Crime, Deviance, Social Order & Social Control Flashcards
Crime & Deviance
- Crime: Behaviour which breaks the law and is punished by the legal system.
- Deviance: Behaviour which goes against the norms, values and expectations of a social group or society.
Socially Constructed
• Created by social processes, rather than occurring naturally. Crime and deviance are socially constructed.
Historical & Cultural Crimes
- Historical: Homosexuality was a crime until 1967.
* Cultural: Polygamy is illegal in UK but not elsewhere.
Situation Dependent
• Crime and deviance are situation dependent e.g. stabbing someone is illegal but stabbing someone during war isn’t.
Plummer (1979)
• Made a distinction between situational and societal deviance.
Societal Deviance
• Acts that are seen by most members of society as deviant in most situations e.g. kicking a dog.
Situational Deviance
• Acts that are only defined deviant in certain situations e.g. being naked at home vs in the middle of the street.
Social Control
• Various methods used to persuade or force individuals to conform to the dominant social norms and values of a society or group.
Socialisation (Durkheim)
• Instilling the shared culture into members - internalise same norms and values and feel as though they should act in the way society requires.
Social Control (Durkheim)
• Rewards for conformity and punishments for deviance.
The Inevitability of Crime (Durkheim)
• Functionalists - deviance = inevitable and beneficial. Two reasons for it:
- Not everyone is socialised adequately.
- There’s a diversity of lifestyles and values.
Anomie (Durkheim)
- Anomie = lack of social/ethical standards in an individual or group.
- DURKHEIM - it occurs in modern societies. Rules governing behaviour are weaker, weakening collective conscience and causing deviance.
Positive Function of Crime: Boundary Maintenance (Durkheim)
- Crime produces a reaction from society, uniting members in condemnation. This reinforces their commitment to shared values.
- DURKHEIM believes the purpose of punishment is to reaffirm society’s shared rules and reinforce social solidarity.
Positive Function of Crime: Adaptation and Change (Durkheim)
- Deviance allows for social change to occur. There’s scope for people to challenge and change existing norms and values.
- DURKHEIM and other functionalists argue society must change to remain healthy and stable.
Dysfunctional Crime (Durkheim)
- Too much crime = no social order
* Too little crime = no social change
Positive Function of Crime: Safety Value
- Deviance can release stresses in society.
- DAVIS argues prostitution is a safety value for the release of men’s sexual frustrations without threatening the monogamous nuclear family.
- POLSKY argues porn channels a variety of sexual desires away from adultery.
Positive Function of Crime: Warning Device
• A.COHEN argued deviant behaviour such as protests and truancy is used as a warning device by society to identify emerging social problems.
Strengths of Durkheim’s Positive Functions of Crime
- Offers a realistic explanation of crime
- Adds to our knowledge
- Tries to be optimistic
Criticisms of Durkheim’s Positive Functions of Crime
- DURKHEIM says society needs certain amount of deviance to function successfully - doesn’t offer a way of knowing how much is the right amount.
- Society didn’t create crime for these functions.
- Ignores how crime affects people - Punishment functional for society but not for the victim or their family.
- Crime doesn’t always promote solidarity e.g. women may not leave their homes for fear of an attack.
Strain Theory
• People engage in deviant behaviour when they are unable to achieve socially approved goals by legitimate means.
Merton’s Strain Theory
• MERTON adapted DURKHEIM’S theory. It combines:
- Structural factors - society’s unequal opportunity structure.
- Cultural factors - strong emphasis on success.
• Deviance is thought to be the result of strain between the two factors.
The American Dream
- American culture values ‘money success’.
- Americans expected to pursue goal by legitimate means - society is meritocratic.
- Disadvantaged groups denied opportunities to achieve legitimately.
- Creates strain which produces frustration which then creates pressure to deviate.
Deviant Adaptations to Strain
- MERTON - individual’s position in the social structure affects the way they respond to the strain of anomie.
- Types of adaptation to strain are dependent on whether an individual accepts, rejects or replaces approved cultural goals.
Five Adaptations
- Conformity - People achieve cultural goals legitimately.
- Innovation - People who fail at standard route deviate.
- Ritualism - People who can’t achieve goals and don’t try.
- Retreatism - People reject the main cultural goals and retreat from society e.g. drop out of school.
- Rebellion - People reject the goals and rebel to change them.
Strengths of Merton’s Strain Theory
- Merton explains how normal and deviant behaviour arises from mainstream goals.
- It has had an influence on later theories.
- MESSNER + ROSENFELD (2001) - In societies based on free-market capitalism and lacking adequate welfare provision, high crime rates are inevitable.
Criticisms of Merton’s Strain Theory
- It takes crime statistics at face value.
- Marxists argue it ignores the power of the ruling class.
- It assumes there’s a value consensus for ‘money success’.
- It only accounts for utilitarian crime.
- It ignores the role of group deviance.
Subcultural Strain Theories
- They see deviance as the product of delinquent subcultures with different values from mainstream society.
- These subcultures provide an alternative opportunity structure for those who are denied access to achieve.
- They are a solution to a problem and are functional for its members.
Status Frustration (A.K. Cohen)
• Agrees with MERTON that deviance is a lower-class phenomenon - they can’t achieve goals legitimately.
• He criticises MERTON for:
- Seeing deviance as an individual response.
- Focusing on utilitarian crime.
• He argues anomie in the MC school system causes WC boys to suffer status frustration. They resolve this by rejecting values and turning to other boys in the same situation.
Alternative Status Hierarchy
- The delinquent subculture inverts the value of mainstream society - what society condemns, the subculture praises.
- The subculture offers an alternative status hierarchy - create illegitimate opportunity structure to win status from peers through their actions.
Strengths of Cohen’s Status Frustration
- It offers an explanation for utilitarian crime.
* It helps understand WC delinquency as a group response rather than individual.
Criticisms of Cohen’s Status Frustration
- He assumes all WC boys start off sharing MC values.
- MILLER (1962) argues young people can’t generate a subculture seeking revenge and rejecting mainstream goals, as they never had them.
Three Subcultures (Cloward & Ohlin)
- They agree WC youths are denied legitimate opportunities to achieve and their deviance stems from this.
- They explain that different subcultural responses occur due to unequal access to opportunity structures - in some areas gangs provide a deviant route but in some places they don’t.
- Different neighbourhoods provide different opportunities.