Theories And Perspectives Crime, Deviance, Social Order And Social Control Booklet Sociologists And Stats Flashcards
Feminists
Social control
A mechanism of patriarchal ideology - men reminding women of their subordinate position through responses to crime and deviance
West and Fred
Patriarchal ideology
When women stray from expected female nurturing and caring behaviour they are regarded as doubly deviant and often given a harsher punishment.
Newburn
The social construction of crime
Crime is a label attached to certain forms of behaviour prohibited by the state.
Crime seems easy to define there is no act that is criminal in itself.
Newburn
Crime is socially constructed
The fact criminal law varies from country to country and changes over time this reinforces the idea that nothing in itself is criminal.
Crime is socially constructed as it is not the act but how members see and define it which makes certain things crimes.
New domestic abuse offence created in 2015
The Home Secretary announces a new domestic abuse offence of coercive and controlling behaviour carrying a penalty of up to 5 years in prison.
The governments definition of domestic violence recognises the impact of coercive, controlling and threatening behaviour this as T been reflected in law before.
Downey’s and Rock
The social construction of deviance
Ambiguity is a key feature of rule breaking as people are often unsure whether something is deviant. Judgement depends on the context, the person and their motives.
What is defined as deviant also depends on social expectations of normal behaviour.
Societal deviance
Act seen by most of society as deviant
Situational deviance
Act defined as deviant in a particular context
Situational deviance examples
- Since July 2007 it has been illegal to smoke indoors.
- Attitudes to homosexuality pre 1967 illegal however 2013 introduced gay marriage.
Durkheim
Explanation of crime and deviance
- To a certain extent crime was inevitable - not everyone can be integrated into the norms and values of society.
- Crime is normal and an integral part of healthy societies - deviant individuals remind others of the importance of social solidarity.
- Without boundary maintenance crime rates might increase leading to anomie or normlessness.
Durkheim
Positive functions of crime
- Boundary maintenance - unites society in condemnation of the wrongdoer reinforcing shared norms.
The purpose of punishment is to reaffirm society’s shared rules not to punish which may be done through rituals of a court room and public shame of the offender. - Adaptation and change - All change starts with acts of deviance what challenges social norms.
Cohen
Positive functions of crime
Examined the role of the media in the dramatisation of evil
Davis
Other functions of crime and deviance
Prostitution acts as a safety value for mens sexual frustrations without threatening a monogamous nuclear family.
Polsky
Other functions of crime and deviance
Pornography safely ‘channels’ a variety of sexual desires away from alternatives e.g. adultery which would threaten the monogamous nuclear family.
Cohen
Crime and deviance acts as a warning to society
Deviance acts as a warning that an institution isn’t functioning properly.
Merton
Strain theory
Crime occurs as a result of tensions or strain arising from people trying but failing to attain goals society has set for them.
Merton
Modes of adaptation
When people cant achieve goals by socially acceptable means they look for others ways which might be criminal.
Hirschi
Control theory
- Attachment - the extent to which we care about other peoples opinions and desires.
- Commitment - personal investment we put into our lives.
- Involvement - how integrated we are so that we neither have the time nor inclination to behave in a deviant/ criminal way.
- Belief - how committed individuals are to upholding society’s rules and laws.
Cohen
Deviance
- Deviance is largely a lower-class phenomenon resulting in many from the lower classes unable to achieve mainstream success goals.
Cohen
Criticisms of Merton explanations of deviance
- Merton focuses on utilitarian crimes committed for material gain and doesn’t account for other crimes such as violence or vandalism.
- Explains how deviance results from individuals adapting to the strain to anomie but ignores the role of group deviance such as delinquent subcultures.
Cohen
Study focused upon working class boys
They faced anomie in middle class dominated school systems.
Young working class were frustrated as they lacked the opportunities to enable them to achieve societies goals - status frustration.
Status frustration led them to develop alternative set of values a ‘delinquent subculture.’
Coward and Ohlin
Response to strain and status frustration
The key reason different subcultural responses occur is not only unequal access to legitimate opportunity but unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structures.
Different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities to learn criminal skills and develop criminal careers.
Cloward and Ohlin
Criminal subcultures
- Conflict subcultures - occur in any areas with high population turnover preventing a stable criminal network.
- Criminal subcultures - Provide youths with an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime.
- Retreating subcultures - young people spending time together but not interacting with other groups such as those sharing a particular interest in a type of music.
Miller
Limitation of Cloward and Ohlin
Lower class has its own independent subculture with its own values. This subculture doesn’t value success so its members aren’t frustrated by failure.
Matza
Evaluation of Cloward and Ohlin
People belonging to subcultures use techniques of neutralisation justifying their behaviour by removing themselves from taking any violence because they were provoked or felt they had no choice.
Lyng
Edgework
Young people commit crimes in order to take risks and experience excitement.
South
Criticism of Cloward and Ohlin
Drug trade is a mix of disorganised crime and professional ‘mafia’ style subcultures.
Messner and Rosenfeld
Institutional anomie theories
Institutional anomie theory focuses on the American Dream.
They argue that its obsession with money, success and winner takes all pressure towards crime by encouraging an anomic cultural environment where ‘anything goes.’
Downey’s and Hansens
Institutional anomie theories
Surgery of crime rates o 18 countries they found that in societies that spent more on welfare there were lower rates of imprisonment.
Savelsberg
Institutional anomie theories
Applies strain theory to postmodern communist countries on East Europe.
Countries saw crime rise with the fall of communism.
Savelsberg attributes this to the introduction of western capitalist goals of money success.
Snider
Criminogenic capitalism
Argues that these types of crimes actually cost society far more than the crimes carried out by the poor.
Gordon
Criminogenic capitalism
Crime is a rational response to the capitalist system and is therefore found in all classes even though official statistics make it appear largely a working class phenomenon
Chanbliss
Law reflects ruling class interests and ideology
Identified ‘non-decision making’ - conscious decisions avoid creating laws and regulations for the wealthy.
Argued laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of capitalist society.
Box
Law reflects ruling class ideology and interests
What is defined as a serious crime is a social construct benefitting the wealthy
Snider
Selective law enforcement
Laws still dont curb the interest of big business.
Big businesses are important and necessary within a capitalist society, they are given concessions which benefit them.
Selective law enforcement example
Royal Bank of Scotland 62% owned by taxpayers disclosed the £305 million bonus pot alongside its annual results.
Pearce
Ideological functions of crime and law
Laws such as safety laws and workplace health often benefit the ruling class too
Ideological functions of crime and law example
2007 law against corporate homicide - only 1 successful prosecution i the first 8 years despite large numbers of deaths at oak estimated to be caused by employers negligence.
Taylor, Walton and Young
Neo Marxist view on crime and deviance
Capitalist society is based on class conflict and exploitation.
Agree that the state enforces the law in the interest of the capitalist state.
Believe capitalism should be replaced with a classless society.
Young and Walton
Neo Marxist views on crime and deviance
Believe their work layed some foundations for later radical approaches that seek to establish a more just society.
Taylor et al
Fully social theory of deviance
- Wider origins of the deviant act.
- Immediate origins of the deviant act.
- The actual act.
- The immediate origins of social reaction.
- Wider origins of social reaction.
- Effects of labelling on the deviants future actions.
Hall
Study of policing crisis in 1978
Focused on a moral panic surrounding mugging in Britain in the 1970s.
Hall believed the idea of a black mugger was a scapegoat for other social problems.
Smart
Growth of feminist criminology
Women are seen as doubly deviant.
Interactionists theories
Explanations of crime
It is more important to explore how people come to be described as deviant and the impact this has on their future behaviour - labelling theory.
Labelling theorists
Explanations of crime
Crime is the product of interactions between suspects and the police.
Becker
Labelling theory
Suggests an act only becomes deviant when others perceive it as such and whether or not a deviant label is applied depends on societal reaction.
Becker
Effect of new laws
- Creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’.
- Creation or expansion of social control agencies - may campaign to change the law to increase their power
Becker
Pre-existing conceptions
Police operate with pre existing conceptions and stereotypical categories of what constitutes trouble, criminal types, criminal areas - these factors influence their response to behaviour they come across.
Interactionists
Official crime statistics
See official crime statistics as socially constructed - at each stage of the CJs agents of social control make decisions as to whether to proceed to the next stage and as a result statistics produced tell us the activities of police and prosecutors rather than the amount of crime.
Lemert
Effects of labelling
Distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance.
- Primary deviance - deviance that hasn’t been public ally labelled as a crime.
- Secondary deviance - when an offender is discovered and publicly exposed and the label ‘deviance’ is attached.
Young
The effects of labelling
Secondary deviance and deviant career - study of hippy marijuana use in Notting Hill London.
Shows that it isn’t the act itself but the hostile reaction of society that creates serious deviance.
Downes and Rock
The effects of labelling
People are always free to choose not to deviate further
Cohen
Folk Devils an Moral Panics
A study of societal reactions to the ‘mods and rockers’ disturbances involving groups of youths at English seaside resorts.
Lambert
Deviance amplification spiral
Theories rest heavily on the idea that deviance leads to social control.
Cicourel
Police typifications
Found that police assumptions led them to concentrate upon certain ‘types of people’ - the working class which resulted in law enforcement having a class bias.
Ciourcel
Police typifications 2
Views justice as not fixed but negotiable.
Ciourcel
Police statistics
Statistics aren’t valid in providing patterns of crime and therefore cant be used as a resource instead they should be a ‘topic’ for sociologists to investigate.
Ciourcel
Research in focus
Studied more than four years of juvenile justice and argued that his first hand experience enabled him to uncover the often-unconscious assumptions of control agents in a way that methods such as interviewing wouldn’t have revealed.
Braithwaite and Drahos
Contemporary application
Labelling theory can be applied to the environment as well as people.
Triplett 2000 in USA and De Haan 2000 in Holland
Labelling and Criminal Justice Policy
Notes an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviance such as truancy.
Braithwaite
Reintegrative shaming
Identifies a positive role and two types of shaming:
- Disintegrative shaming - where criminal and the crime are labelled bad and the offender is excluded from society.
- Reintegrative shaming - labels the act rather than the offender which avoids stigmatisation and encourages forgiveness.
Argues crime rates are lower in societies where Reintegrative rather than disintegrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders.
Plummer
Evaluation of labelling theory
Although most sociologists no longer see themselves as labelling theorists, the theory has been very influential in embedding a range of theories such as moral panics and crime and the media.
Young
Aetiological crisis
Argues this led to an aetiological crisis - a crisis explanation for theories of crime.
Lee and Young
The causes of crime
Three causes of crime:
1. Relative deprivation - how people regard their position in relation to others that causes crime.
- Subcultures - various types form among the working class who may begin to see offending behaviours as normal.
- Marginalisation - the process through which some people find themselves on the edges of society unable to access rights and services available.
Young
Late modernity exclusion and crime
Since the 1970s insecurity and exclusion have increased with deindustrialisation and increased unemployment.
Young
Bulimic society
- People gorge on media images of expensive consumer lifestyles.
- Economic circumstances to vomit out raised expectations.
- Leads to resentment and feelings of relative deprivation.
Lea and Young
Tackling crime
Police clear up rates are too low to act as a deterrent to crime and therefore there needs to be an increased trust between the public and police.
Henry and Milovanovic
Evaluation of Left Realists
They accept the authority’s definition of crime as being street crime committed by the poor instead of defining it as a being how powerful groups do to harm the poor.
Cornish and Clarke
Rational choice
People commit crime based on a rational choice - if they feel the chances of being caught are low they will commit a crime.
Wilson and Hernstein
Biological differences
Bio social theory of criminal behaviour - crime caused by a combo of social and biological factors.
Wilson and Hernstein
Biological differences
Bio social theory of criminal behaviour - crime caused by a combo of social and biological factors.
Hernstein and Murray
Biological differences
The main cause of crime is low intelligence which they see as biologically determined.
Murray
Socialisation and the underclass
Crime rates have increased due to a growing underclass who defined by their deviant behaviour fail to socialise their children.
Murray
Socialisation and the underclass 2
Sees the welfare state as generous provision since the 1960s as allowing a growing number of people to become dependent on state benefits.
Bennet
Socialisation and the underclass
Lone mothers are ineffective socialisation agents especially for boys lacking male role models.
Crime is the result of growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent and criminal adults in a practically perfect Criminogenic environment that seems almost consciously designed to produce viscous, predatory unrepentant street criminals.
Clarke
Rational choice theory
The decision to commit crime is a choice based on rational calculations of the likely consequences.
Tackling crime
Wilson and Kellings
Broken windows argues it’s essential to maintain the orderly character of neighbourhoods to prevent crime taking hold.
Young
Zero tolerance policing
Success of zero tolerance policing was a myth peddled by police and politicians.
New York’s crime rate was already reducing since 1985, 9 years before zero tolerance.
The police needed arrests to justify their existence and so arrested people for minor deviant crimes.
Murray
The New right
Argues the underclass is responsible for a large proportion of crime.
An overly generous state has led to people becoming reliant on welfare benefits.
Henry and Milovanovic
Forms of harm
- Harm of reduction - someone uses power in a way that results in immediate loss of possession to cause some form of harm to the person.
- Harms of repression - Where peoples future growth and development are threatened.
Bauman and Lyon
Liquid surveillance
There are many forms of surveillance including mobile phones, passports etc which people willingly buy and use which suggests our lives are becoming increasingly transparent to the point surveillance is invisible to us.
