Crime (1) Functionalism

Functionalists argue that society is based on a value consensus. What does this involve?

Members sharing shared values, with socialisation teaching society’s values and social control such as the police ensuring people behave.

Durkheim argues that crime is inevitable. Why?

Crime is inevitable and even beneficial because not everyone is socialised the same and modern societies are too complex, and the right amount of crime helps prevent anomie or normlessness.

Durkheim argues that crime performs boundary maintenance. How?

Crime creates a reaction from society that unites them against the “baddy,” and the punishment reinforces shared rules and shows the boundaries, linking to Cohen’s idea of folk devils where the media dramatizes crime and deviance.

Durkheim argues that crime contributes to adaptation and change. How?

All change starts with an act of defiance because people with new ideas must ignore some social norms and social control, shown through examples like persecution of religious visionaries or gay rights activists whose actions eventually lead to positive change, and Durkheim argues that neither too high nor too low a level of crime is desirable because too much threatens social bonds and too little is repressive and prevents change.

What additional positive functions of crime do Davis, Polsky, Cohen and Erikson suggest?

Prostitution allows men to release sexual frustration without threatening the nuclear family, pornography channels sexual desires safely instead of leading to adultery, crime and deviance act as a warning that an institution is functioning badly such as truancy, and bodies such as the police may actually want to maintain crime because of its positive functions.

What are the criticisms of Durkheim’s functionalist theory?

Functionalists focus only on the positive outcomes of crime and ignore serious crimes like rape and murder, treat crime as if it is intended to keep society going even though society could survive without it, and crime does not always promote social solidarity and can divide people such as in terrorist attacks.

Merton argues that people engage in deviant behaviour when they cannot achieve socially approved goals. Why does this lead to crime?

Strain creates frustration and pressure to be deviant in order to get what you want, which Merton calls the strain to anomie, combining structural factors such as unequal opportunity with cultural factors such as society emphasising success goals.

How does the American Dream create crime according to Merton?

American culture emphasises success and achieving goals, but poverty and inadequate schooling block legitimate opportunities, so individuals turn to crime to provide for themselves and reach the same goals.

What are Merton’s five adaptations to strain?

Conformity involves working hard legitimately to achieve goals, innovation involves using illegitimate means such as fraud, ritualism involves giving up on goals and getting stuck in dead‑end jobs like middle‑class office workers, retreatism involves rejecting both legitimate and illegitimate means and becoming dropouts such as psychotics, tramps, alcoholics or drug addicts, and rebellion involves rejecting existing goals and means and replacing them with new ones.

What patterns in crime does Merton explain?

Most crime is property crime because American society values material wealth so highly, and lower‑class and ethnic minority groups have higher crime rates because they have the least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately.

What are the criticisms of Merton’s strain theory?

Merton takes official statistics at face value and is deterministic and unrealistic, Marxists argue he ignores the power of the ruling class to make laws that criminalise the poor but not the rich, and the theory only accounts for utilitarian crime and not crimes of violence or vandalism.

Cohen argues that working‑class boys experience status frustration. Why?

Working‑class boys experience anomie in the middle‑class school system due to cultural deprivation, fail to achieve status legitimately, and form subcultures with alternative status hierarchies.

What characterises the delinquent subcultures described by Cohen?

They are characterised by spite, hostility and hatred for outsiders, praising behaviours that mainstream society condemns such as truancy, and explaining non‑utilitarian crime.

What is a key criticism of Cohen’s theory?

He assumes working‑class boys share the same success goals as middle‑class boys, which may not be true.

Cloward and Ohlin argue that different illegitimate opportunity structures produce different subcultures. How?

Working‑class youths are denied legitimate opportunities but also have unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structures, so different areas produce different types of subcultures.

What are the three subcultures identified by Cloward and Ohlin?

Criminal subcultures provide apprenticeships for utilitarian crime in areas with existing criminal hierarchies, conflict subcultures arise in areas with low social cohesion and high population turnover leading to violence, and retreatist subcultures consist of double failures who turn to drug use or alcoholism.

What are the criticisms of Cloward and Ohlin’s theory?

They ignore crimes of the wealthy and over‑predict working‑class crime, and Miller argues that working‑class subcultures aim to achieve their own goals rather than mainstream ones.