paper 3

• Crime and deviance


  Socially constructed and culturally determined
• Arranged marriages


  • Legal in India, illegal in UK
• Sending children to work

  • Acceptable 100 years ago in UK, now illegal under 13
• Rape in marriage


  • Acceptable 100 years ago, now illegal
• Situational deviance


  Depends on the context of the behaviour
• Being naked


  • Fine in own home, deviant in public
• Societal deviance


  Something society agrees is inappropriate
• Maternal deprivation


  Can lead to multiple personalities and criminality
• Genetic abnormalities


  Can make people more aggressive and hostile
• Brain abnormalities in psychopaths


  Shown by PET scans
• Italian criminals


  Had abnormal physical features compared to general population
• Genetic abnormalities


  Can make some people born criminal
• Durkheim's positive functions of crime


  • Strengthens collective values, leads to social change, acts as safety valve, acts as warning device
• Merton's strain theory


  Lack of norms, moral guidance, normlessness leads people to commit crime to achieve the American Dream due to inequality of access
• Merton's 5 types of strain


  • Conformity
  • Innovation
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Rebellion
• Hirschi's control theory


  • People break law due to breakdown in societal bonds of attachment, commitment, involvement, belief
• Cohen's subcultural theory


  • Working class boys lack values to achieve status, form delinquent subcultures - criminal, conflict, retreatism
• Miller's theory


  • Male working class delinquency is normal part of macho lower-class culture, many from female headed households
• Marxist theory


  • Capitalism is criminogenic, working class have to commit crime to survive, selective law enforcement targets working class, crime of the powerful ignored
• Chambliss' theory


  • One law for the rich, one for the poor
• Snider's theory


  • Capitalist state only criminalizes working class behaviour, not their own
• Ideological functions of crime


  • Divides working class, creates false consciousness that working class are the problem, not capitalism
• Taylor et al's neo-Marxist theory


  • Wider social origins of deviant acts, immediate origins, societal reaction and outcomes
• Neo-Marxist agreement with Marxism


  • Economy most important, capitalism causes inequality, most crime is utilitarian to improve situation
• Neo-Marxist view of crime


  • Voluntary, politically motivated, meaningful actions, not passive puppets
• Labeling theory


  • Primary deviance vs secondary deviance, stereotypes determine labels, relativity of crime and deviance, consequences of labeling
• Left realist theory


  • Focus on reality of crime, impact on victims and communities, practical policies to reduce crime
• Right realist theory


  • Crime is real problem, biological differences and underclass cause crime, rational choice theory
• Crime trends have fallen by 48% since peak in 1995
• Sources of crime statistics


  • Police recorded crime
  • Victim surveys
  • Court records
  • Prison records
  • Self-report
• There is a hidden figure of crime that is not captured in statistics
• Perspectives on crime statistics


  • Functionalist, New Right, Right realist - accept uncritically
  • Interactionism, labeling theory - see as distortion of reality
  • Marxism, neo-Marxism - recognise systemic bias against the powerless
  • Feminism - underplay female victims
  • Left realism - have some value but typical offenders are young, working class, black males
• Gender differences in crime


  • Women more likely to commit property crimes
  • Men more likely to commit murder, rape, sexual assault
• Gender crime statistics may be incorrect as women are more reluctant to report certain crimes
• Fennec feminists argue that the statistics underplay the extent of female victims as many are innocent reluctant to report domestic or sexual offences
• Males can be victims of domestic or sexual offences and are even less likely to report it to the police
• Official statistics have some value, they accept the typical offenders are young, working class, black males
• Victim surveys show fear of crimes
• A third of female prisoners committed property crimes, which is one of the most popular crimes
• 13% of male criminals committed murder, while another 13% raped or sexually assaulted someone