Crime Flashcards
Durkheim
Causes -
Poor socialisation, Anomie
Functions of Crime -
Social change, Social solidarity, Safety valve, Warning device
There can be too much crime - threatens societal norms and values
EVAL - Y - Link between poor socialisation and crime, crime can reinforce collectivism. X - Not clear how much crime is needed, not all poorly socialised people commit crime
Merton
Strain theory - Societal pressure to reach monetary success leads to crime. They deal with this is various ways
Conformity - achieve success through accepted means
Innovation - Achieve success through deviant means
Ritualism - Give up on goals but accept the means e.g unemployment/low wage
Retreatism - Reject both goals and means and become societal rejects, e.g drug addicts/ homeless
Rebellion - Rejects goals and means but replaces them with new ones to bring about societal change. E.g hippies
Cohen - Subcultural
Working-class boys experience status frustration - cant achieve status in mainstream society and blocked avenues of success
To cope with frustration they create their own goals forming an alternative status hierarchy
they reject the mainstream values and join others in similar situations forming a delinquent subculture
EVAL - Y - Does explain why gang cultures emerge, It does explain non-utilitarian crime. X - assumes W/C boys start off sharing middle-class success goals and ignores the possibility that they didn’t share these goals in the first place so they never saw themselves as failures
Cloward and Ohlin
Combination of Cohen and Merton, argues that there are 3 different subcultures
Criminal subcultures - Develop in W/C areas and established crime e.g. mafias. Young criminals enter into a criminal career ladder as an alt to legitimate jobs, mostly/only utilitarian crime
Conflict - emerges in socially disorganised areas with a high population turnover and lack of social cohesion. Characterised by violence and street crimes
Retreatist - a more individual response in which they can’t engage in the other subcultures or mainstream culture. Drugs and addiction paid for by petty theft or prostitution.
EVAL - Y - more advanced than Merton’s or Cohen’s as it explains different types of deviance and why they occur N - It assumes everyone starts with the same mainstream goals, Ignores crimes of the wealthy
EVAl of subcultural theories
Edgework - Katz and Lyng commit crime for thrill-seeking
Delinquency and drift - Matza criticises for them saying that once they join a delinquent subculture they stay there forever, he argues that individuals drift in and out of delinquency using techniques of neutralisation
Criminogenic Capitalism - Marxism
crime is inevitable due to its nature - Gordon says crime is a rational response to to the competitiveness and inequality of life
Poverty - crime may be the only way to survive
The only way to obtain consumer goods
alienation and lack of control lead to frustration and aggression then non-utilitarian crimes
Capitalism encourages crimes to gain an edge over competitors leading to white collar crime
Selective law creation
Law-making serves the interest of the capitalist class
Chambliss - argues that laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of the capitalist economy
The ruling class have the power to prevent the introduction of laws that would threaten their interests
Laws perform an ideological function for capitalism by passing laws that appear to benefit the W/C rather than capitalism. Pearce argues that laws often benefit the R/C by giving capitalism a ‘caring’ face these laws create false consciousness among the workers.
Selective law enforcement
Box - Criminal justice system disproptionately targets the poor an working class while often ignoring or minimally punishing white collar crimes
CJS serves an ideological purpose by promoting the idea that crime is primarily the problem of lower classes this diverts the attention from harmful activities of the R/C
Divides the working class as they blame each other for their problems rather than capitalism
Marxism evaluation
Y - Explains a wide variety of crimes across different classes, also links the interests of the ruling class and law-making
X - capitalism doesn’t always produce high crime rates and assumes communism will solve all crimes. ignore the relationship between crime and other inequalities such as ethnicity and gender
Neo marxist
They combine Marxist ideas with other approaches like labelling theory
Crime is a choice not driven by economic necessity
Crimes of the powerful
Sutherland - defined white-collar crime as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation
Occupational crime - commited by employees for their own personal gain often against the org they work for e.g claiming false expenses from the company or overcharging customers
Corporate crime - Crimes commited by or on behalf of a large company and directly profits the company rather than individuals. Corporate crime is moticated by the desire to increase profits
Under representation of white collar crime/ corporate crime-
Hard to detect - appearing to be normal, coverups
Involves very powerful people - can persuade govt
May benefit both parties - Bribery
institutional protection - not prosecuted, dealt with by fines
Interactionalism - Lemert
Primary and Secondary deviance
Primary deviance - deviance that has not been labelled as such, Breaking the law and committing deviance but hasnt been found yet and as such there arent any deviance
Secondary Deviance - Once an offender is discovered and publicly exposed and the labe of deviance is attached. results in the stigma of the crime becoming their master status and therefore produces more deviance and hostile reactions from society therefore reinforcing the status
EVAL - Y - shows importance of the reactions of others in defining and creating deviance
X - Lemert doesnt explain why people commit primary deviance in the first place. It also assumes that an act isnt realy deviant until it is labelled as such yet people know what they are is deviant
Labelling - Howard Becker
Argued that deviance is created by society, those who enforce the rules decide what is deviant and label those who break their rules as deviant. Its not the act that is deviant but the reaction of others that defines it e.g heroin as medicine is fine but as a stimulant its deviant
Interactionalists focus on agents of social control and their actions in defining labelling and punishing crime
EVAL - Y - Becker helps to show that crime stats are more a record of the activities of the police rather than of criminals
X - It is deterministic impliying that once someone is labelled a deviant career is inevitable. Ignores the fact that individuals may actively choose deviance
Labelling process
Jock Young - “the drug takers” gives an example of labelling creating deviancy amplification. He shows how interaction between between the hippies and police produced more crime rather than less. this is due to media coverage on hippies and drug taking which leads to police going after them. This means hippies have to act more secret and drug taking becomes more of their identity.
This leads to increasing distrust and hippy deviance leads a “crime wave” and they become a “folk devil”
Cicourel
Cicourel’s study examines how police officers decisions to arrest are influenced by their stereotypes about offenders. He discovered that police officers relied on assumptions about typical delinquents leading to a class bias in law enforcement with police focussing on these areas reinforcing the stereotypes
As such teenagers were far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested and charged. middle class kids were more likely to be counselled, cautioned and released futhermore middle class parents are seen as respectable and reasonale people from a nice neighbourhood and are willing to cooperate with the police
Thus the process of justicce is a process of negotiation and middle class respectable people are far more successful at this - lavinia woodward. can be also be applied to gender and ethnicity
