Sociology

• Theories


  • Func, strain, subcultural and labelling theory
• All the above theories demonstrate higher levels of crime amongst the working class
• Marxism


  • Crime is inevitable in capitalism as it is criminogenic
  • Exploitation is damaging to the working class and this gives rise to crime
• Crimes in capitalism

  • Poverty crime
  • Attain consumer goods by theft
  • Alienation = vandalism, violence etc
• Capitalism's 'dog eat dog' culture encourages greed and 'winning at all costs', which encourages white collar crime such as tax evasion
• Gordon's view


  Crime is a rational response to capitalism
• The state and law making

  • Law enforcers only serve the interests of capitalists
  • Chambliss' view
• Introduction of plantations into Britain

  • Not a money economy = forced African population to work
  • Introduced tax payable in cash, non-payment resulted in punishment
  • To pay the tax could only be earned by working, this served the needs of the capitalist plantation owners
• During application of the law, there is a selective process, i.e. working class and ethnic minorities are criminalised while crimes of the powerful are ignored
• Some laws appear to benefit the working class e.g. health and safety laws in the workplace, however this is to benefit the ruling class as it creates a false class conscious that they are being looked after = reality = exploited
• As selective enforcement portrays crime as a working class phenomenon, ultimately this leads to the working class blaming criminals for their problems rather than capitalists
• Criticisms of Marxism

  • Deterministic, not all working class commit crime due to capitalism and pressures of poverty
  • Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates e.g. Japan/Switzerland
  • Prosecutions for corporate crime do occur, it does not go unrecognised = exaggerated by Marxism
• Neo-Marxism


  • Agrees with Marxism on: State makes laws in interests of capitalists, Capitalism should be replaced by classless society
  • Disagrees on: Argues Marxism is too deterministic, Takes voluntaristic approach, Sees crime as meaningful action and conscious choice with a political motive, Believes a complete theory on crime and deviance would need to include wider and immediate origins, the act itself and meaning, social reaction and its origins, and the effects of labelling
• Criticisms of neo-Marxism: Romanticism of working class criminals as 'Robin Hoods', Ignores the effects of crime on the working class, Too general to explain crime and too idealistic to be useful in tackling crime
• Crimes of the powerful

  • Selective enforcing
  • 'Rich get richer and poor get prison'
  • CJS takes a more forgiving view on middle class crime
• White collar crime


  • Occupational crime: committed by employees
  • Corporate crime: committed by employers, including financial crime, crimes against consumers, employees, environment, and the state
• Sutherland challenges the view of crime as a working class phenomenon, failing to distinguish between occupational and corporate crime
• Interactionism + Labelling theory


  • Becker: Considers how and why some acts are labelled as a crime, No crime is deviant in itself, only comes to be when others label it, A deviant is one whom the label has successfully been applied
  • Platt: Mainly interested in 'Moral Entrepreneurs' who lead a moral crusade to change the law, e.g. the idea of 'juvenile delinquency' was created as a result of a campaign by Victorian moral entrepreneurs to protect youth at risk
  • Label depends on: interaction with agents of social control, appearance and background, situation and circumstance
  • Cicourel: Officers have 'typifications' showing class bias, leading to more arrests in working class areas
  • Probation officers see juveniles caused by poverty as more likely to offend in future, while middle class juveniles are less likely to be charged
• Interactionism states that crime stats are socially constructed, as the outcome of crime depends on agents of social control and whether they want to proceed to the next stage of an offence
• Effects of labelling


  • Primary deviance: Trivial acts that have not been publicly labelled
  • Secondary deviance: Deviance that is publicly labelled, caught, shamed, stigmatised, leading to a crisis for the individual's self-identity and a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing the individual to join a deviant subculture
• Hippies' drug use


  • Primary deviance, however persecution by police led hippies to see themselves as outsiders and retreat to deviant subcultures, performing secondary deviance
• Young's 'deviance amplification spiral': More and more control produces more and more deviance
• Mods and rockers


  • Highlighted as 'folk devils', press exaggeration led to moral panic and more public demand for police crackdown, leading to more arrests and an upward spiral of deviance amplification
• Braithwaite's 'reintegrative shaming': Labels the act and not the actor, helping individuals reintegrate into society and stop secondary deviance, leading to lower crime stats in areas with reintegrative shaming
• Interactionists reject the positivist approach to studying suicide, arguing that suicide is socially constructed and says more about social control than the crime itself
• Interactionists also reject official statistics on mental illness, as they are social constructs and psychiatrists hold the power to label patients as mentally ill
• Criticisms of labelling theory

  • Deterministic, implies deviant career is inevitable once labelled
  • Assumes offenders are passive victims and don't choose deviance
  • Implies deviance wouldn't exist without labelling
  • Fails to explain primary deviance before labelling
  • Only focuses on agents like police and not the ruling class who make the rules
• Functionalist view of crime

  • Crime is inevitable and universal, as not everyone is equally socialised
  • Positive functions: Boundary maintenance (reinforces shared norms and values), Adaptation and change (all change starts with deviance)
• Other positive functions of crime: Prostitution as a 'safety valve', Pornography channelling sexual desires, Crime identifying problems in institutions
• Criticisms of functionalist theory: Just because crime helps social solidarity does not explain why it exists, and it fails to consider how crime affects different groups
• Merton's Strain Theory


  • Deviance is the result of a strain between cultural goals and the institutional structure of society
  • 5 ways individuals respond to the strain: Conformity, Innovation, Ritualism, Retreatism, Rebellion
• Criticisms of Merton's Strain Theory: Takes official statistics at face value, sees crime as a working class phenomenon, and is too deterministic
• Anomie


  Pressure to turn to illegitimate means
• Strain to anomie


  Pressure to deviate
• Merton's theory


  • Individuals' position in social structure affects the way they respond to the strain to anomie
  • Suggests there are 5 ways to respond
• 5 ways to respond to strain to anomie

  • Conformity: accept culturally approved goals and achieve legitimately
  • Innovation: accept the goal of money, but use 'new' illegitimate ways i.e fraud
  • Ritualism: give up on trying, but have internalised legitimate means and so always follow the rules
  • Retreatism: reject both the goals and legit means and become dropouts 'outcasts' 'vagrants' 'tramps'
  • Rebellion: reject existing societies goals and replace with new ones to bring change and new society = counter cultures such as hippies
• Subcultural strain theories


  • See deviance as the product of delinquent subculture who have different values to mainstream society
  • Subculture provides alternative opportunities to gaining goals and so a solution to some
• Cohen's theory


  • Status frustration: wc boys deviance who face anomie in mc school system
  • Suffer from cult deprivation and lack of skills
  • Resolve by rejecting mc values and turning to other wc boys in same situation = form subculture and gain status by vandalising
• Function of subcultures


  • Offers the boys alternative status, having failed using legitimate opportunity and so create illegitimate ways to gain status from peers
• Cloward and Ohlin's theory


  • Agree with Merton that wc youth are denied legitimate means to achieve money success and so deviance stems from their response
  • Attempt to explain why different subcultural responses occur and argue it is because of: unequal access to illegitimate opp structures
  • Different neighbourhoods provide different opportunities and criminal skills