AC 3.2 Evaluate sociological theories of criminality

Question 1

Sociological theories
- Sociological theories
- Marxism

Answer 1

STRENGTHS
- Poverty and inequality can cause working class crime
- Demonstrates how capitalism promotes greed and upper class crime
- Shows how law making and enforcement are biased against the working classes

LIMITATIONS
- Focus on class and largely ignores relationship between crime and other inequalities e.g. gender and race
- Over-predicts working class crime stats
- Ignores low crime rates in some capitalist countries e.g. Japan v USA (Low welfare state = 5x Higher murder rate)

Question 2

Sociological theories
- interactionism
- Labelling

Answer 2

STRENGTHS
- Highlights how law enforcement can be discriminatory.
- Shows how labelling can affect policing.
- Highlights weaknesses in official statistics which included bias law enforcement.
- Highlights the role of the media in creating moral panics and producing folk devils.

LIMITATIONS
- Fails to explain why deviant behaviour happens in the first place. There is no acceptance that some people may choose to be deviant.
- Ignores the victim of the crime and focuses on the ‘criminal’. There is a potential to romanticize crime or be soft on those who become criminals.
- Criminals do not need a label to know they are doing wrong. Plus, labelling does not always lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 3

Sociological theories
- realism
- Left and right realism

Answer 3

Left:
STRENGTHS
- Draws attention to importance of poverty, inequality and relative deprivation as the underlying structural causes of crime
- Draws attention to the reality of street crime and its effect – especially on victims from deprived groups

LIMITATIONS
- Henry and Milovanovic argue that LR accepts authorities definition of crime as just being street crime of poor – fail to explain white collar/corporate crimes
- Ignores the harm done by the powerful committing crime to the poor
- Overpredicts working class crime rates
- Focus on high-crime inner city areas gives an unrepresentative view making crime appear a bigger issue that it is

Right:
STRENGTHS
- Studies support RCT e.g. Rettig gave students a scenario of the opportunity to commit a crime, degree of punishment determined whether they choose to commit the crime
- Feldman found that people make rational decisions - high reward and low risk = crime worth committing
- Bennett and Wright interviewed convicted burglars – risk was the key factor in committing the crime
- May explain petty crimes

LIMITATIONS
- Rettig and Feldman – experiments; results may not apply to real offenders
- Bennett and Wright – unsuccessful burglaries; we don’t know if successful burglars think this way
- Not all crimes are the result of rational decisions
- Violent crimes are impulsive
- Offenders under the influence of drugs/alcohol are unlikely to calculate risk

Question 4

Sociological theories
- functionalism

Answer 4

STRENGTHS
- First to recognise crime can have a positive function

LIMITATIONS
- He claims that society requires a certain amount of deviance to function successfully but does not explain how much is the right amount
- Durkheim considers the function crime serves for society as a whole but not how it might affect different groups or individuals
- Crime doesn’t always promote solidarity, it can have the opposite effect leading to people being isolated eg women or elderly might stay inside.
- He never explains why certain social groups commit crime.
- He neglects the fact that some crimes are always dysfunctional