Crime and deviance

Functionalist views of crime and deviance - Durkheim

• A lack of social solidarity leads to anomie (a loss of norms), which is dangerous to society as it means people will act in a deviant way and the crime rate increases.

• Argued crime is inevitable as not everybody in society will be committed to collective values and norms since we are all exposed to different influences and circumstances.

• Even in a ‘society of saints’ with no crime, the high standards of behaviour would make a small deviant act stand out - so deviance is inevitable.

Durkheim’s functions of crime

• Social regulation (boundary maintenance) - crime produces a negative reaction from society of the perpetrator, which reaffirms their shared values and establishes what is acceptable and what is not. This does not change the ways of the perpetrator, but publicly shaming them can deter others from the crime.

e.g - 2024 riots + response of police arresting people

• Social integration (social cohesion) - crime can bind society together and reaffirm their law-abiding values as a result of potentially being threatened. Cohen argues the role of the media is to dramatise evil, which reinforces social solidarity.

e.g - 9/11, Manchester Arena bombing

• Social change (adaptation and change) - deviant acts can create societal change and individuals must not be restricted by social order to do so. These acts may appear deviant at first, but can create new values. However, too much crime can dismantle societal bonds, and too little crime means society is stifling individual freedom too much.

e.g - Nelson Mandela

Evaluation of Durkheim

• Realists - crime is not functional for victims and their loves ones, including those affected by the fear of crime as it does not bind society together if people are afraid to leave their homes.

Merton’s strain theory

Strain theory - the gap between your means and the goal → people engage in deviant / criminal behaviour when they are not able to achieve societal goods by legal / legitimate means.

e.g - people becoming frustrated and resorting to crime to achieve what they want

e.g - they find comfort in their failure in drug use

This theory combines two factors:

• Structural factors - society’s unequal opportunity structure.

• Cultural factors - society’s emphasis on success and goals, but a weaker emphasis on using legal / legitimate means to achieve them.

e.g - American culture values having individual material, wealth and high status

Merton - The American Dream

• Tells Americans that society is meritocratic and there are opportunities for everyone if they are self-disciplined (studying and working hard)

1) Americans have to pursue their goals through legitimate means and self-discipline.

2) Going to underachieving schools and discrimination due to being in poverty prevents some groups from pursuing their goals.

3) People experience strain to anomie - the pressure to deviate from achieving societal goals.

4) This is due to the strain between the cultural goal of material wealth and the lack of opportunities to achieve them. This causes frustration, resulting in them deviating. This is reinforced by American culture focusing on pursuing goals through any means possible, including illegitimate means. The norms are not strong enough to prevent this.

Merton - deviant adaptations to strain

• Ritualism - individuals that reject the goals, but have internalised the legitimate means and go along with them. This deviance comes from rejecting the value consensus of achieving highly.

• Retreatists - individuals that reject both the goals and the means. They become drug addicts, homeless, drop out of education and descend into alcoholism.

• Rebellion - individuals that seek to reject society’s goals and institutionalised means with ones that meet the norms of their group.

e.g - political radicals, hippies, terrorists and protestors

• Conformity - individuals accept the societal approved goals and achieve them legitimately. Usually the M/C who have access to good opportunities - but Merton sees it as the typical response of most Americans.

• Innovation - individuals accept the goal of material wealth, but use newer illegitimate means to gain it - such as fraud or theft. They are usually W/C and have the greatest pressure to innovate

Evaluation of Merton

• Marxists - argues that it ignores the power of the ruling class and that they also enforce laws to criminalise the poor, but not the rich.

Cohen - status frustration

• Believed as well that crime was a reaction to blocked opportunities by subcultural groups to seek revenge.

• Cohen researched young males in the US during the 1950s. As a response to their educational failures and not being able to achieve status in society through legitimate means in the M/C dominated system, they turned to subcultural groups in order to gain status from their peers (similar boys).

• These groups formed their own norms and values that were subverting of society - leading to an alternative status hierarchy where you achieved a higher status based on deviant activities.

• These deviant activities / crimes were based on non-utilitarian crime that had no financial motive, including graffiti, violence and anti-social behaviour.

General statistics to Cohen’s status frustration

• High percentage of excluded pupils who go on to commit crime.

• Crime rates higher with young males who are low achievers in education.

Evaluation of Cohen

• Assumes people who want to conform to society’s norms and are unable to leads to a reaction - some retreat and some become ritualistic.

• Explains non-utilitarian crime but does not explain criminality in other areas, such as fraud, theft etc.

• No recognition of W/C girls - not representative of the W/C population.

Cloward and Ohlin - opportunity structures

• Explains why different groups of criminals commit different types of crime.

• It is not just access to legitimate opportunities that matter (such as education), but also illegitimate ones.

• For example, people who fail by legitimate means, such as schooling, would not have always be able to join a criminal subculture.

• Different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate means for young people to learn different rules of crime and have a criminal career.

Cloward and Ohlin - different criminal subcultures

• Criminal subcultures - organised crime (such as the mafia) where criminals socialise youths into their own criminal career - resulting in the same material success that is gained through legitimate means.

• Conflict subcultures - gangs organised by youths that are based on claiming territory from other gangs in ‘turf wars’.

• Retreatist subcultures - made up of individuals who do not have access to both legitimate and illegitimiate opportunity structures, so they drop out as a group, leading to them potentially abusing drugs.