Crime and Deviance - Functionalism and Subcultural Theory

Question 1

What is crime and deviance?

Answer 1

CRIME:
- The breaking of a law (law is something that the society has set out as being important, and are formed by government - it is a social construction)
- Tim Newburn (2007) - crime is a label given to certain behaviours prohibited by the state

DEVIANCE:
- The breaking of a norm (sometimes this is also a crime, but is sometimes just an expectation in society)
- Downes and Rock (2007) - deviance is complicated and it depends on context

Acts which were once labelled and treated as criminal and gain social acceptance and more liberal views lead to the removal of the criminal label. Criminality is socially constructed and deviance is also a product of social construction.

Question 2

Types of crime

Answer 2

Types of crime:
- Crime against a person
- Crime against property
- Crime against the state
(NB religious crimes are called sin and are not needed for sociology - there are law overlaps but most religious laws are not state laws)

Question 3

The effects of crime

Answer 3

Society:
- Causes a breakdown in morality - allows deviant behaviour to be noticed and stopped, encouraging value consensus and social solidarity
- Can cause damage to the state
- Normalises negative behaviour
- Causes lawlessness - allows lawfulness to be emphasised
- Provides jobs through prisons and the criminal justice system
- Damages institution reputations
- Adds to ISAs
- People avoid areas of crime - causes large population density in some areas that cannot sustain it
- Rise in certain crimes can cause general societal fear and concern
- State crimes can bring people together
- Lack of confidence / blame in members of authority
- Can cause integration or isolation (come together or become suspicious of each other)
- Adds political pressure
- Allows change in society - changes values

Individual:
- The victim
- Can be damaging to them personally / leave them broke or without property
- Can cause psychological damage
- Lack of trust

The perpetrator:
- Can allow them to get the help they need
- Can provide employment options for the working class or mentally ill people
- Face punishment / restriction on freedom and impact on rights
- Personal judgement on them / ruin their reputation / gain status
- Personal relationships can see a breakdown

Question 4

Crime and deviance - key sociologists

Answer 4

• Newburn 2007 (crime is a label given to certain behaviours prohibited by the state)
• Downes and Rock (2007) deviance is complicated. - It depends on context.
• Plummer (1979) - societal deviance vs situational deviance - racist comments amongst your mates at the pub whose norms are agreed and no-one is offended (situational) is different to racist language in school (societal) or at someone in the street (societal and criminal)
• All crimes are deviant but not all deviant acts are crimes.
• Lombroso - criminal man 1876 - biological approach.

Question 5

Why do people commit crime?

Answer 5

• Boredom
• Retribution
• No reason not to
• Frustration/rebellion
• Lack of morals/ignorance of the law
• Poverty / Unemployment
• Peer pressure / gang / Idol influence (copycat)
• For money / status / kicks
• Coerced
• To further a cause
• External influences; drugs/alcohol/media
• Family background / self defence/defence of others
• Lack of socialisation
• Religious belief
• Mental health

Question 6

Functionalism - social control

Answer 6

Functionalists on crime -
1) Society functions better with a consensus
2) This reaffirms and clarifies the consensus.
3) Social control is used to prevent deviance
4) A consensus is achieved when people agree (conform)
5) Any behaviour against this is called ‘deviant’

Formal social control -
- Laws and rules are enforced by agents in society; police and the criminal justice system. These forms of social control are official e.g. jail time for an offender

Informal social control -
- Norms and values are enforced by other agents in society; public opinion is expressed with non-verbal and verbal communication. These forms of social control are unofficial e.g. people moving away from you on the bus

Question 7

Durkheim and crime

Answer 7

• Society shares a collective conscience of shared norms and values. The further away behaviour gets from the norm, the more deviant it is. The consensus is maintained by punishing offenders.
• Crime can be negative (it leads to social disruption) and positive (it encourages social change).
• Society needs a certain percentage of crime as it clarifies the boundaries and initiates change. Crime plays a function in society.
• ISSUES - makes crime appear socially acceptable, who decides where this ‘Goldilocks crime zone’ is etc

He argued crime was 4 things:
- Inevitable (will happen no matter what)
- Universal (happens in all societies)
- Relative (our attitudes to crime differ)
- Functional (has a role to play in society)

Question 8

Kingsley Davis - the Safety Valve of Crime, 1967

Answer 8

• A further function of deviance is that it acts as a safety valve for society
• He gives the example of prostitution, suggesting it has the positive function of releasing of men’s sexual tension (controversial) to stabilise the adult personality and protects the nuclear family relationships by carrying out perversions etc in other environments outside the home
• Bit of crime to protect the larger picture
• E.g. stealing necessities
• Doesn’t account for the positives of crime and explain why it occurs

Question 9

3 Functions of crime in society

Answer 9

1) Safety Valve
- Functionalists think that all aspects of society exist for a purpose and fulfil a role. Crime exists and therefore it too must have a role. A little bit of crime can actually prevent more serious or numerous crimes, acting as a safety valve, releasing pressure and limiting the impact of crime.
- For example, Davis argues that men engaging in the sex industry (eg using prostitutes) prevents the release of pressure in the home and the risk of domestic violence disrupting the nuclear family.

2) Boundary Maintenance - Durkheim
- Crimes that provoke an overwhelming response from society where the majority of people share the view that something is not acceptable, can help to reaffirm the boundaries of all of our behaviour and keep the values of our society shared and respected.
- This keeps society functioning in a healthy way and promotes collective conscience and social solidarity. For example, when there is an incident of terror, people go out of their way to promote tolerance and kindness.
- if there is a consensus boundary, everything outside is deviant; when someone threatens the edge of it, formal social control is used to reestablish it by pulling them back, or the boundary changes to encompass a behaviour as more people move against it, and crime maintains the boundary by iterating what is lawful or not and illustrates the consensus and what goes against it, for example murder is wrong, and so criminal justice systems iterate this and reestablish the norm and value that killing another person is wrong

3) Adaptation and Change - Parsons
- Some actions which are initially seen as criminal, can begin to show society that there is a wish to push boundaries and change the status quo. When enough people share the view that the crime should not be a crime, society responds by changing the law.
- For example, Nelson Mandela was a criminal but his behaviours highlighted inequality and eventually the society changed and he became president. The name for these people is functional rebels
- people do illegal things which can change social attitudes and laws, bringing about social change, functional rebels, use crime as a way to make welcome and positive change

Question 10

Functionalism takes a normative view of crime ->

Answer 10

• Boundary maintenance
• Reaffirms norms/values
• Adaptation and change
• Deviance = anything which is against consensus and shared norms/values
• Collective conscience = an agreed understanding (e.g. murder of Jo Cox and recent terror atrocities go against the collective conscience).
• (In)formal social control reward conformity and sanction deviance.
• Crime can cause anomie or ‘normlessness’

Question 11

The control theory / bonds of attachment - Hirschi

Answer 11

• His main question - why don’t people commit crime?
• Social control theory states that crime is the result of a loss of control of social institutions over individuals; weak institutions such as certain types of families, the breakdown of local communities and the breakdown of trust in the government and the police are all linked to higher crime rates
• Hirschi named this the Bonds of Attachment; criminal activity occurs when an individual’s attachment to society is weakened
• According to this theory, the ‘typical delinquent’ would be predicted to be young, single, unemployed and probably male; conversely, those who are married and in work are less likely to commit a crime - those who are involved and part of social institutions are less likely to go astray
• Social institutions weaken -> people feel less controlled -> they act deviantly / criminally -> warning that society is not functioning well
• But - the ‘they’ are a minority; does not explain why others do not commit crime also
• Institutions are weakened in different ways e.g. technology changes the family structure and relationships which can cause deviance
• ‘Lads need dads’ - Jack Straw; young, male, working class crime was the biggest concern, with the decision that what was missing was a father figure who could connect them to society

Question 12

The 4 main ways people are ‘bonded’ to society

Answer 12

1) Attachment - family, friends and community
2) Commitment - future, career, success, personal goals
3) Belief - honesty, morality, fairness, patriotism, responsibility (stronger the socialisation the better)
4) Involvement - school activities, sports teams, community organisations, religious groups, social clubs
- The stronger these components are, the more likely you are to demonstrate conformist rather than criminal behaviour

Question 13

Contributing factors to crime

Answer 13

• Absentee parents - Murray and New Right; agree that a lack of social bonds does contribute to the underclass
  Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (Farrington and West) - looked at 411 working class males born in 1953 who were studied until their late 30s, and found that offenders were more likely to come from poorer, single parent families with poor parenting and parents who were themselves offenders
• This study suggests that good primary socialisation is essential in preventing crime (lacks generalizability to others)
• Martin Glyn has pointed out that many young offenders suffer from a ‘parent deficit’, arguing this is the single most important factor in explaining youth offending, and he argues that children need both discipline and love, two things that are often both absent with absent parents
• Truancy - less education, lower education (Merton and Strain and inability to achieve social goals)
• Unemployment - less economically stable (Left realism; marginalisation, relative deprivation and subculture)

Question 14

Evaluation of Bonds of Attachment theory

Answer 14

• Some types of crime such as tax evasion or money laundering can only come through having these connections in society - ruling class / corporate / global crime is enabled by these, even if it stops working class petty crime
• Marxism - it’s unfair to blame marginalised people; they are victims of an unfair society which does not provide sufficient opportunities for work etc
• Interactionism - middle class crimes are less likely to appear in statistics; in reality, middle classes (attached) are just as criminal
• By focusing on the crimes of the marginalised, the right wing elite dupe the public into thinking we need to protect us from criminals (whereas we actually need protecting from the elite)
• This may be a case of blaming the victim - we need to look at structural factors that lead to family breakdown (poverty, long working hours, unemployment)
• Parent deficit does not automatically lead to children becoming criminals; there are ‘pull factors’ such as peer group pressure

Question 15

Cohen

Answer 15

Crime and Deviance acts as a ‘warning device’ for society that something is not working correctly, and change needs to happen. For example, high levels of truancy indicate problems in the education system.

Question 16

Evaluation of the functionalist theory of crime

Answer 16

1) Durkheim states that society requires a certain amount of crime and deviance for society to function, but does not state how much - we also have no idea how much crime there actually is
2) Functionalists discuss crime in terms of their positive functions e.g strengthening solidarity. But people do not commit crime in order to do this – so why DO they do it?
3) Functionalism looks at crime and its functions for society as a whole, but does not look individually at crime and its effects on individuals.
4) Crime does not always lead to solidarity, and can sometimes have the opposite effect – e.g people staying inside the house because they are too scared to go outside.
5) Crime isn’t planned to bring about positive benefits -this doesn’t explain how/why it is there, it just explains the impact of it; ignores the free will and agency of people, interactionist, never explains where it comes from just its function for existence

Question 17

Strain Theory - Robert Merton

Answer 17

• This theory aims to answer the question of where crime comes from
• Strain in society is felt when people do not have the means to secure the goals; this lack of ability to achieve what you want causes frustration and tension and can lead to people trying to achieve their goals through deviant means, leading to people committing crime and contributing to anomie
• Means - how goals can be achieved; these are the resources at our disposal to achieve our goals, and you need education to get work to earn a comfortable salary and secure a decent house
• Goals - what do people aim for in their lives (socially approved goals); most people want decent housing, work, leisure, comfort etc and these goals motivate us to try hard

Modes of adaptation in America in the 1930s (Great Depression):
- Most unequal economy in the world, with the top 10% owning 80% of the GDP
- American society is meritocratic, but in reality this is not the case - the American Dream is a false goal
- There is a strain between the cultural goal of money success and the lack of legitimate means to obtain it, which creates frustration, causing pressure to deviate and therefore a strain to anomie
- The American dream concept of working hard and being rewarded is false; they can only work hard and gain no reward

Question 18

What are some barriers that can cause strain?

Answer 18

• Lack of proper socialisation
• Lack of opportunity
• Material deprivation
• Structural inequality (CAGE)
• Zero sum society - finite amount of power, winners and losers
• Lack of cultural/social/economic capital

Question 19

The 5 adaptations to strain

Answer 19

1) Conformists - these are people who have invested in the American Dream, worked towards their education and are in employment
2) Ritualists - these are people who do not aspire to society’s goals but accept the means of achieving them, so they go to wok and ‘do the job’ but may not want career success such as promotions
3) Innovators - these are people who are seen as criminals who support the goals of society but may use criminal means to achieve them
4) Retreatists - these reject society’s goals and may be seen as dropouts e.g. alcoholics, drug addicts
5) Rebels - these create alternative goals to those prescribed by society and may seek a counterculture - terrorists or revolutionaries would fit into this category

The strain to anomie:
- The goal -> desire to succeed -> lack of opportunity -> pressure to adopt illegitimate means (having one of these missing opens the opportunity to strain and anomie)
- Conformity -> has the means and the goals
- Innovators -> have the goals not the means (make their own)
- Ritualists -> Have the means but not the goals
- Retreatists -> have neither the goals or the means
- Rebellion -> are lacking in either department / mixture

Question 20

Evaluation of strain theory

Answer 20

+ Deviance arises because of the social structure
- Assumes that there is a consensus around goals and means, i.e: everyone wants the same thing, but this isn’t true
- Focuses on the individual responses, what about social patterns of who commits crime?
- Why do some turn to crime, but not others? – too deterministic
- Outwardly successful people (innovators) may be involved in criminal activity eg: white collar crime
- Only applies to western, capitalist society

Question 21

Utilitarian crime

Answer 21

Provides monetary / material reward

Non-utilitarian crime -> only reward is status, not physical reward
- Strain theory helps to explain utilitarian crime, but not non-utilitarian crime because material reward is a measurable goal

Question 22

Cause and Effect in functionalism

Answer 22

1) Rapid social change - Durkheim
-> confusion on new norms / boundaries
-> breaks in solidarity when people oppose the change, breaking the collective conscience
-> breakdown in consensus
-> increase in anomie and egoism (self-interest forms basis of morals
-> Functional rebels exist and become models of deviance
-> structures have an unknown function, which causes breakdown in socialisation
LEADS TO - more deviance

2) Social integration and consensus (Durkheim)
-> greater bonds of attachment (Hirschi)
-> more integration into society
-> boundaries are maintained
-> value consensus / collective conscience / social solidarity
-> socialisation is better / reinforced through media etcas boundary maintenance
LEADS TO - Social order and less crime

3) Strain theory (Merton)
- Less access to means for the goals and therefore people become deviant to achieve the goals
- Goals are harder to achieve when people retreat or rebel
- Deprivation tends to contribute to strain, as does poor socialisation, absent parents, structural inequality, lack of capital, losers in a zero sum society and lack of opportunity that the middle classes get
LEADS TO - More W/C crime recorded

Question 23

Albert Cohen - Status frustration and delinquent subcultures (subcultural theories of crime)

Answer 23

• Cohen focused on working class youth boys, saying they fail at school and therefore end up not being able to get good jobs or be economically successful
• Students realise that they can never compete on a level playing field and this is frustrating
• They reject the values of hard work, success and compliance etc in favour of values they can achieve, with like minded individuals banding together into ‘delinquent subcultures’
• Cohen argues that working class youth boys face anomie in the middle-class dominated school system and they suffer from cultural deprivation and lack the skills to achieve
• Their inability to succeed in this middle class world leaves them at the bottom of the official status hierarchy, and as a result of being unable to achieve status by legitimate means (education) the boys suffer status frustration
• Cohen uses his theory to explain non-utilitarian crime such as those not committed for material gain, such as vandalism, loitering and joyriding which can help working class youths to deal with their status frustration by having an outlet for this frustration and also because it helps them to gain status within their delinquent subculture

Question 24

The aim of Cohen’s theory

Answer 24

• He set out to develop Merton’s strain theory - why do particular groups commit crime and why do they commit non-utilitarian crime?
• The key to subcultural theories is that actually deviants confro mto norms and values, but these norms and values are just different from the rest of society
• Cohen argued W/C boys often failed at school resulting in low status, and the response to this was a formation of subcultures with values that were largely reverse of mainstream values, and what was deemed to be deviant in mainstream society was praiseworthy and good in the subculture and vice versa
• Cohen’s theory explains crimes like vandalism and fighting by the inversion of mainstream values, turning deviant acts into those with achieving status in the group

Question 25

Opportunity / status hierarchies - Cohen

Answer 25

Legitimate opportunity in the status hierarchy
- Learning at school -> qualifications -> working -> promotions (status) -> take on a management role (leadership and more status) -> train others
- This is a legitimate acquiring of skills that is praiseworthy in mainstream culture

Illegitimate opportunity in the status hierarchy
- Failure at school -> unqualified and so innovate, become deviant and learn deviant skills and knowledge -> employment into criminal activity (utilitarian crime due to pay) -> gang leader (status) -> Big criminal network leader (organised crime and gang networks) -> recruitment
- What occurs in the socially approved status hierarchy is deviantly inverted in the illegitimate status hierarchy and they mirror one another in the acquirement of status

Question 26

Evaluation of Cohen

Answer 26

1) Do members of subcultures consciously invert norms and values - does this theory make it seem too intentional; postmodern sociologists Lyng and Katz argue that it is more likely the individual is influenced by boredom or is seeking a ‘buzz’ - however, it could be countered that delinquents can be conscious of how deviant acts may provide access to rewards and status in the group
2) Cohen does not address why working class boys form these groups and not girls - if the reason of deviance is frustration at low status, many feminists would suggest that in 1950s America, you would expect girls to be the ones forming deviant subcultures as they face even more frustration
3) However, he does successfully develop Merton’s strain theory to provide an explanation for non-utilitarian crimes, and therefore Merton and Cohen offer a functionalist explanation for a wide range of deviant behaviour

Question 27

Miller (1958) - Subcultural theories of crime; focal concerns

Answer 27

• Working class boys are socialised into a number of distinct values that together meant they were more likely than others to engage in delinquent or deviant behaviour; Miller described these as ‘focal concerns’ (ways we socialise boys) and these are values which can lead to greater deviance and/or criminality

The focal concerns - FATEST
1) Excitement - they seek out excitement, particularly when not at work
2) Toughness - they wish to prove they are tough / ‘hard’
3) Smartness - they use wit (smart remarks)
4) Trouble - linked to excitement and toughness, they will find themselves in trouble
5) Autonomy - they wish to be independent and not reliant on others
6) Fate - they believe that their future is already decide; what they do won’t influence it
- For example, seeking excitement might lead to non-utilitarian crime; toughness, smartness and trouble might result in fighting - autonomy might lead people to take matters into their own hands rather than asking for help;fatalism might mean that they do not consider the consequences of their actions as the future is already written

Question 28

Evaluation of Miller

Answer 28

1) Cannot believe in social solidarity as a functionalist if there is an assumption that the lower classes have different norms and values
2) Miller just talks about boys without really considering gender; feminist critics have pointed out that these focal concerns might just be masculine values rather than lower-class ones
3) Indeed, as suggested by Matza, perhaps we all share such ‘deviant’ values but learn not to act on them - boys could be socialised with these focal concerns and not be deviant

Question 29

Cloward and Ohlin (1960) - Subcultural theories of crime

Answer 29

• Like Merton, they argued that there was a “legitimate opportunity structure” (what Merton had meant by the socially-acceptable means to achieving social goals), but they also identified an alternative “illegitimate opportunity structure” which was available through gang membership.
• However, just as not all people could easily access the legitimate opportunity structure and material success (Merton’s concept of strain), there could also be a strain in relation to illegitimate opportunity structures.
• Because someone is unable to become wealthy through working hard and gaining qualifications does not mean that they will easily find a criminal path to wealth and success.
• Some people live in locations where an existing criminal subculture already exists while others do not. Furthermore, the types of subcultures available vary and people’s responses to blocked opportunities differ.
• This goes some way to explaining why not all those who find legitimate opportunity structures blocked turn to crime.

Question 30

Cloward and Ohlin’s 3 deviant subcultures

Answer 30

Combined the theories of Merton and Cohen to explain the different kinds of criminal subcultures they identified; developed three types of deviant subcultures within the illegitimate opportunity structure
1) Criminal subculture - organised crime where career criminals can socialise youths into their own criminal career that might result in material success
2) Conflict subculture - gangs organised by young people themselves, often based on claiming territory from other gangs in so-called ‘turf wars’
3) Retreatist subculture - those who are unable to access either legitimate or illegitimate opportunity structures might drop out altogether but might do so as a group rather than individually; these groups might abuse drugs for example

Question 31

Evaluating Cloward and Ohlin

Answer 31

1) Not 3 distinct subcultures - although Cloward and Ohlin’s three forms of subculture seem distinct, most criminal gangs would have elements of two or more of these subcultures; for example, drug use is likely in all three groups, and turf wars often happen between all groups as well
2) Don’t tackle the root cause of why people are denied legitimate opportunities; Cloward and Ohlin write about working class crime and predominantly about males, but do not tackle wider issues relating to social class or gender, and they do not question why in a meritocratic society, working class youths are generally denied access to legitimate opportunity structures
3) Doesn’t explain female crime - they also do not explain how girls, who are also denied access to these structures, do not react in the same ways boys do

Question 32

Matza - subcultural theories of crime

Answer 32

We all share delinquent values:
- Most people are however able to keep these suppressed, and most young people commit crime as they are less able to suppress and haven’t learned how to do this, and therefore people are neither conformist or deviant; instead, people are able to ‘drift’ between both throughout their lives
- Matza suggests that the proof of existence of these subterranean values (underground) comes from people trying to neutralise their deviant acts
- If people really had a different set of values when they behaved deviantly, they would believe their deviant behaviour was appropriate / correct
- However, people quickly seek ways to justify their behaviour or question their responsibility in terms of mainstream values
- Therefore, according to Matza, they must understand and share those values, and he suggests people use a number of different techniques of neutralisation

Technique:
1) Denial of responsibility - ‘it wasn’t me’
2) Denial of injury - ‘it didn’t hurt’
3) Denial of victim - ‘you deserved it’
4) Condemnation of the condemners - ‘you’re just as bad’
5) Appeal to higher loyalties - ‘I did it for my friends etc’

Question 33

Evaluating Matza

Answer 33

1) Techniques of neutralisation are excuses; they could simply be used as an attempt to avoid censure or punishment, rather than to ‘drift’ back into mainstream values
2) Some of these techniques of neutralisation may be deviant values; the belief that victims are partly responsible for their victimhood, or that higher loyalties justify crimes might well be examples of the deviant norms and values of a criminal subculture
- However, Matza is correct that many people may be delinquents when they are young and then go on to lead respectable lives as adults (e.g. politicians or bank managers) and in such cases, it is not that they have been socialised into a different, minority set of norms and values, and their ability to conform to mainstream values when they mature shows that they were socialised into their value consensus as those who did not participation in deviant behaviour in their youth

Question 34

Jackson Katz and Lyng - postmodernism; edgework of crime

Answer 34

• Cultural criminology - eval of right realism, focuses on how committing crime actually makes people feel and the thrill of the act as an escape from a grey existence
• Crime is a reaction against the mundane - Katz argues that people get drawn into crime because it is seductive, and crime is just one way people enjoy leisure time in a postmodern society (London Riots 2011)
• Lyng - Edgework; crime is a means whereby people could get a thrill by engaging in risk-taking behaviour and going to the edge of acceptable behaviour and challenging what is considered to be acceptable
• Crime happens precisely because rules exist, and increased surveillance simply creates more law breaking due to more thrilling challenges