Ac2.3 Sociological theories

• Bentham's panophean prison design

  • Watch tower and glass cells
  • Prisoners didn't know if they were being watched
  • It created lots of mental health problems
• Actuarial justice and profiling

  • Risk of crime and likelihood of who/Where crime may be committed.
• Foucault

  • Changed from sovereign power (Physical punishment) to disciplinary power (control over the mind)
• Synoptic surveillance

  • Always watching others eg neighbourhood watch
• CCTV is a modern form of the pantoptical

  • Gill and Loveday found that very few criminals were put off by CCTV.
  • Cctv is good for identification such as david copeland a right wing terrorist convicted of a nail bombing campaign
• Surveillance strength

  • led to research into the use of disciplinary power eg electric panopticon
  • Identified other forms of surveillance including actuarial and profiling
• Surveillance weaknesses

  • Exaggerates the extent of control, some inmates in prisons and mental hospitals resist control
  • Surveillance doesn't always change people's behaviour. Some offenders don't care.
• Functionalist see society as a stable structure based on sharing norms and values this is called value consensus and it creates social solidarity.
• Durkheim believed that deviance was necessary because it helped maintain social cohesion and reinforced shared values. He argued that if everyone behaved identically there would be no way of knowing what was normal or acceptable so we need deviants to show us what is wrong.
• Boundary maintenance (functionalism)

  • Crime produces reaction from society and binds them together
  • Reaffirm's beliefs.
• (functionalism) safety valve

  • Prevents worse crime
• (functionalism) Warning device for political change.
• Anomie 


  Absence of social ties that bind people to society, state of where norms about good and bad have little significance in people's lives.
• Deviant


  Actions and identities cut off margins of group, inadequately socialised, subcultural groups.
• Functionalists believe all social change starts with Deviance.
• Functionalist strength

  • First person to recognise that crime can have positive features for society.
• Functionalist weaknesses

  • Doesn't say how much crime is healthy
  • Crime isn't functional for victims
• subcultural theories state that people experience status frustration who are working class and so join a subculture to commit crime and afford what they want illegally
• conflict subcultures

  • gangs organised by young people
  • territory and turf wars
• retreatist subculture

  • can't access what they want legally or illegally
  • drop out of society
  • drug abuse- eg crack den/house
• Criminal subcultures

  • organised crime
  • it is their career
  • they socialise young people into the gang
• subculture theory strengths

  • shows how sub cultures perform a function for their members by giving them opportunity for success
  • show how sub cultures differ in different neighbourhoods
• subculture theory weaknesses

  • they ignore crime committed by the wealthy
  • assumes everyone begins with the same goals and turns to subcultures when they fail to achieve them
• Merton strain theory- functionalist


  Society is unequal and not everyone gets the same opportunities
• Merton- conformist achieves goals in legitimate ways.
• Merton- innovators has goal and so does it illegally
• Merton- ritualists give up on striving for success
• Merton- retreatists give up on goals and drop out of society
• Merton- rebels want to change society
• Strain theory strengths

  • Normal and deviant behaviour arise from the same goals and different means (eg conformist and innovators)
  • Explains crime patters shown in official stats. Most crime is property crime because society values wealth and working class crime is high
• Strain theory weaknesses

  • Ingores the crime of the wealthy and over predicts working class crime
  • Ignores crime with no economic movie eg vandalism
• Interactionalism and labelling theory- social groups create crime by making rules that when broken consitutues crime and by applying those rules it labels them as outsiders
• Interactionalism states that all people commit crime but only some get caught
• (Interactionism)self fulling prophecy- offenders self image is defined by the label
• Interactionism and labelling theory rejects crime statistics as its just a reflection of what the police are doing
• • Interactionalism and labelling links back to unit 1, mods and rockers, and typifications
  • Typifications: According to Cicourel, the police, judges, probation officers and prosecutors have stereotypes of the typical. delinquent.
• Interactionalism and labelling

  Primary deviance= never labelled and carry on with life as normal
• Interactionalism and labelling

  Secondary deviance= primarily deviance that escalated and is then labelled as criminal and impacts whole life
• Interactionalism and labelling strengths

  • Doesn't just consider the law as a fixed set of rules, explores the construction and meanings
  • Explains crime stats, increase portion of working class crime. Explains behaviour of law enforcement
• Interactionalism and labelling weaknesses

  • Doesn't explain why some groups are labelled more than others
  • Doesn't explain the crime in the first place