sociological evaluation

Question 1

Durkheim

Answer 1

+ first to recognise that crime can have a positive function on society

• claims that society needs deviance but how much?
• crime may be functional for society but not for victims

Question 2

Merton

Answer 2

+ shows that normal and deviance arise from the same goals
+ explains patterns shown in statistics (high property crime as wealth is valued)
- ignores crime committed by the wealthy
- sees deviance as individual response not grouped
- focuses on utilitarian crime ignoring them with no economic motive

Question 3

Labelling theory

Answer 3

+ shows that law needs more explanation
+ can help explain why working class and minority groups are over represented in statistics
+ shows how controlling deviance causes more
- implies that once someone is labelled criminality is inevitable
- fails to explain primary deviance, before labelling
- fails to explain why labels are given to some groups but not the other

Question 4

Marxism

Answer 4

\+ explain crimes like theft and burglary as the working class commit them due to unequal society 
\+ shows how laws are in favour of the upper class
- focuses on the class an crime ignoring other inequalities (gender,sex)
- over exaggerates the amount of crime the working class commit
- not all capitalist societies have high crime rates

Question 5

Right realism

Answer 5

+ Rettig gave students scenario opportunity to commit a crime - degree of punishment determined if they did it
+ Feldman - if the rewards are high enough crime is worth committing
+ Bennett and Wright interviewed burglars they all weighed up the risks and rewards
- Feldman’s were experiments so may not apply to real life
- Bennet and Wright only studied unsuccessful burglars so we don’t know if successful ones think the same
- not all crimes are rational choice (violent ones)

Question 6

Left realism

Answer 6

+ draws the importance of poverty, inequality and relative deprivation as causes to crime
+ draws attention to street crime and its effects on the victims
- Henry and Milovanovic left realism accepts the definition of crime as street crimes of the poor, doesn’t explain white collar crime
- over predicts the amount of working class crime
- focuses on high crime in inner cities- unrepresented view