Perspectives on Crime

Question 1

Functionalism - Durkheim

Answer 1

• The vast majority of the population share similar values and have a collective conscience
  ↳ the more ones values differ from the core values, the more likely they are to be viewed as deviant
  ↳ a strong collective conscience, effective socialisation and a fair legal system, reinforcing this forms the basis of social order
• A limited amount of crime may be good for society

Role of crime and deviance in society

• Crime and Deviance are inevitable: there will never be a crime free society
• Limited amount of crime and deviance actually perform positive functions
• Durkheim: there is a point at which there can be too much crime in a society (this is when a society tips out of balance)
  ↳ Didn’t actually say ‘how much’ crime is the right amount
  ↳ Excessive crime could be caused by problems with the collective conscience caused by anomie (instability) & egoism (personal interest)

Crime is Inevitable

• Even in a ’society of saints’ deviance would still exist
  ↳ The general standards of behaviour would be so high that even the slightest slip would be regarded as a serious offence
• All societies adapt and change and all social change begins with some form of deviance
• Regarded some crime as ‘an anticipation of morality of the future’

Positive Functions of Crime

• Argued that crime performed positive functions within a society
• Social Regulation: Crime reminds people what the law is and drawing them together in horror against it
  ↳ Pursuit, trial and punishment of criminals reassure people that society is functioning effectively & the law unambiguously marks the extremities of acceptable behaviour
  ↳ In contemporary society, newspapers help to perform the publicity function: the courts and the media are ‘broadcasting’ the boundaries of acceptable behaviour
• Social change: all social change begins with some deviance; everytime a person is prosecuted for a crime, attention is drawn to that act
  ↳when the law is clearly out of step with the feelings and values of the majority, legal reform is necessary
  ↳ Criminals help the law reflect the wishes of the population and legitimising social change
  ↳ if collective sentiments are too strong, there will be little deviance and little change or progress
• Social Integration (Social Cohesion): when particularly horrific crimes have been committed the whole community joins together in outrage and the sense of belonging to a community is strengthened

Question 2

Application of Functionalism - 2011 London Riots

Answer 2

• Rioters are mad, ordinarily people who lose their rationality in the crowd and mindlessly mimic the violence of others
• Rioters are bad: criminals & others come together to vent their rage against society
• Bad is leading the mad: ‘malcontent agitators’ taking advantage of a gullible mass in order to create nathan
• Explanations: recession, racism (Black people seen as a danger and stopped and searched by police - experienced as humiliating and led to simmering anger)
• Media held a biased and unbalanced view
• Social Regulation?: riots escalated very quickly so there was no social regulation as more people kept joining the riots
• Social Integration?: people came together to challenge the police and created the riots
  ↳ united against the police so there was more unity in society
• Social Change?: little to no social change and the only thing that changed was the increasingly authoritarian way in which police and courts handle public protest and public disorder

Question 3

Hirschi - Bonds of Attachment Theory

Answer 3

• Criminal activity occurs when an individuals attachment to society is weakened
• Attachment: the more we feel a sense of belonging to society, the less likely we are to commit crime
• Commitment: the more one has invested in society, the less likely one is to commit crime
• Involvement: the less free time one has less likely they are to commit crime
• Belief: the stronger someone believes in the values of a society, the less likely they are to commit crime
• ‘Typical Characteristics’ of a criminal: young, single, unemployed male with a history of truancy and bad parents
• Problem areas correlated with higher crime rates: absentee parents, truancy and unemployment

Question 4

Hirschi - Problem Areas

Answer 4

Absentee Parents and Crime

• Strong link between absentee parents and increased crime rates: disproportionate amount of those in jail and young offenders institutions suffer from ’Parent Deficit’
• Farington and West: Offenders were more likely to come from poorer, single parent families with poor parenting and parents who were themselves offenders
  ↳ suggests that good primary socialisation is essential in preventing crime
• Glyn - Parent Deficit: children need both discipline and love (which are absent with absent parents)
• ‘Family breakdown and a lack of father futures could be to blame for pupils joining gangs - children as young as nine are being drawn into organised crime for protection and to gain a sense of belonging
  ↳ others are effectively ‘born into’ gangs as membership is common among older brothers and even parents in some areas

**Truancy and Cr

• Children with a history of truancy (and permanent exclusion) from school are more likely to end up in young offenders institutions and later on in jail
• Nearly 3/4 of excluded students admitted offending in the previous 12 months; poor attendance at school means poor qualifications, which means lower paid, lower status job or unemployment
  ↳ these conditions are correlated with higher rates of criminal activity
• Been noted by politicians: introduction of fines and even jail sentences for parents who don’t prevent their children taunting being indicative of house seriously the gov takes this issue

Unemployment and Crime

• More than a fifth of people on unemployment benefits have a criminal record
• More than 1.1 million of the 5.2
  million people (22%) claiming out-of-work benefits had a criminal record
• People who are claiming unemployment benefit are more than twice as likely to have a criminal record

Question 5

Application of Hirschi - ‘Life on the Estate’

Answer 5

• Children predict that they will end up in prison: no investment in society/school
• 12 year olds taking drugs
• Children feel no attachment to society: they are surrounded by drugs and smoking cigarettes
  ↳ because they feel no attachment, they are more likely to commit crime
  ↳ also means they most likely don’t believe in the values of society because they are surrounded by crime

Question 6

Merton - Strain Theory

Answer 6

• Didn’t agree with functionalists that crime was always beneficial
• Crime was often seen as evidence of a poor fit (strain) between the socially accepted goals of society and the socially approved goals of obtaining them
• The cultural system of the USA was built on the ’American Dream’: a set of meritocratic principles which assured the American public that equality of opportunity was available to all, regardless of class, gender or ethnicity
  ↳ The American Dream encouraged individuals to pursue a goal of success which was largely measured in terms of the acquisition of wealth and material possessions and people were expected to pursue this goal through legitimate institutionalised means such as education and work
• Dominant cultural message was if you are ambitious, talented and work hard then income and wealth should be your rewards
  ↳ however these goals were not attainable by all because the structural organisation of the USA meant that the means to get on were not fairly distributed and it was difficult for some to compete and achieve financial success
  ↳ imbalance between the opportunities in the legitimate opportunity structure and the r number of people wanting to fill these opportunities
• Developed the concept of anomie: describe this imbalance between cultural goals and institutional means
  ↳ an imbalanced society produces anomie - there is a strain or tension between the goals and means which produce unsatisfied aspirations
• When individuals are faced with a gap between their goals and their current status, strain occurs
• London Riots 2011: young people have no opportunities so they have nowhere to channel their energy
  ↳ they don’t see the point in school and have no good opportunities for them such as jobs, so they get back at tension and strain they feel to feel justified

Ways to adapt to strain

• Conformity: pursuing cultural goals through socially approved means
• Innovation: using socially unapproved or unconventional means to obtain culturally approved goals eg drug dealing or stealing to achieve financial security
• Ritualism: using the same socially approved means to achieve less elusive goals (more modest and humble)
• Retreatism: reject both the cultural goals and the means to obtain it, then find a way to escape it
• Rebellion: reject the cultural goals and means, then work to replace them

Question 7

Evaluation of Merton

Answer 7

• Explains why middle class criminals might commit financial crimes (they want to be super rich)
• Only really explains utilitarian (economic) crime: doesn’t really explain violent crime
• Still insufficient to explain exactly who will commit crime: not all people who lack legitimate opportunities turn to crime as some people just put up with it, suffer or commit suicide
• Accounts for individual deviance, but what about group deviance (subcultures)
• MARXISM: ignores the powers of the ruling class, who enforce laws in a way that criminalise the poor but not the rich

Question 8

Subcultural Theory

Answer 8

• Subculture: group that has values that are different to the mainstream culture
• Deviance is the result of whole groups breaking off from society who have deviant values and deviance is a result of these individuals conforming to the values and norms of the subculture to which they belong
• Pull of the peer group: encourages individuals to commit crime
• Helps to explain non-utilitarian crimes such as vandalism and joy riding
• Deviance is a collective response to marginalisation

Question 9

Cohen - Deviant Subcultures emerge because of Status Frustration

Answer 9

• Working class subcultures emerge because they are denied status in society
• Working class boys strove to emulate middle class values and aspirations, but lacked the means to achieve success
  ↳ led to status frustration: a sense of personal failure and inadequacy
• Working class boys face anomie in the middle-class dominated school system
  ↳ they suffer from cultural deprivation and lack the skills to achieve and their inability to success in this middle class environment leaves them at the bottom of the official status hierarchy
  ↳ boys suffer status frustration and they face a problem of adjustment and they revolve this by rejecting socially acceptable values and patterns of acceptable behaviour
  ↳ because several boys go through the same experiences, they end up banding together and forming delinquent subcultures
• Alternative Status Hierarchy: delinquent subculture that reverses the norms and values of mainstream culture, offering positive rewards (status) to those who are most deviant
  ↳ status may be gained by being malicious, intimidating others, breaking school rules or the law and generally causing trouble
  ↳ this pattern of boys rejecting mainstream values and forming delinquent subcultures first starts in school and then becomes more serious later on, taking on the form of truancy and possible gang membership

Question 10

Cloward and Ohlin

Answer 10

• Argue that a lack of opportunity in the legitimate opportunity structure to reach societies goals was the cause of crime
• Illegitimate opportunity structure: a regular illegal career may be available through a subcultural group

Three types of delinquent subcultural group

• Criminal Subcultures: characterised by utilitarian crimes, such as theft and develop in more stable working class areas
  ↳ provided a learning opportunity and career structure for aspiring young criminals and an alternative to the legitimate job market as a means of achieving financial rewards
  ↳ adult criminals exercise social control over the young to stop them carrying out non-utilitarian delinquent acts such as vandalism which might attract the attention of the police
• Conflict subcultures: emerge in socially disorganised areas where there is a high rate of population turnover and a consequent lack of social cohesion
  ↳ these prevent the formation of stable adult criminal subcultures
  ↳ Characterised by violence, gang warfare, mugging and other street crime
  ↳ Both approved and illegal means of achieving mainstream goals are blocked or limited and young people express their frustration at this through violence or street crime, and at least obtain status through success in subcultural peer-group values
  ↳ this is a possible explanation for the gang culture which is increasingly appearing in run down areas of the UK, and possibly explains 2011 London Riots and subsequent social unrest
• Retreatist Subcultures: emerge among those lower class youth who are ’double failures’
  ↳ they have failed to succeed in both mainstream society and in the crime and gang cultures above
  ↳ response is a retreat into drug addiction and alcoholism, paid for by petty theft, shoplifting and prostitution

Question 11

Evaluation of Subcultural Theory

Answer 11

Paul Willis: Counter-School Subculture

• Represents a Marxist critique
• Working class lads formed a subculture in order to ‘have a laff’ in a school system which they had accurately identified as being irrelevant to their futures
• Unlike Cohen, these lads never aspired to be middle class, they identified themselves as working class, rejected middle class aspirations and rejected the middle class system of the school
• ’Counter-School Subculture

David Matza

• Interactionist Approach
• There were no distinct subcultures among young people rather all groups in society share a set of subterranean values (deviant values that encourage us to go against social norms eg drinking too much)
  ↳ these are usually held under control, but sometimes emerge at peak leisure times (weekends, holidays etc)
  ↳ the difference between a persistent offender and a law-abiding citizen is simply how often and in what circumstances these subterranean values emerge

Postmodernists

• Subcultures are much more common today than they were in the 1960s
• Subcultural theory assumes there are ‘mainstream norms and values which subcultures deviant from’
  ↳ according to Postmodernists, in society today deviance and subcultures are ‘normal’, which renders the whole of subcultural theory irrelevant in helping us to understand crime and deviance

Further Research

• 23% increase in gang related crime in London
• Gangs globally form distinct subcultures which encourage deviance

Question 12

Charles Murray - Underclass and Crime

Answer 12

• Underclass = group of people in America who were long term unemployed and effectively welfare dependent
• The first generation of underclass were then having children and socialising the next generation of children into a culture of worklessness
  ↳ creates issues because this group is essentially cut off from ordinary social life and are not constrained by ordinary norms and values like ordinary working people
• In the UK the underclass was termed NEETS
• Each new NEET dropping out of education at 16 will cost taxpayers an average of £97k during their lifetime, with the worst costing more than £300k a piece
• A single 157,000 strong cohort of 16-18 year old NEETS would cost the country a total of £15 billion by the time they died prematurely in about 2060
• NEETS are 22x more likely to be teenage mothers, 50% more likely to suffer from poor health, 60%
  more likely to be involved with drugs and more than 20x more likely to become criminals
• NEETS contribute to high crime rates and low participation in the labour force: they have never been socialised and simply don’t know how to behave
  ↳ it is very difficult, almost impossible, to take these people now and provide basic conditioning
• There has always been a small underclass but now the NEETS are a major problem

Question 13

Marxist Perspective on Crime

Answer 13

• Power is held by the Bourgeoisie and laws are a reflection of their ideology
• The legal system and the police work in the interests of the Bourgeoisie
  ↳ These institutions are used to control the masses, prevent revolution and keep people in a state of false consciousness
  Key Points

1) Capitalism is Crimogenic - it encourages criminal behaviour
2) The Law is made by capitalist elites and tends to work in their interests
3) All classes, not just the working class, commit crime and the crimes of the elite are more costly that street crime
4) The state practices selective law enforcement - the CJS mainly concerns itself with policing and punishing the marginalised, not the wealthy and this performs ideological functions for the elite classes

Question 14

Capitalism is Crimogenic

Answer 14

• Crime is a ‘natural outgrowth’ of the capitalist system
• Capitalism encourages individuals to pursue self-interest rather than public duty
• Capitalism encourages individuals to be materialistic consumers, making us aspire to an unrealistic and often unattainable lifestyle
• In its wake, capitalism generates massive inequality and poverty, conditions which are correlated with higher crime rates

David Gordon

• Capitalist societies are ‘Dog eat dog societies’: each company and individual is encouraged to look out for their own interests before the interests of everyone/thing
• The capitalist system recommends we engage in self-interested pursuit of profit (which they say is good) and that it is acceptable that we harm others and the environment in the process
• In a capitalist society, there is immense competitive pressure to make more profit and be more successful because this is the only way to ensure survival
• The values of the capitalist system filter down to the rest of our culture and this may help explain the motives of economic criminals; they are seeking personal gain without caring for the individual victims

Capitalism encourages us to want things we don’t need and cannot afford

• Companies such as McDonalds spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, morphing their products into fantastical images that do not accurately the reality of their products or the exploitative productive processes behind their products
• Modern capitalism could not exist without the culture of consumerism and the world of advertising presents a ‘normal lifestyle’ which may be unattainable for many people in British society
• For people who lack legitimate means to achieve the materialist norm through working, this can breed feelings of failure, inadequacy, frustration and anger
• Advertising creates the conditions that can lead to status frustration (and thus crime)
• Similar to Merton’s Strain Theory: the desire to achieve the success goals of society outweigh the pressure to obey the law and advertising adds too this train between the legitimate means and the goal of material success
  ↳ however, Marxists argue that this problem is a structural feature of capitalism, and this will not be eradicated as a cause of crime until capitalism disappears

Capitalism is divisive and creates inequality and poverty

• The capitalist system is one of radical inequality
• At the very top we have the ‘superclass’ (David Rothkopt): the people who run global corporations
• At the very bottom, we have the ‘underclass’ and the slum dwellers, the street children and the refugees
• Zygmunt Bauman: the super wealthy effectively segregate themselves from the wealthy, through living in exclusive gated communities and travelling in private jets and armoured vehicles with security entourages
  ↳ however, this does not prevent the poor and rich from living side by side and this visible evidence of massive inequalities give people at the bottom a sense of injustice, anger and frustration that they are not sharing the wealth being flaunted in front of them
  ↳ capitalism leads to a flourishing of economic crime and violent street crime
• William Chambliss: economic crime ‘represents rational responses to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies’
  ↳ if capitalism is based on competition, selfishness and greed then that forms peoples attitudes to life and so crime is a perfectly normal outcome of these values
  ↳ Internalised is the desire to be successful that breaking the law is seen as a minor risk
  ↳ Marxists: more egalitarian societies based on the values of co-operation and mutual assistance have lower crime rates

Question 15

The Law benefits the elites and works in their interests

Answer 15

• The superstructure serves the ruling classes, and so the state passes laws which support ruling class interests
• Property rights are much more securely established in law that the collective rights of (for instance) trade unions
  ↳ Property law clearly benefits the wealthy more than those with no property
  ↳ William Chambliss: ‘at the heart of the capitalist system lies the protection of private property’ - eg there are roughly 100,000 homeless people in the UK yet there’s 300,000 houses lying empty

Laureen Snider - Capitalist states are reluctant to pass laws which regulate large capitalist concerns which might threaten profitability

• Having tried so hard to attract investment, the last thing the state wants to do is alienate the large corporations so they are reluctant to pass or enforce laws against such things as pollution, worker health and safety and monopolies
• Fines for breaking environmental protection laws are relatively low and until 2007, np individual member of a corporation could be prosecuted for damaging the environment or endangering worker safety
  ↳ Eg: deregulation of financial markets prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent ‘credit crunch’ and economic recession - the activities of bankers and financiers were not seen as illegal and many grew rich through payments of large bonuses rather than being prosecuted

People have unequal access to the law

• Having money to hire a good lawyer can delay trials, meaning the difference between being found not guilty or guilty, the influence of the length of one’s sentence and the type of prison one goes to
• For Marxists, punishment for a crime may depend and vary according to the social class of the perpetrator: poorer criminals tend to receive harsher punishments than rich criminals

Question 16

Costs of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime

Answer 16

• Although they are hidden from view, the crimes of the elite exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of ‘ordinary people’
• White Collar Crime: crimes committed in the furtherance of an individual’s own interests, often against the corporations of organisations within which they work
  ↳ eg embezzlement, extortion, tax evasion, money laundering
  ↳ Bernie Madoff: executed the largest Ponzi scheme in history worth about $65 billion, defrauding investors out of tens of billions of dollars
• Corporate Crime: crimes committed by or for corporations or businsses which aim to further their interests and have a serious physical or economic impact on employees, consumers, and the general public.
  ↳ The drive is usually the desire to increase profits
  ↳ Eg: fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, health and safety violations, paying below minimum wage
  ↳ Bhopal Pesticide Plant: gas leak causing 3500 deaths and 25000+ permanent injuries

Laureen Snider

• The cost of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime to the economy far outweighs the cost of street crime by ‘typical’ criminals
• The cost to the taxpayer in the USA of corporate bail outs is estimated to be around $500 billion or $5000 per household in the USA

Question 17

David Gordon - The Ideological Functions of Selective Law Enforcement

Answer 17

• The police mainly focus on policing working class (and underclass) areas and the justice system mainly focuses on prosecuting working and underclass criminals
• The system ignores the crimes of the elite and the middle classes, although they are just as likely to commit crime
• The disproportionate prosecution of working class criminals ultimately serves to maintain ruling class power and reinforce ruling class ideology (thus performing ‘ideological functions’ for the ruling class

Selective Law Enforcement benefits the capitalist system in major ways

1) By punishing individuals and making them responsible for their actions, defining these individuals as ‘social failures’, we ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality and poverty that create conditions which lead to crime
2) The imprisonment of many members of the underclass also sweeps out of sight the ‘worst jetsam of capitalist society’ so we cannot see it
3) The imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system
4) All of the police, court and media focus on working class street crime meaning our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes

Question 18

Evaluation of Marxism

Answer 18

• Does show us the lack of critical insight mainstream media brings to our understanding of crime
  ↳ mainstream thinking concentrates on violent youth crime, blaming immediately obvious factors such as lone parent families, status frustration and peer groups
• Argues there is a deeper cause of crime such as gang crime, rooted in the logic of the capitalist economy which is based on the self-interest accusation of material goods through exploitation and violence
  ↳ Gang crime is a deflection of the real problems of our society, generated by the greed mongers who, when not operating illegally, are almost certainly acting immorally
• Doesn’t account for all crimes; crime still exists in non-capitalist societies
• The UK is more capitalist then ever but crime rates have been decreasing in the last 20 years
• Stands up for the powerless working classes
• Highlights the economic cost of corporate and white collar crime

Question 19

Neo-Marxist Subcultural Theory

Answer 19

• Neo-Marxists acknowledge the existence of deviant subcultures and see them as a resistance to capitalism

Cohen

• Saw a reassertion of working-class culture in the 1980s, as they tried to reaffirm the lifestyle of a culture under threat from social and economic changes
• This reassertion of their working class roots was a reaction to the capitalism system that robbed them of an identity

Willis

• ‘Lads’ reproduces their working-class position through creating anti-school subcultures which reflected the shop floor culture they would inevitability go into for their working lives

Question 20

Taylor, Walton and Young - New Criminology

Answer 20

• Influence by Marxism as well as Interactionist/Labelling Theories
• Argued that when understanding why crime takes place, we should not only look at the individuals motivation but the wider capitalist society that generates the circumstance of the crime and the police response to it
• Also important to look at the interactionist ideas about the interplay of behaviour of victim, offender, media and the CJS
• Were particularly sympathetic towards the decriminalisation of many offences as they saw the law as unnecessarily intolerant and restrictive

Question 21

Stuart Hall - Policing the Crisis (New Criminological Approach)

Answer 21

• Neo-Marxist approach
• Research into the moral panic about ‘mugging’ as an ideological attempt to distract the attention from the failings of capitalism
• Moral panic over black criminality at the time created a diversion away from the wider economic crisis
  ↳ ‘Black youths out of control’ being the headlines rather than ‘Capitalism in Crisis’

Causes of this Moral Panic

1) Major economic recession in the mid 1970s increased unemployment and lead to wider civil unrest
2) Capitalism faced a ’legitimation crisis’ (appeared not to be working) and the government needed a scapegoat to divert attention away from the failing capitalist system
3) Recession also leads to further social and economic marginalisation of black youth which led to an increase in street robbery
4) The media picked up on these street robberies, creating a ‘moral panic’
5) The government responded to this by putting more police in areas with increasing crime rates
6) This led to higher arrest rates which the media reported on

Question 22

Critical Criminology

Answer 22

• Looks critically at the role of the media, the police and the CJS and is critical of the established capitalist order
• Adopted a wide range of perspectives including Feminism, anti-racism and environmentalism
• Saw existing societies and the CJS as unfair and exploitative

Question 23

Interactionism

Answer 23

• People do not become criminals because of their social background, but rather argue that crime emerges because of labelling by authorities
• See crime as the product of micro-level interactions between certain individuals and the police rather than the result of external social forces
• Labelling Theorists are interested in how certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place
• Argue there is no such thing as an inherently deviant act & certain acts only become deviant in certain situations when others label them as deviant
• Deviance is not a result of an act of an individual being ‘uniquely different’, deviance is a product of society’s reactions to actions
• Interested in the ways which those in power are more able to negotiate themselves out of being labelled as criminals even if they are just as deviant/criminal
  ↳ Being arrested, charged and convicted depends on the characteristics of the actors, the situation and circumstances of the offence and their interactions with agencies of social control
  ↳ leads labelling theorists to look at how the laws are applied and enforced
  ↳ their studies show that agencies of social control are more likely to label certain groups as deviant or criminal

Key ideas associated with labelling theory of crime

• Crime is socially constructed: an act which harms an individual/society only becomes criminal if those in power label it as criminal
  ↳ acts become criminal because some people decide that it’s bad enough to warrant a criminal label, not because it’s inherently ‘bad’
• Not everyone who is deviant gets labelled as such: negative labels generally given to the powerless by the powerful
• Labelling has real consequences: it can lead to deviancy amplification, self-fulfilling prophecy and deviant careers
• Labelling theory has a career has a clear ‘value position’: it should speak for the powerless and aim to promote policies that prevent labelling minor acts as deviant

Question 24

Howard Becker - Labelling Theory

Answer 24

• Illustrates how in a low-income neighbourhood, a fight is more likely to be defined by the police as evidence of delinquency, but in a wealthy areas as evidence of high spirits
  ↳ the acts are the same, but the meanings given to them by the audience (public/police) differ
• ’Moral entrepreneurs’: people who lead a moral crusade to change the law in the belief that it will benefit those to whom it is applied
• When new laws are created, they simply create new groups of outsiders and lead to the expansion of social control agencies and such campaigns may do little to change the underlying amount of ‘deviant activity’ taking place
• Deviance is not a quality that lies in behaviour itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it
  ↳ Deviance is produced by a process of interaction between the potential deviant and the wider public

Question 25

Aaron Cicourel - Power and the negotiation of justice

Answer 25

• Two Californian cities had similar social characteristics yet there was a significant difference in the amount of delinquents in each city which could only be accounted for by the size, organisations, policies and practices of the juvenile and police bureaus
  ↳ it is the societal reaction that affects the rate of delinquency and the agencies of social control that produce delinquents
• It was the meanings held by police officers and juvenile officers that explained why most delinquent come from working class backgrounds
  ↳ process of defining a young person as a delinquent was complex, involving mainly two stages of interactions based on sets of meanings held by the participants

Stages of interactions

1) The decision by the police to stop and interrogate an individual: this decision is based on meanings held by the police of what is strange, unusual or wrong and depends on where the behaviour is taking place and on how the police perceive the individuals
↳ if a young person has a demeanour like that of a ‘typical delinquent’ then the police are more likely to both interrogate and arrest that person
2) The young person is handed over to the juvenile delinquent officer: the officer will have a picture of a ‘typical delinquent’
↳ factors associated with a typical delinquent: dishevelled appearance, poor posture, speaking in slang

• Found that most delinquents come from working class backgrounds
• When middle class delinquents are arrested they are less likely to be charged with the offence as they do not fit the picture of a ‘typical delinquent’
  ↳ + their parents are more able to present themselves as respectable and reasonable people from a nice neighbourhood
  ↳ as a result, the middle class delinquent is more likely to be defined as ill rather than criminal, as having accidentally strayed from the path of righteousness and having a real chance of reform

Question 26

Consequences of Labelling - Edwin Lemert

Answer 26

• Everyone engages in deviant acts, but only some people are caught being deviant and labelled as such
• Primary deviance: refers to acts which have not been publicly labelled and are thus of little consequence
• Secondary deviance: Deviance which is the consequence of the response of others which is significant
• Study of Canada which had a long-rooted problem of chronic stuttering or stammering: chronic stuttering (secondary deviance) is a response to parents reaction to initial minor speech defects (primary deviance)

Question 27

Consequences of Labelling - Howard Becker

Answer 27

• Labelling theory can be applied across the whole CJS to demonstrate how criminals emerge
• The public, the police and the courts selectively label the already marginalised as deviant, which the then labelled deviant responds to by being more deviant
• This deviant label can become a master status where the individuals deviant identity overrules all other identities

5 Stages of the Deviant career and master status

1) Individual is publicly labelled as deviant which may lead to reflection from several social groups
2) May encourage further deviance
3) The label becomes a master status
4) Individuals join an organised deviant group where they confirm and accept their deviant identity
5) The official treatment of deviance may have similar effects - ex-convicts may find it hard to find work so they turn to deviance again

Question 28

Labelling Theory Applied to the Media

Answer 28

• The media has a long history of exaggerating the deviance of youth subcultures in particular, making them seem more deviant as they actually are
  ↳ this creates a moral panic which in turn leads to the authorities clamping down on the activities of those subcultures and the individuals resounding with more deviance
• Moral panic = exaggerated outburst of public concern over the morality or behaviour of a group in society
• The mass media has a crucial role to play in creating moral panics through exaggerating the extent to which certain groups commit crime and turning them into ’Folk Devils’ (people who are threatening to public order)
• The public responds disproportionately to something they see in the media
  ↳ could be expressed in heightened levels of concern in opinion polls or pressure groups sprinting up that campaign for action against the deviants
• The authorities respond to the public’s fear, which will normally involve tougher laws, initiatives and sentencing designed to prevent and the deviant group
• Cohen - Mods and Rockers: showed how the media exaggerated the violence which sometimes took place between them to try to make the young people categorise themselves as either mods or rockers
  ↳ this helped to created the violence that took place between them, which further helped to confirm them as violent in the eyes of the general public

Question 29

Labelling and Criminal Justice Policy

Answer 29

• Deviance is made worse by labelling and punishment by the authorities
• In order to reduce deviance, we should make fewer rules for people to break and have less serious punishments for those that do break the rules
• Interactionists argue that decriminalising drugs should reduce the number of people with criminal convictions and the risk of secondary deviance
  ↳ drug offences should be treated medically rather that criminally as many offences are committed by addicts (it’s better to treat the addiction rather than further stigmatise them with a criminal label)
• We should avoid naming and shaming offenders since this is likely to create a perception do them as evil outsiders and by excluding them from mainstream society, push them into further deviance

Question 30

Positive Evaluations of Labelling Theory

Answer 30

• The law is not set in stone: it is actively constructed and changes over time
• Law enforcement is often discriminatory
• We cannot trust crime statistics
• Attempts to control crime can backfire and may make the situation worse
• Agents of social control may actually be one of the major causes of crime, so we should think twice about giving them more power

Question 31

Criticisms of labelling theory

Answer 31

• Tends to be deterministic: not everyone accepts their labels
• Assumes offenders are just passive: doesn’t recognise the role of personal choice in committing crime
• Gives the offender a ‘victim status’: Realists argue that this perspective actually ignores the actual victims of crime
• Tends to emphasise the negative sides of labelling rather than the positive side
• Fails to explain why acts of primary deviance exist, focusing mainly on secondary deviance
• Structural Sociologists: there are deeper, structural explanations of crime and it isn’t all just a product of labelling and interactions

Question 32

Postmodernism

Answer 32

• It is the chaos of postmodern life and increasing marginalisation that leads to increasing anomie and crime

Social Changes in a postmodern world and how they may have changed the nature and extent of crime

1) Emergence of ‘Consumer Society’

• Postmodern society is based around
  consumption and consumerism rather than work
• People primarily identify themselves through the goods and services they buy rather than the jobs they do
• As a result there is simply more stuff being brought which means there is more opportunity to commit crime
• The mass media today is rife with programmes promoting high consumption, celebrity lifestyles as both normal and desirable thus increasing demand
  ↳ this combined with insufficient opportunities to earn enough to buy such a lifestyle creates a Vertigo of Late Modernity fuelling a historically high level of crime

2) Society has become a hyper real society - Baudrillard

• Mediated life is more common and more ‘real’ than face to face reality
• So, it is no surprise that the fastest growing type of crime is cyber-crime of different varieties; where criminals do not come face to face with their victims
• Most criminals would not dare to say the things they do face to face; the fact we are connected via the internet globally, the relative ease of access to the internet and the relatively low riskm of getting caught all help to explain the increase of cyber crime in the age of post-modernity

3) Society is now characterised by instability, insecurity and exclusion

• Since the 1970s, society has become a lot more unstable; de-industrialisation and the corresponding decline of unskilled manual jobs has led to increased unemployment, underemployment and poverty, especially for young people
• These changes have also destabilised family and community life and contributed to rising divorce rates
• All of this has contributed to increased marginalisation and exclusion of those at the bottom
  ↳ Today, there are millions of people who will never earn enough money to live a high-consumption, celebrity lifestyle and this results in many people suffering from relative deprivation and frustration
  ↳ this leads to more crime as people want to achieve material goals or seek a temporary emotional release from the anomie-frustrations

Question 33

Katz and Lyng - Postmodernism + Cultural Criminologists

Answer 33

• They stress the highly emotional nature of crime; they are interested in how committing the crime actually makes people feel
  ↳ focus on the thrill of the act: it can offer a brief escape from an otherwise grey emotional existence
  ↳ argue there is an intoxicating mix of fear and pleasure that often accompanies risk taking
• Crime is a reaction against the mundane: it is a time when those involved momentarily experience status, excitement and even some control over their own lives, which are otherwise characterised by feelings of worthlessness and insecurity
• People get drawn into crime because it is seductive and thrilling: Postmodernists interpret this simply as part of postmodern society which calls on us to enjoy our leisure time
  ↳ crime is one means where people do just that eg in the London Riots 2011

Lyng - ‘Edgework’

• Crime was a means whereby people could get a thrill by engaging in risk-taking behaviour
  ↳ going right to the edge of acceptable behaviour, and challenging the rules of what is acceptable
• This is an outgrowth of a postmodern society which encourages and rewards risk-taking behaviour
• Crime is carried out precisely because the rules are in place
  ↳ most young offenders do not set out on their escapades assessing the chances they will be arrested and this is why the steady increase in control in culture over our lives (CCTV, ASBOS) does little to deter
  ↳ it creates more lawbreaking as they are face with more ‘thrilling’ challenges

Strengths

• Explains the existence of new types of crime
• Contributes ideas on crime control and if it is effective
• Explains crime in post-modern society

Question 34

Jock Young - Late Modernity, Exclusion and Crime

Answer 34

• We are now living in a late modern society characterised by instability, insecurity and exclusion
• The 1950s and 60s represented a golden age of modern capitalist society, a period of stability, security and social inclusion, characterised by full employment and a well-functioning welfare state
  ↳ also a low divorce rate, strong communities and a general consensus about right and wrong and crime rates were very much lower
• Since the 1970s, society has become a lot more unstable: de-industrialisation and the corresponding decline of unskilled manual jobs has led to increased unemployment, underemployment and poverty
  ↳ these changes have also destabilised family and community life and contributed to rising divorce rates
  ↳ all of this has contributed to increased marginalisation and exclusion of those at the bottom
• Just as more and more people are suffering from the economic exclusion, we now live in a media saturated society which stresses the importance of leisure, personal consumption and immediate gratification as the means whereby we should achieve the good life
• The media generally informs us of what is normal and desirable
• Similar to Merton’s Strain Theory: today there are millions of people who will never earn enough money to live a high consumption, celebrity lifestyle and this results in many people suffering relative deprivation and frustration (basically anomie)
• Argues that deviant and criminal behaviour become a means whereby people can not only attempt to realise material goals, but crime can also be the means whereby they can seek to achieve celebrity or simply to seek a temporary emotional release from the anomic-frustration of coping with the usual contradictions and pressures of living in late-modernity
• Crime is more widespread and found increasingly throughout the social structure and crime is nastier with an increase in hate crimes
• Examples of attempts to achieve celebrity through deviance: extreme-subculture or any form of extreme ‘one-upmanship’ videos on Youtube
• Examples at escapism: binge-drinking and violence at the weekends
• Anomie and frustration generated in late-modernity also explains the increase in more serious crimes such as hate-crimes against minority groups and asylum seekers

In order to belong to society we are required to do the following:

• We need to have high levels of consumption: any buying now, paying later, and debt are seen as legitimate strategies for maintaining our consumption levels
• We need to have active leisure lives and publicise this: in effect we should turn ourselves into mini-celebrities and we need to be somebody
• We should strive to achieve success ourselves rather than depending on others: anyone can be successful if they try hard enough is the message

Question 35

Evaluating Jock Young’s Theory of Crime in Late Modernity

Answer 35

• These ideas can add a new dimension to our understanding of the causes of crime and deviance: particularly with regard to the non-economic reasons why people commit crimes
• Argues against the idea that crime is committed when there are available opportunities (rational choice theory) or a lack of controls against criminal behaviour
  ↳ crime here is depicted as quite a routine and logical act
• These approaches do not explain why crime is such an attractive option for so many young people (particularly men)
  ↳ there are many crimes such as drug use and vandalism, joyriding and even and rape and murder, which clearly involve much more than a simple rational choice
  ↳ there is obviously something much more appealing for those involved in crimes such as street robbery than the promise of profits on offer

Question 36

Applying Jock Young Theory - Focusing on Hate Crimes

Answer 36

• Hate Crime = a crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or similar grounds
• June 2016: number of hate crimes recorded in the past two weeks has spiked by 42% than this time last year (3076 incidents)
  ↳ the biggest number of recorded incidents came on 25 june when there were 289 hate crime related incidents
• Jock Young: explains that an increase in anomie and frustration leads to hate crimes

Causes of hate crime

• Because they are defensive: they see hate crimes as ‘defending’ themselves or their area
• Retaliation: revenge in response to other crimes such as terrorism or other personal slights
• Bigotry: believe a hate crime is protecting themselves eg a hate crime against a transperson is protecting their kids from being ‘groomed’

Question 37

Michel Foucault - Sovereign Power to Disciplinary Power

Answer 37

• Focuses on how the nature of crime control has shifted from us using the threat of violence and the fear of being physically punished to control through surveillance: fear or being seen to be doing something wrong
• Punishment has changed crime being a violent public spectacle (eg hanging) to being hidden away, behind closed doors
  ↳ Changed from being swift and physical, done on the body, to being more drawn out and psychological - punishment today is typically about changing the mind and the soul
• This reflects a change in his power is exercised in society; we have moved through sovereign power which is control through the threat of force to disciplinary power which is control through the monitoring and surveillance of populations
• By the end of the 18th century, extreme public punishment no longer took place and instead took place in prisons, behind closed doors and there was more of an attempt by authorities to control and reform criminals through the use of timetables and other intervention
• Disciplinary power evolved significantly in the late 19th century with the Panopticon Prison Design which consisted of a central observational tower and prison cells arranged around it
  ↳ prisoners could potentially be under observation at any time but could not see whether they were being observed or not so they had to self-monitor their behaviour so that in effect they ended up disciplining themselves as a result of being under constant surveillance

Question 38

Significance of Foucault’s Work on Surveillance

Answer 38

• Argues the use of disciplinary power has extended to everywhere in society: it is not only in prisons that disciplinary power (surveillance) is used to control people, and it is not only criminals who are subjected to this power
• Disciplinary power is now everywhere and everyone is subjected to it
  ↳ eg CCTV in public spaces but also in schools through registers and reports, and in workplaces through the use of performance monitoring and we can even see it in our personal lives; pregnancy and childhood are highly monitored by healthcare professionals and social workers and is possibly the most obvious in the form of expert knowledge surrounding childhood
• Most people now obey the rules because they know they are being watched: they regulate their own behaviour for fear of becoming the wrong kind of person
  ↳ eg a failing student, an unproductive worker, a bad mother, an obese-person

Question 39

Thomas Matthiesan - Synoptic Surveillance

Answer 39

• Control through surveillance has developed Foucault’s panopticon model
  ↳ allows the few to monitor the many, but today the media increasingly allow the many to monitor the few
• In Late Modernity, there is a significant increase in surveillance from below, which he calls the ’synotopicon’ where everybody watches everybody
• Thompson: powerful groups such as politicians fear the media’s surveillance of them may uncover damaging information about them, and this acts as a form of social control over their activities
• Synoptic surveillance is where the public monitor each other, as with video cameras mounted on dashboards or cycle helmets to collect evidence in the event of accidents
  ↳ this may warn other road users that their behaviour is being monitored and result in them exercising self-discipline
• The synotopticon suggests that ordinary citizens might have more power to ‘control the controllers’ eg activists filming the police at protests
  ↳ however this bottom-up scrutiny can still be stopped by more classic law enforcement such as the police confiscating cameras from citizen journalists