Crime and Deviance Flashcards
The inevitability of crime - Durkheim
- Not everyone is equally effectively socialised into shared norms and values.
- There are a diversity of lifestyles and values.
Positive functions of crime - Durkheim
- Boundary maintenance = unites society in condemnation of their wrongdoings. Cohen also talks about the dramatisation of evil, which makes a huge thing about crime to reinforce its wrongness.
- Adaptation and change = thinks society changes gradually and that acts of deviance that challenge norms and values leads to a new culture. Too little crime stops society changing -> too much threatens the bonds of society.
- Acts as a warning device = AK. Cohen -> crime can act as a warning that what you’ve got isn’t working.
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Safety valve = Allowing people to be deviant to prevent crime Davis = prostitution prevents cheating
Polsky = porn prevents cheating.
Criticisms of Durkheim
- He doesn’t explain why some people are more likely to be criminals than others - e.g. 95% of the UK prison population is male.
- He assumes the law is an accurate representation of what everyone believes in society.
Negative aspects of crime - Durkheim
Excessive crime could be a result of two problems with the collective conscience:
Anomie = (normlessness) if you feel lost and confused it can lead to crime and deviance.
Egoism = this occurs when the collective conscience simply becomes too weak to restrain the selfish desires of individuals.
Strain theory - Merton
Merton says that deviance is the result of strain between two things:
- The goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve.
- What the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimately.
**E.g. school says you should have 100% attendance and straight As*.
The American Dream - Merton
- Argues the nature of the US produces crime.
- When we can’t reach cultural goals through legitimate means, we may turn to illegitimate means.
- The strain between the cultural goal of money success and the lack of legitimate opportunities = the pressure to deviate which Merton calls the strain to anomie.
Deviant adaptations to strain - Merton
- Retreatist = giving up or losing sight of both means and goals by opting out or dropping out of conventional society. Can happen in any social class.
- Conformist = (the response of the majority), the stereotypical law-abiding citizen who uses conventional means such as a job to pursue the approved goals of success, which may never be reached.
- Rebels = both goals and means are rejected, but alternatives are constructed
- Innovator = Socially acceptable means, such as a job, are rejected, but the goals of success are still pursued. The person may turn to crime to become rich, etc…
- Ritualist = this is where the means to the goals are accepted and conformed to, but the person loses sight of the goals. The person therefore goes through the motions but has no real interest in the outcome.
Merton - evaluation
Merton’s theory of crime and deviance is a better explanation than Durkheim’s as it provides more explanations as to why people do things.
Cohen’s process for W/C boys:
W/C taught M/C norms and values -> W/C children can’t achieve M/C norms and values -> W/C suffer status frustration -> W/C then reject M/C norms and values -> Delinquent subcultures form -> This offers an alternative to gain status
Utilitarian crime
A crime that produces a monetry reward.
Cloward and Ohlin
Argue that different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities for young people to learn criminal skills and develop criminal careers. They identified three types of deviant subcultures:
Criminal subculture: Provides youths with an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime. They arise only in neighbourhoods with a longstanding and stable criminal culture.
Conflict subculture: Arise in areas of high population turnover. This results in high levels of social disorganisation and prevents a stable professional criminal network developing.
Retreatist subculture: In any neighbourhood, not everyone succeeds.
Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie theory explaining deviance:
It focuses on the American Dream. They argue that its obsession with money success and its ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality, exert pressure towards crime by encouraging an anomic cultural environment in which people are encouraged to adopt an ‘anything goes’ mentality in pursuit of wealth.
Downes and Hansen, and Savalesberg
Studied 18 countries and found societies that spent more on welfare had lower rates of imprisonment.
