportunities available in different neighbourhoods
• Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories ignore crimes of the wealthy and the wider power structure, and over-predict the amount of working-class crime
• Subcultural theories wrongly assume that everyone starts off sharing the same mainstream success goals
• Crime


  An inevitable part of a normal, healthy society because not everyone is successfully socialised into society's norms and values, and instead have different norms, subcultures and lifestyles
• Positive functions of crime (Durkheim)

  • Boundary maintenance - crime causes a reaction from society, we condemn wrongdoers to reinforce our commitment to norms and values
  • Adaptation & change - crime/deviance gives us the scope to challenge current rules/laws/norms, which leads to society making necessary changes
• Examples of boundary maintenance

  • Courtroom rituals dramatising wrongdoing and publicly shaming the offender
• Examples of adaptation and change

  • Legalising gay marriage
• Durkheim argues there's a 'right' amount of crime/deviance for society, but proposes no way of measuring this
• The effects of 'functions' of crime on individuals are ignored, e.g. the often illegally trafficked sex worker having to be functional for the client and not themselves
• Crime doesn't always promote solidarity - women may fear going out into society
• Other functions of crime

  • Prostitution as a safety valve that helps release men's sexual frustrations without threatening the monogamous nuclear family (Davis 1961)
  • Pornography safely channels away desires that would threaten the family, such as adultery (Polsky 1967)
  • Deviance functions as a warning that an institution isn't functioning properly, like policy-makers knowing to make changes to school if the amount of truants is high (Cohen)
  • Using student rag weeks to allow behaviour that is normally punished may give us leeway to cope with the strain of growing up (Erikson 1966)
• Durkheim's theory ignores that they over-present working class crime
• Durkheim's theory only explains individual deviant behaviour, not group deviance like subcultures
• Durkheim's theory agrees with Merton that deviance as a response to strain, but criticises him for only seeing it as a working class phenomenon
• Strain theory


  Deviant adaptations to strain, including conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion
• Subcultural theory


  Delinquent subcultures develop as a response to status frustration, where working class boys in middle class schools are culturally deprived and lack the skills to achieve in school, so they reject middle class values and create an alternative status hierarchy through delinquent behaviour
• Cloward & Ohlin argue that one source of strain is not only unequal success goals, but unequal legitimate opportunities
• Cloward & Ohlin explain why there are different types of criminal subcultures, unlike Cohen
• Weaknesses of Cloward & Ohlin include South (2008) arguing the links between crime and the drug trade are too tight, and Matza (1964) arguing delinquents aren't as committed to a subculture as assumed, and instead drift in and out of crime
• Conflict subcultures develop in areas with high population turnover, as the high levels of strain enable a stable criminal network from which young men can release their frustrations through violence, and gain status
• Retreatist subcultures develop where not everyone aspires to be a professional criminal or a successful gang leader, just like not everyone in the legitimate structures gets the best job. These double failures reject both the goals and the means, becoming the dropouts, drug addicts, vagrants, etc.