Criminology

• Merton's strain theory


  Robert K Merton, a functionalist, argues that the root cause of crime lies in the unequal structure of society. He focuses on the USA but his ideas can also be applied to the UK. American society values 'money success' or wealth as the goal people should pursue and tells them they should achieve this through legitimate means such as hard work at school and in a career.
• Blocked opportunities


  • Not everyone has an equal chance of achieving success legitimately because American society is very unequal. Opportunities for working class people are often blocked by poverty and inadequate schools. This creates a 'strain' between the goal society says they should achieve and the lack of legitimate means to do so.
• Possible deviant ways of adapting to this strain

  • Conformists (can achieve society's goal legitimately)
  • Innovators (accept the goal but find illegal ways of achieving it)
  • Ritualists (give up striving for success)
  • Retreatists (reject both goal and means)
  • Rebels (reject the existing goals and means, replacing them with new ones with the aim of changing society)
• Successful banker

  • Ritualism
• Drug dealer


  • Innovation
• Monk living in a monastery

  • Retreatism
• Person cheating in exams

  • Innovation
• Shoplifter


  • Innovation
• Drug addict


  • Retreatism
• Indifferent job centre clerk


  • Ritualism
• Political radical


  • Rebellion
• Interactionism/Labelling Theory


  Theory that focuses on our interactions with one another and uses labeling theory to explain criminality
• Interactionism/Labelling Theory


  • Crime and criminals are social constructs - meanings that we create through our social interactions
  • No act is deviant or criminal in itself, it only becomes so when we create rules and apply them to others
• Labeling theory states that to understand criminality, we must focus on how certain actions and people get labelled as criminal in the first place
• Differential enforcement of the law

  Social control agencies such as the police label certain groups as criminal, resulting in the law being enforced more against one group than another
• Typifications are stereotypes held by the police of the "typical delinquent", and those that fit the typification are more likely to be stopped, arrested and charged
• Groups that may be subject to police typifications and more likely to be labelled as criminal

  • Young males
• How police typifications and differential enforcement affect crime statistics

  More people will be stopped and arrested
• Primary deviance


  Involves acts that have not been publicly labelled, often trivial and mostly go uncaught, where those who commit these acts do not usually see themselves as criminals
• Secondary deviance


  Results from labeling, where the offender may be rejected by society and join a deviant subculture, and further offending becomes more likely
• A self-fulfilling prophecy has taken place as the individual has now become what the label said they were
• Right realism


  A right wing, conservative political outlook that sees crime, particularly street crime, as a growing problem and believes that control and punishment is the answer rather than rehabilitation or tackling causes such as poverty
• Main causes of crime according to right realists

  • Biological differences
  • Inadequate socialisation and the "underclass"
  • Offending is a rational choice
• Underclass


  The lowest social stratum in a country or community, consisting of the poor and unemployed
• Rational Choice Theory argues that criminals weigh up the risks/costs against the rewards/benefits, and if the rewards of crime appear to outweigh the risks, people will be more likely to offend
• The XYY theory suggests that the extra Y chromosome in XYY men may produce extra testosterone and incline such men towards aggression and criminality, more so than XY men
• Jacobs et al (1965) study concluded that XYY males showed a significantly higher frequency of anti-social behaviour in adolescence and adulthood, and of criminal convictions, than the controls
• Twin studies claim that if one of the twins has criminal tendencies, there is a high chance that the other will too, as they share 100% of their DNA
• Monozygotic twins


  Identical twins, delivered from a single ovum
• Dizygotic twins


  Non-identical twins, delivered from two separate ova
• Concordance rate


  The state or condition of agreement
• There is a significant concordance rate for monozygotic twins, supporting the genetic explanation for criminal behaviour
• If genes were the only cause of criminality, identical twins would show 100% concordance, but studies show 50% or less
• Higher concordance rates for monozygotic twins may be because of social environment/nurture, i.e. same home, school, etc.
• Adoption studies suggest that if a person's biological parent or parents exhibit criminality, so too will they on the basis of their heredity, even if they are raised by foster parents in a stable, non-criminal environment
• Mednick et al. (1994) found a significant correlation between criminal boys and their criminal biological parents, but no relationship between adopted children's convictions and their adoptive parents
• Damage to the pre-frontal cortex/frontal lobe of the brain, caused for example by a serious head injury, may change a person's behaviour, causing immaturity, increased loss of self-control, and inability to modify behaviour
• Raine et al (1997) study found that murderers showed significantly higher occipital lobe glucose metabolism than controls
• PET scan


  An image made using positron emission tomography, especially one of the brain
• Phineas Gage's brain damage from a workplace accident led to changes in his personality and behaviour, and ultimately to his death from an epileptic seizure