topic 2- social dist of crime: class

what do functionalists believe about crime, specifically walter B miller

functionalists see laws as a reflection of society’s shared values and crime as the rpoduct of inadequate socialisation.

walter B miller argues that the lower class have developed an independent subculture with its own distinctive norms and values that clashw ith those of mainstream culture, thus explainign why the lower class have higher crime rate.

what do strain theorists believe about crime

strain theoriests argue that people engage in deviant behaviour when their oportunities to achive in legitimate ways is blocked.

merton argues that the american dream denies working class people the ability to achive material success that american culture values highly.

working class are more liely to be deined legitimate opportunities to achieve success so they are more likely to seek illigimate means of achievint it.

merton calls this ‘innovation': the use of ‘new’ deviant means such as theft, fraud or other proporty crime to gain wealth.

merton believes that this is why the working class have higher rates of ultilitarian crime (crime for material gain) than the middle class

what do subcultural theorists believe

Subcultural theories start from Merton's idea that the working class suffer from blocked opportunities to achieve success by legitimate means.

For example, A.K. Cohen sees working-class youths as culturally deprived - they have not been socialised into the mainstream, middle-class culture. As a result, he claims, they lack the means to achieve in education and find themselves at the bottom of the official status hierarchy. Their failure to achieve gives rise to status frustration.

thus, they join a delinquent subculture as a solution to the problem of status frustration. By inverting mainstream values such as respect for property, working-class youths can gain status from their peers, for example by vandalising property.

Cohen's theory thus helps to explain why the working class appear more likely to commit non-utilitarian crime.

subcultural theorists, cloward and ohlin, what d they argue

Cloward and Ohlin build on Merton and Cohen.

They use the concept of illegitimate opportunity structures to explain why a range of different crimes are seemingly more prevalent within the working class. They identify a criminal subculture in stable working-class neighbourhoods that offers professional criminal career opportunities, a conflict subculture of gang violence and 'turf wars' in poor areas with a high population turnover, and a retreatist, 'dropout' drug subculture made up of those who fail in both legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures.

labelling theorists do not agree with functionalists, strain and subcultural theorirsts who take for granted the oifficial statistics being accurate and they focus their efforts on finding out the cause for why working clas commit crime, how do lablling theorists differ

• They reject the view that official statistics are a useful resource for sociologists that give a valid picture of which class commits most crime.

• Instead of seeking the supposed causes of working-class criminality, they focus on how and why working-class people come to be labelled as criminal. They emphasise the stereotypes held by law enforcement agencies that see the working class as 'typical criminals', and the power of these agencies to successfully label powerless groups such as the working class.

For this reason, labelling theorists have been described as 'problem makers', wheras, subcultural functionlists and strain theorists are ‘problem takers’. They do not see official crime statistics as valid social facts or a useful resource. Rather, crime statistics are a topic whose construction we must investigate by studying the power of control agents to label working-class people as criminal.

do marxists agree with labelling theorists- how do they agree how do they disagree

Manxists agree with labelling theorists that the law is enforced disproportionately against the working class and that therefore the official crime statistics cannot be taken at face value.

However, they criticise labelling theory for failing to examine the wider structure of capitalism within which law making, law enforcement and offending take place.

how do marxists explain crime

Marxist explanations of crime and deviance flow from their view of the nature of capitalist society.

Marxists see capitalist society as divided into two classes: the ruling capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) who own the means of production, and the working class (or proletariat), whose alienated labour the bourgeoisie exploit to produce profit.

how do marxists see crime, three main elements

• Criminogenic capitalism

• The state and law making

• Ideological functions of crime and law

what is criminogenic capitalism

For Marxists, crime is inevitable in capitalism because capitalism is criminogenic - by its very nature it causes crime.

Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class - that is, on using them as a means to an end (profit), whatever the human cost of doing so. It is therefore particularly damaging to the working class and according to Marxists this may give rise to crime:

• Poverty may mean that crime is the only way the working class can survive.

• Crime may be the only way they can obtain the consumer goods encouraged by capitalist advertising, resulting in utilitarian crimes such as theft.

• Alienation and lack of control over their lives may lead to frustration and aggression, resulting in non-utilitarian crimes such as violence and vandalism.

is crime confined to the working class for marxists

crime is not confined to the working class.

Capitalism is a 'dog eat dog' (David gordon) system of ruthless competition among capitalists, while the profit motive encourages a mentality of greed and self-interest. The need to win at all costs or go out of business, along with the desire for self-enrichment, encourages capitalists to commit white collar and corporate crimes such as tax evasion and breaches of health and safety laws.

what does david gordon explain

David Gordon (1976) argues, crime is a rational response to the capitalist system and hence it is found in all social classes - even though the official statistics make appear to be a largely working-class phenomenon.

how do marxists differ to functionalists

Unlike functionalists, who see the law as reflecting the value consensus and representing the interests of society as a whole, Marxists see law making and law enforcement as only serving the interests of the capitalist class.

what does chambliss argue

William Chambliss (1975) argues that laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of the capitalist economy.

Chambliss illustrates this with the case of the introduction of English law into Britain's East African colonies. Britain's economic interests lay in the colonies' tea, coffee and other plantations, which needed a plentiful supply of local labour. At the time, the local economy was not a money economy and so, to force the reluctant African population to work for them, the British introduced a tax payable in cash, nonpayment of which was a punishable criminal offence. Since cash to pay the tax could only be earned by working on the plantations, the law served the economic interests of the capitalist plantation owners.

The ruling class also have the power to prevent the introduction of laws that would threaten their interests.

what does laureen snider argue

Similarly, Laureen Snider (1993) argues that the capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities of businesses or threaten their profitability.

how do marxists show selective law enforcement

Marxists agree with labelling theorists that although all classes commit crime, when it comes to the application of the law by the criminal justice system, there is selective enforcement. While powerless groups such as the working class and minority ethnic groups are criminalised, the police and courts tend to ignore the crimes of the powerful!

how do laws show ideological function, who argues

Frank Pearce (1976) argues that such laws which appear to benefit th working class, such as worplace health and safety laws often benefit the ruling class too - for example, by keeping workers fit for work. By giving capitalism a 'caring' face, such laws also create false consciousness among the workers.

proof that laws whuch create the appearence of benefitiing the working class do not actually

such laws are not rigorously enforced. For example, despite a new law against corporate homicide being passed in 2007, in its first eight years there was only one successful prosecution of a UK company - despite the large numbers of deaths at work estimated to be caused by employers' negligence (Jenabi, 2014).

how does law enfrocement blame workers

because the state enforces the law selectively, crime appears to be largely a working-class phenomenon.

This divides the working class by encouraging workers to blame the criminals in their midst for their problems, rather than capitalism.

The media and some criminologists also contribute by portraying criminals as disturbed individuals, thereby concealing the fact that it is the nature of capitalism that makes people criminals.

how is marxist approach criticised

• It largely ignores the relationship between crime and non-class inequalities such as ethnicity and gender.

• It is too deterministic and over-predicts the amount of crime in the working class: not all poor people commit crime, despite the pressures of poverty.

• Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates; for example, the homicide rate in Japan and Switzerland is only about a fifth of that in the United States.
  (However, as Marxists point out, societies with little or no state welfare provision, such as the USA, tend to have higher crime rates.)

• The criminal justice system does sometimes act against the interests of the capitalist class. For example, prosecutions for corporate crime do occur.
  (However, Marxists argue that such occasional prosecutions perform an ideological function in making the system seem impartial.)

• Left realists argue that Marxism ignores intra-class crimes (where both the criminals and victims are working-class), which cause great harm to victims.

who provides the most important neo marxist contirbution

The most important neo-Marxist contribution to our understanding of crime and deviance has been The New Criminology, by lan Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young (1973).

they argee with marxists by believing that Capitalist society is based on exploitation and class confict and characterised by extreme inequalities of wealth and power. Understanding this is the key to understanding crime.

• The state makes and enforces laws in the interests of the capitalist class and criminalises members of the working class.

• Capitalism should be replaced by a classless society. This would greatly reduce the extent of crime or even rid society of crime entirely.

how are taylor et al differ with marxism

Taylor et al argue that Marxism is deterministic. For example, it sees workers as driven to commit crime out of economic necessity. They reject this explanation, along with theories that claim crime is caused by other external factors such as anomie, subcultures or labelling, or by biological and psychological factors.

Instead, Taylor et al take a more voluntaristic view (voluntarism is the idea that we have free will - the opposite of determinism). They see crime as meaningful action and a conscious choice by the actor. In particular, they argue that crime often has a political motive, for example to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Criminals are not passive puppets whose behaviour is shaped by capitalism: they are deliberately striving to change society.

how do taylor et al aim to crate a ‘fully social theory of deviance’

in their view, a complete theory of deviance needs to unite six aspects:

1. The wider origins of the deviant act in the unequal distribution of wealth and power in capitalist society.

2. The immediate origins of the deviant act - the particular context in which the individual decides to commit the act.

3. The act itself and its meaning for the actor - e.g. was it a form of rebellion against capitalism?

4. The immediate origins of social reaction - the reactions of those around the deviant, such as police, family and community, to discovering the deviance.

5. The wider origins of social reaction in the structure of capitalist society - especially the issue of who has the power to define actions as deviant and to label others, and why some acts are treated more harshly than others.

how to feminists criticse taylor et al

Feminists criticise it for being 'gender blind', focusing excessively on male criminality and at the expense of female criminality.

how do left realists criticse taylor et al

Left realists make two related criticisms.

• Critical criminology romanticises working-class criminas as 'Robin Hoods' who are fighting capitalism by redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. However, n reality these criminals mostly prey on the poor.

• Taylor et al do not take such crime seriously and they ignore its effects on working-class victims.

how do walton and young defend taylor et al

They argue that:

• In calling for greater tolerance of diversity in behaviour, thaylor et al successfuly combated the 'correctionalist bias' in most existing theories - the assumption that sociology's roles simply to find ways of correcting deviant behaviour.

• taylor et al successfuly laid out some of the foundations for later radical approaches that seek to establish a more just society. such as left realist and feminist theories.

what do remian and leighton highlight

the more likely a crime is to be committed by higher-class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an offence. There is a much higher rate of prosecutions for the typical 'street' crimes that poor people commit, such as burglary and assault. Yet with the crimes committed by the higher classes, such as serious tax evasion, the criminal justice system takes a more forgiving view.

who coined the term white collar crime

The term 'white collar crime' was coined by Edwin Sutherland (1949), which he defined as:

'a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of [their] occupation'.

criticisms of sutherland’s defintion of white collar crime

However, his definition fails to distinguish between two different types of crime:

• Occupational crime committed bu emolovees simply for their own personal gain, often against the organisation for which they work, e.g. stealing from the company or its customers.

• Corporate crime committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals, e.g. deliberately mis-selling products to increase company profits.

who overcomes sutherland’s issue with definting white collar crime

Place and Tombs 2003) widen the definition.

They define corporate crime as any illegal act or omission that is the result of deliberate decisions or culpable negligence by intended to benefit the business.

how does white collar crime wrose than ordinary street crime

White collar and corporate crime do far more harm than'ordinary' or 'street' crime such as theft and burglary.

For example, one estimate puts the cost of white collar crimes in the USA at over ten times that of ordinary crimes.

what does tombs note about how coroportate crime is detrimental

Tombs (2013) notes that corporate crime has enormous costs: physical (deaths, injuries and illnesses), environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments). He concludes that corporate crime is not just the work of a few 'bad apples', but rather it is'widespread, routine and pervasive'

examples of coprotate crime

including the following:

• Financial crimes such as tax evasion,

• bribery,

• money laundering and illegal accounting.

Victims include other companies,

• shareholders,

• taxpayers

• and governments.

example of crime aginst consumer

Crimes against consumers, such as false labelling and selling unfit goods (including 'food crime').

In 2011, the French government recommended that women with breast implants from the manufacturer, Poly Implant Prothèse, have these removed because they were filled with dangerous industrial silicone rather than more expensive medical silicone. Some 300,000 implants had been sold in 65 countries.

how does tombs show crimes aginst employers and also palmer

Tombs (2013) calculates that up to 1,100 work-related deaths a year involve employers breaking the law. This is more than the annual total of homicides.

Palmer (2008) estimates that occupational diseases cause 50,000 deaths a year in the UK.

crimes aginst envioment what is it and give example

Crimes against the environment include illegal pollution of air, water and land, such as toxic waste dumping

Following an investigation by US authorities in 2015, Volkswagen admitted installing software in 11 million of its diesel vehicles globally. The software could detect when the engines were being tested and disguised emissions levels that were 40 times above the US legal limit.

example of high statys professions abusing the trust that people place on them

a UK tribunal found a tax avoidance scheme devised by accountants Ernst and Young for wealthy clients unacceptable.

Described by a Treasury spokesperson as 'one of the most blatantly abusive scams of recent years", the scheme could have cost the taxpayer over £300m per year (Sikka 2008).

most notable case of abuse of trust

that of the GP Harold Shipman. In 2000, Shipman was convicted of the murder of 15 of his patients, but over the course of the previous 23 years, he is believed to have murdered at least another 200.

you could also talk about lucy letby- Lucy Letby is a British former neonatal nurse who murdered seven infants and attempted the murder of six others between June 2015 and June 2016

how does the media contirbute to the invisibility of corprate crime

The media give very limited coverage to corporate crime, thus reinforcing the stereotype that crime is a working-class phenomenon.

They describe corporate crime in sanitised language, as technical infringements rather than as real crime.

For example, embezzlement becomes 'accounting irregularities'; defrauding customers is 'mis-selling'; deaths. at work are 'accidents' rather than employers' negligence or cost-cutting.

how does de labelling contribute to the invisibility of corporate crime, what example

de labelling occurs At the level of laws and legal regulation. this happens because corporate crime is consistently filtered out from the process of criminalisation.

For example, offences are often defined as civil not criminal, and even in criminal cases, penalties are often fines rather than jail. Investigation and prosecution are also limited

For example, in 2010, French authorities provided their British counterparts with a list of 3,600 UK citizens holding secret bank accounts with the Swiss subsidiary of the UK-based bank HSBC. The accounts were believed to be a means of evading tax. However, UK tax authorities secured only one prosecution, and no action was taken against HSBC.

how does under reporting contirbute to the invisibility of corporate crime

Individuals may be unaware that they have been victimised for example, you may not realise you have been illegally duped into buying the wrong mortgage).

Even when victims are aware, they may not regard it as 'real crime'.

Equally they may feel powerless against a big organisation and so may never report the offence to the authorities.

however, since the financial crisis of 2008, corporate crime may have become more visible, how is this provided

These include campaigns against corporate tax avoidance such as Occupy and UK uncut, investigative journalists whistle blowers inside companies and the media (for example, through adverts for compensation claims over pensions mis-seling).

how do strain theorists explain corporate crime

Merton's anomie or 'strain' theory argues that deviance results from the inability of some people to achieve the goals that society's culture prescribes by using legitimate means.

For example, where opportunities to achieve the goal of material wealth by legal means are blocked, individuals may 'innovate' - that is, use illegal methods such as theft to acquire it.

how does Box use merton’s strain theory to understand corporate crime

Box (1983) argues that if a company cannot achieve its goal of maximising profit by egal means, it may employ illegal ones instead.

Thus, when business conditions become more difficult and profitability is squeezed, companies may be tempted to break the law.

how does geis explian corporate crime

geis as a differential association sociologust explains that if individuals join companies where illegall price fixing was practiced, they as a result become involved in this practice as part of their socialisation

how can differential association be applied to two other concepts

1. Deviant subcultures are groups who share a set of norms and values at odds with those of wider society. They offer deviant solutions to their members' shared problems. Company employees face problems of achieving corporate goals and may adopt deviant means to do so, socialising new members into these.

   The culture of business may also favour and promote competitive, aggressive personality types who are willing to commit crime to achieve success.

2. Techniques of neutralisation

   Sykes and Matza (1957) argue that individuals can deviate more easily if they can produce justifications to neutralise moral objections to their misbehaviour.

   For example, white collar criminals may say they were carrying out orders from above, blame the victim (they should have read the small print') or normalise their deviance by claiming that 'everyone's doing it'. Learning these techniques is an important part of socialisation into a deviant corporate culture.

what does cicourel argue

the middle class are more able to negotiate non criminal lavels for their misbehaviour for example, justifying graffiti was youthful high spirits rather than vandlism

how can business prevent labelling

Nelken (2012) calls 'de-labelling' or 'non-labelling'.

Unlike the poor, businesses and professionals often have the power to avoid labelling. For example, they can afford expensive experts such as lawyers and accountants to help them avoid activities they are involved in, such as tax avoidance schemes, being labelled criminal, or to get the seriousness of any charges reduced.

for marxists, what is corpotate crime a result of

For Marxists, corporate crime is a result of the normal functioning of capitalism. In this view, because capitalism's goal is to maximise profits, it inevitably causes harm, such as deaths and injuries among employees and consumers.

what marxist calls ‘mystification’

Box (1983) calls a 'mystification'.

That is, it has spread the ideology that corporate crime is less widespread or harmful than working-class crime. Capitalism's control of the state means that it is able to avoid making or enforcing laws that conflict with its interests.

While some corporate crime is prosecuted, this is only ever the tip of the iceberg

how does perarce argue happens as the result of mystifcation

As Pearce (1976) argues, this sustains the illusion that it is the exception rather than the norm, and thus avoids causing a crisis of legitimacy for capitalism.

how does box see corporations as criminogenic

Box (1983) sees corporations as criminogenic because, if they find legitimate opportunities for profit are blocked, they will resort to illegal techniques aimed at competitors, consumers or the public.

Companies comply with the law only if they see it enforced strictly; where effective controls are lacking, for example in developing countries, capitalism shows its true face, selling unsafe products, paying low wages for work in dangerous conditions, polluting the environment and bribing officials.

what does nelken argue to criticse marxists and strain theorists

As Nelken (2012) argues, it is unrealistic to assume that all businesses would offend were it not for the risk of punishment: for example, maintaining the goodwill of other companies that they must do business with may also prevent them resorting to crime.

criticsm that marxist adn strain theorists fail to explain why non profit institutions also commit corpoate crime

even if capitalist pursuit of profit is a cause of corporate crime, this doesn't explain crime in nonprofit making state agencies such as the police, army or civil service. For example, state agencies in the former communist regimes committed crimes against health and safety, the environment, and consumers.

who shows that law abiding is actually more profitble than law breaking

Braithwaite (1984) found that US pharmaceutical companies that complied with Federal Drug Administration regulations to obtain licences for their products in America were then able to access lucrative markets in poorer countries. These countries couldn't afford their own drug-testing facites guarantee of quality and therefore relied on the FDAS licensing procedures a guarantee of quality

Outline three reasons why white-collar crime may be less likely than working class to be reported to the police.

1. Skyes and Matza argue hat individuals who work in coporate instituions are socialised to be able deviate more easily by producing justifications that neutralise moral objections to theur behaviour. for example white collar criminals may say that they were carryign out orders from above, they may blame that they should have read the small print or they may nromalise their deviance, stating that everyone does it

2. the media give very limited coverage of coporate crimes, this reinforces and perpetuates the steoretype that crime is a working class phenomenon. they also describe corporate crime in santitised langage, for example as technical infrignements rather than as real crime- eg, embezzlement becomes ‘accounting irregularities’, deaths at work are ‘accidents’

3. there is a lack of political will to tackle the problem of corporate crime. politicans rhetoric of being ‘tough on crime’ is focused on street crime and policing

1. individuals may be unaware that they have been victimised for example you may not realise that you have been llegally duped into buying the wrong mortage. even when victims are aware they may regard it as a real crime. finally, they may feel powerless against big corporations who are able to manipulate the criminal system such as employing world class lawyers, thus individuals may not even report the offence to the authorities

analyse two ways in which Marxists see class and crime as related.

1. marxists see crime as crimonogenic, where it is in the nature of capitalism that crime is inevtiable. this is because capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class, where they are used as an means to an end for profit. thus, there is a unequal distribution of wealth and thus the working class are pushed into poverty and therefore, to survive they need to commit crime such as shoplifting. a capitalisitc society is also base on sunsumerism and therefore, the working class in order to conform to the amterialistic values of society are encoiraged by apitalist advertising to commit utiltiairan crime in order to obtain consumer goods. finally, due to alientation and lack of control this leads to freustrationa nd agression asn therefore memebrs of the proletriarit may ocmmit non ultilitairna crime such as violence adn vandelism

2. ?

analyse two reasons why lababelling theory may not provide an adequate explanations for the causes of crime

1. marxists argue that labelling theoriits fail to examine the wider structure of capitalism within law making, law encorcement and offending take plac.e thus, for example chambliss argues that laws to protect private proerty are in the ideological interest of the bourgeoisie and Pearce argues that laws which appear to benefit the working class instead maintain that workers remain fit and gives capitalism a ‘caring’ face

2. ?

analyse two reasons why white-collar crime may be less likely to be reported to the police than crimes committed by working class people.

evaluate the usefulness of Marxist approaches in understanding crime and deviance.

Evaluate the usefulness of Marxist approaches to understanding the causes of crime.

, Evaluate the usefulness of strain and subcultural theories to our understanding of crime and deviance.

Outline three reasons why white collar and corporate crime may have low rates of prosecution (6 marks)

Outline three ways that corporate crime is invisible (6 marks)

Outline three criticisms of Marxist approaches to crime and deviance (6 marks)

Applying material from item A, analyse two ways in which Marxist see class and crime related. (10 marks)

Applying materials from item B, and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of corporate crime (30 marks)

Applying material from Item A and your knowledge, evaluate the different views of the relationship between crime and social class. (30 marks