Theories Of Crime

Question 1

Why does Durkheim argue crime is an inevitable feature of social life?

Answer 1

Durkheim argued crime is an inevitable feature of social life because:
1.) Not everyone is effectively socialised into the value consensus.
2.) In a modern society there is a diversity of values.

Question 2

What are the positive functions of crime according to functionalists?

Answer 2

1.) Boundary maintenance —> Reasserts the value consensus by reminding everyone of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. (Durkheim)
2.) Enables social change —> Allows new ideas to develop and challenges outdated values. (Durkheim)
3.) Acts as a safety valve—> Releases stress in society, avoiding more serious challenges to social order. (Davis)
4.) Acts as a warning device —> Indicates social problems in society that need solving before there are more serious threats to social order. (Cohen)

Question 3

What are the criticisms of the functionalist theories of crime?

Answer 3

• Crimes are not always functional for everyone e.g. the victim.
• Crime doesn’t always promote solidarity. It may lead to people becoming more isolated.

Question 4

What does Merton say about his strain theory?

Answer 4

Merton suggests there is order in society because there is a consensus on:
- Social goals (what society agrees individuals should aim for).
- The approved ways of achieving these goals.
In an unequal society, some individuals don’t have the same opportunity as others to achieve these goals. They suffer from strain and anomie as a result.

Question 5

How does Merton say that individuals respond to the set social goals?

Answer 5

1) Conformity: accept the goals of society and the means of achieving them.
2) Innovation: accept the goals of society but cannot achieve them through approved
means so turn to crime instead.
3) Ritualism: give up on achieving goals but keep to the means of achieving them, e.g.
workers who have given up on hopes of promotion.
4) Retreatism: reject goals and means of society. They give up completely.
5) Rebellion: reject existing goals and means but substitute them for new ones.

Question 6

What are the criticisms of Mertons strain theory?

Answer 6

• Assumes there is a consensus on the goals of society.
• Doesn’t explain why most people who face strain don’t turn to crime.
• Doesn’t recognise there are many apparent conformists who are actually innovators, e.g. white collar criminals.

Question 7

What is Cohens theory of status frustration?

Answer 7

Agrees that mainly the lower classes commit crime, but also argue:
- That crime is not always an individual response. It is often committed amongst certain groups, e.g. the young
- Merton largely ignores non-utilitarian crime which may not be due to strain.
Working class boys face strain and anomie due to failure in education and therefore suffer from status frustration, resulting in them forming criminal subcultures.

Question 8

What are the criticisms of Cohens status frustration?

Answer 8

• Assumes working class youth accept society’s goals and only reject them when they can’t achieve them. Miller argues they don’t accept them as they have different values.
• Matza also shows how most young delinquents are committed to mainstream values but drift in and out of occasional delinquency.

Question 9

What is Cloward and Ohlins theory of different responses?

Answer 9

1.) Criminal subcultures: utilitarian crimes, working class areas with patterns of adult crime, provides a career structure for aspiring young criminals and an alternative career ladder (illegitimate opportunity structure).
2.) Conflict subcultures: Violence, gang warefare, high rate of population turnover —> lacks social cohesion, street crime and gang culture to gain status from peers.
3.) Retreatist subcultures: includes young people who are double failures, they have failed to succeed in mainstream society and criminal and conflict subcultures —> responding by retreating into drug addiction and alcoholism.

Question 10

What are the criticisms of Cloward and Ohlins theory of different responses?

Answer 10

Exaggerate differences between the different types of subculture as there is an overlap between them.

Question 11

What is Millers theory of focal concerns?

Answer 11

Argues the working class are socialised into a distinct subculture with key characteristics called focal concerns. These include an emphasis on:
1) Toughness and masculinity
2) Smartness (being quick witted etc) 3) Autonomy and freedom
4) Trouble
5) Excitement
These values result in a risk of law breaking and become exaggerated as young people search for peer group status.
It is therefore conformity to lower working class subculture rather than the rejection of dominant values that causes the working class to commit crime.

Question 12

What are the criticisms of Millers theory of focal concerns?

Answer 12

Matza:
Matza argues young offenders are very similar to other people in society.
Many delinquents use techniques of neutralisation which are based on mainstream values. These are used to try and justify or excuse their actions as temporary lapses in normally conformist behaviour. The following techniques are often used:
1) Denying responsibility
2) Denying there was a victim or any injury to a victim
3) Claiming that those who blame them have no right to do so
4) Claiming the deviance was justified.
This means they know what they have done is wrong, so cannot be part of a subculture with different norms and values to the rest of society.

Question 13

What are other criticisms of subcultural theories of crime?

Answer 13

• Do not explain middle class and corporate crime.
• They rely on the pattern of crime shown in statistics. However a lot of crime is not reported which makes it difficult to know who the real offenders are.
• Imply that working class youth are socialised into delinquent values. If this is the case there should be widespread delinquency. However there is not.

Question 14

What does the interactionist theory of crime and deviance focus on?

Answer 14

1) The interaction between deviants and those who define them as deviant (police etc).
2) How and why the law is selectively enforced.
3) The consequences of being labelled as deviant.
4) The circumstances in which a person is defined as deviant.
5) Who has the power to attach deviant labels.

Question 15

What is Cicourels theory of selective law enforcement?

Answer 15

• Suggests police stereotypes affect whether criminal labels are attached, leading to the social construction of crime statistics.
• He found juvenile crime rates to be consistently higher in working class areas than in middle class areas. He found this was because the police viewed the behaviour of middle class and working class juveniles differently even when they were engaged in the same behaviour.

Question 16

What does Cicourel argue about the negotiation of justice?

Answer 16

• Justice is not fixed, but is negotiable, not everyone who commits the same crime will receive the same punishment.
• Middle class offenders were less likely to be charged because they didn’t fit the police stereotype of a criminal but also because their parents were more able to negotiate on their behalf.
• Resulting in the middle class offender getting a warning rather than being prosecuted, this isn’t the case for working class youth offenders.

Question 17

What is the social construction of crime statistics?

Answer 17

• Some people will commit offences and be prosecuted and therefore labelled.
• Others will commit the same crime and not be prosecuted.
• This means statistics only tell us about the activities of the police and prosecutors, not who actually commits crime.
• In addition to this, many crimes go unreported to the police, and unrecorded by the police.
• This means much crime doesn’t appear in statistics and this is referred to as the dark figure of crime.

Question 18

What is Lemerts opinion on the effects of
labelling?

Answer 18

• Lembert distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance.
• Primary is deviance that hasn’t been publically labelled, and is often committed by lots of people.
• If the deviance is detected, and the person committing it is publicly labelled as a criminal, this can result in a master status.
• The individual could accept this deviant label and may lead to a self fulfilling prophecy, where they can become the label, this leads to further deviance known as secondary deviance.

Question 19

What does Becker argue labelling can lead to?

Answer 19

• Becker argued this can lead to a deviant career.
• This is when those who have been labelled find legitimate opportunities blocked.
• This individual then joins with a deviant group facing similar problems. This provides support and understanding for the deviant identity and may generate further deviance.

Question 20

What is moral panics and deviancy amplification?

Answer 20

• The deviancy amplification spiral is a term used to describe the process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance.
• This leads to greater attempts to control it, and this then leads to even higher levels of deviance. A key example of this was shown by Cohen in his study of mods and rockers in the 1970s.
• The media exaggerated the level of violence and this began a moral panic where there was increasing public concern and moral entrepreneurs called for a crackdown.
• The police responded by arresting more youths which then led to more public concern as they thought there was increasing deviance and seemed to confirm the original media reports.
• At the same time the mods and rockers were labelled as folk devils who were seen as responsible for society’s problems. This led to them being further marginalised in society, which caused more crime/deviance.

Question 21

What are the criticisms of interactionism?

Answer 21

• It tends to remove blame from the deviant and place it onto those who define them as deviant.
• It doesn’t explain the causes of deviant behaviour before labelling takes place, e.g. why a person commits primary deviance.
• It is too deterministic: labelling doesn’t always result in more deviance.
• It is seen as soft on crime: it says the solution is to not label criminals. It has little to say about the victims of crime.

Question 22

What is feminist theories of crime in regards to the theories of a malestream sociology?

Answer 22

• Heidensohn and Silvestri argue the study of crime and deviance is characterised by amnesia, neglect and distortion. This essentially means gender issues and female offending were forgotten or ignored until fairly recently.
• As a result, there was little attempt to explain female crime, the gender gap in crime or female victimisation.

Heidensohn suggests various reasons for the invisibility of females:
1) Researchers were mainly men.
2) Middle class sociologists had a romanticised obsession with macho working class
deviance. By studying these males, these sociologists would increase their ‘street cred’.
3) There is less to study due to the relatively low level of female crime and the invisible
nature of offences committed by women, which are likely to be less detectable.

Question 23

What is feminists theory of double deviants?

Answer 23

• There is a focus on gender identity and male power in crime and deviance.
• Smart for example, pointed out that female offenders are often seen as double deviants as they not only break the law but breach traditional gender roles too.
• This means their offences are more stigmatised than those of men.

Question 24

What is the feminists theory of masculinity and crime?

Answer 24

• Feminists also look at how concepts of femininity might lead women to be less deviant than men.
• For example, Messerschmidt’s research into how crime and violence can be a way of accomplishing masculinity (achieving a masculine image) for men who have failed to achieve this in other areas of their lives links to this.

Question 25

What is the first traditional marxist theory about crime and deviance?

Answer 25

1.) A capitalist society is criminogenic
This means crime is a natural development of capitalism (Greed, self-interest).
Upper class also commits crime.
Gordon argues crime amongst the working class is a rational response to capitalism because:
- Causes poverty: forced to commit utilitarian crime in order to survive.
- Causes social exclusion: unable to participate in a consumer society, therefore
encouraging utilitarian crime.
- Causes exclusion and alienation: results in frustration causing non-utilitarian crime.

Question 26

What is the second traditional marxist theory about crime and deviance?

Answer 26

2.) The law reflects ruling class interests and ideology
- Chambliss argues the law is based on ruling class ideology and is used to protect the interests of the ruling class.
- Box argues that serious crime is ideologically constructed. –> Serious crime is defined as property crime committed by the w/c rather than crimes committed by governments or corporations.
- Snider argues the capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate businesses or
threaten their profits.
- Pearce argues that laws that seem to benefit the working class also benefit the ruling class.

Question 27

What is the third traditional marxist theory about crime and deviance?

Answer 27

Crime statistics show that crime is mainly committed by the working class –> due to selective enforcement of the law.
- Chambliss argues the criminal justice system (police, courts etc) focuses more on the working
class and prosecutes them more. Higher classes are less likely to be prosecuted and if they are, they are treated more leniently.
This creates false class consciousness:
- Upper class crimes are ignored or seen as rare.
- The working class are seen as criminals, meaning capitalism isn’t blamed for causing
crime.

Question 28

What is the neo marxist theory about crime and deviance?

Answer 28

• Hall studied newspaper coverage of a new type of street crime in the UK in the 1970s:
  mugging –> focused on young, black males.
• These crimes were focused on due to a crisis of capitalism, ruling class had to assert dominance (hegemony), which is done by distracting people by scapegoating young, black people.
• Hall et al argued this created a moral panic which helped justify more aggressive policing.

Question 29

What are the criticisms of marxist and neo marxist theories of crime and deviance?

Answer 29

• They overemphasise property crime and have little to say about non-property offences.
• They overemphasise class inequality and ignore other inequalities like ethnicity and gender.
• Feminists regard their theories as malestream, which only focus on male criminality.
• Traditional Marxist theories are too deterministic.
• Not all laws can be seen as reflecting ruling class interests. There are many that are in
  everyone’s interests, e.g. traffic and consumer protection laws.
• They pay little attention to the victims of crime. Neo Marxists tend to romanticise working
  class crime. Left Realists point out that most victims are working class.

Question 30

What does left realism focus on?

Answer 30

• Takes the approach of being ‘tough on the causes of crime’.
• Mainly linked to Labour Party policies.

Question 31

What does right realism focus on?

Answer 31

• This emphasises being tougher on criminals than the causes.
• Mainly linked to Conservative Party policies and the New Right.

Question 32

What did left realism accuse marxism of doing?

Answer 32

1) Romanticising working class criminals.
2) Failing to take victimisation seriously as well as the fact that most victims were the
poor and deprived.
3) Having no practical policies to reduce crime.

Question 33

What did a real increase in crime cause according to left realists?

Answer 33

• From the 1950s onwards there was a real increase in crime, especially amongst the working
  class.
• Young argues this caused an aetiological crisis for theories of crime because Marxist, Neo Marxist and labelling theorists tended to deny that the increase was real as they distrust crime statistics.
• However the left realists argue the increase was too large to be explained in this way. More
  people were reporting crime and victim surveys demonstrated this.

Question 34

What does Lea and Young say about relative deprivation?

Answer 34

1.) Relative deprivation –> when people see themselves as deprived in comparison to others, worse in contemporary society due to the growth of individualism, people are more concerned with others than themselves. –> turn to utilitarian crime.

Question 35

What does Lea and Young say about marginalisation?

Answer 35

2.) Marginalisation –> Some groups are pushed to the margins of society and they face social exclusion. They have no organisation e.g. trade unions, to represent them and feel ignored by society. –> Express crimes through non-utilitarian crimes such as rioting.

Question 36

What do Lea and Young say about subcultures?

Answer 36

• Working class deviant subcultures emerge as solutions to the problems of relative deprivation and marginalisation.
• These subcultures can take different forms over time and in different contexts, e.g. street gangs or youth subcultures.
• These can lead to more crime as these subcultures may see offending as acceptable
  behaviour or as ways of achieving the goals of society.
• For example, Young argues there areghettos in the USA where criminal subcultures are ‘fully immersed’ in the American Dream, valuing brands such as Gucci and Nike.

Question 37

What does Young say about a bulimic society?

Answer 37

• A media saturated society and an increase in individualism can lead to a bulimic society where people gorge themselves on media images of consumer lifestyles but are then forced to vomit out their raised expectations as they cannot afford these lifestyles. This intensifies their frustration resulting in crime.

Question 38

What does Lea and Young say about the square of crime?

Answer 38

Examining the ways in which the four elements of the square of crime influence or interact with one another.
1) Formal social control by the state: what is defined as a crime, how enforcement is
carried out and whether an act is criminal or not.
2) Informal social control: how do people react to crime in their communities? Do the
public report offences?
3) The role of victims: why do people become victims and what do they do about it?
How do victims view offenders?
4) The offenders: what meaning does the act have to the offender? Why do they choose
to offend?

Question 39

What are the criticisms of left realism?

Answer 39

• It neglects other responses to relative deprivation and marginalisation such as those outlined by Merton.
• It neglects gender as a significant issue and particularly crime which females are most likely to be victims of.
• It doesn’t pay much attention to white collar and corporate crime even though these often
  have the most impact on the most deprived communities.
• It doesn’t really explain why most deprived working class youth don’t turn to crime.

Question 40

What does Right realist theorists say about biological differences affecting crime?

Answer 40

• Wilson and Herrnstein argue biological differences between individuals make some people
  more likely to commit crime than others.
  E.g. people who are naturally more aggressive or risk takers are more likely to commit crime. They also argue crime is caused by low intelligence.

Question 41

What do right realist theorists say about poor socialisation?

Answer 41

• Argue the best agent of socialisation is the nuclear family (a two parent family).
• Murray argues that the underclass is characterised by dependency on welfare payments, lack of individual responsibility, high rates of lone parenthood etc.
• This has led to the decline of
  marriage and the growth of lone parent families because people can now live off benefits.
• It also means men no longer have to take responsibility for taking care of their families and
  therefore no longer need to work.
• Absent fathers, according to Murray, means boys lack discipline and positive male role
  models. As a result they turn to criminal role models outside of the family.

Question 42

What do right realist theorists say about rational choice?

Answer 42

• Cornish and Clarke suggested people choose to commit crime because they decide the benefits to be gained are greater than the potential costs and there are opportunities to commit crime.
• The solution, therefore, is to increase the costs, e.g. heavier policing to increase the risks of
  being caught and reduce the opportunities for crime.
• They argue crime is worse because there is often little risk of being caught and punishments are lenient.

Question 43

What are the criticisms of right realism?

Answer 43

• Doesn’t address the wider structural causes of crime.
• Doesn’t pay any attention to white collar, corporate crime or hidden crimes.
• Suggests offenders act rationally, but some crimes are impulsive or irrational and do not bring any obvious gain.

Question 44

What do postmodernists view crime as?

Answer 44

• Postmodernists view crime as an outdated metanarrative of the law, which doesn’t reflect the
  diversity of postmodern society.
• Crime simply reflects a view among those with power of how
  people should conduct themselves.
• They argue it is necessary to develop a transgressive approach.
• This doesn’t define crime as simply law breaking and focuses on a definition of crime based on respect for people’s chosen identities and lifestyles.

Question 45

What do Henry and Milovanovic suggest about how crime should be defined as?

Answer 45

• Crime should be defined as people using power to show
  disrespect for, and causing harm to others.
• This is regardless of whether these acts are criminal or not. This embraces all threats and risks to people pursuing increasingly diverse
  lifestyles and identities.
• They identify two forms of harm:
  1) Harms of reduction: power is used to cause a victim to experience some immediate
  loss or injury.
  2) Harms of repression: power is used to restrict future human development. This
  brings a wider range of actions into being classed as criminal, which may not be illegal,
  or taken very seriously, e.g. sexual harassment and hate crimes.