Crime and deviance

Crime

Illegal act punishable by law - if detected can result in formal consequences

Deviance

Seen as abnormal to the majority - behaviour which does not conform to society’s mainstream norms and values. Likely to receive informal actions/ consequences.

Social control

• The methods which persuade or force individuals to conform to the the main social norms and values which are learned through early socialisation - prevents deviance

• Can be formal and informal

• Sanctions are a way of enforcing social control and can be positive or negative, ranging all the way from positive sanctions being pocket money or a knighthood to negative sanctions being sitting in the corner or life imprisonment

Formal social control

• These are agencies specifically set up to ensure that people conform, for example police, courts

• You have to obey because of bad sanctions like prison time or fines

Informal social control

These are groups which sanction but are not primarily involved in enforcing social control, for example parents, education system and workplace

Official crime statistics

• Police recorded statistics

• Published every 6 months by the home office

Strengths of official statistics

• Provide an overview of social life

• Enable easy comparisons between social groups and countries

• They help us to make historical comparisons and to establish trends

• The government is the only institution large enough and representative enough to collect massive data sets on public issues

• Allows the researcher to remain detached from the respondents

• Often freely available to the researchers and the general public

Weaknesses of official statistics

• Some lack validity, eg not all crimes will be reported

• Lack validity because they are collected by the state and manipulated to make things look better than they actually are, eg unemployment statistics

• May serve the interests of elite groups - data is only collected on things which do not harm those in power

• The way that some social trends are measured change over time - making historical comparisons difficult

Crime survey for England and Wales (British crime survey)

• Survey in which a sample of people are asked if they have been victims of crime and if so whether it has been reported to the police

• Since 2009 interviewed children aged 10-15 years

• People are interviewed about their experience of crime in the last 12 months and their attitudes to crime related issues (eg police, perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour)

• Random sampling of addresses from the royal mails list of addresses in England and Wales - equal chance of being chosen

Strengths of crime survey

• Captures the ‘dark figure of crime’ - crimes that are unreported to the police

• Has higher validity than the official police recorded statistics as it relies upon first hand information from those that have been victims of crime

• Gives a more complete picture of crime and can be used to create initiatives and lead to policy reforms

• Uses a large sample that is representative of the population

• Repeated annually using similar questions and can compare the amount of crime from one year to the next making it reliable

• Collects data on people’s perceptions of crime which is useful in policy formation

Weaknesses of crime survey

• Fails to capture victimless crimes such as prostitution and drug use

• Is an estimate of the amount of crime in the UK

• Relies upon the subjective interpretation of individuals as to whether a crime has been committed

• Relies upon people remembering the past 12 months and whether they have been the victim of a crime

• Respondents may not be aware that they have been the victim of a crime, e.g. fraud

Self report studies

Anonymous questionnaires in which people are asked to own up to committing crimes, whether or not they have been discovered

Strengths of self report studies

• More accurate picture

• Reveal the dark figures of crime

• Challenge stereotypes - reveal that female offending is underestimated in OCS

Weaknesses of self report studies

• Validity issues - respondents may lie, forget or misunderstand questions

• Fear of disclosure can lead to underreporting

• Asking about criminal behaviour can create discomfort or pressure for participants

• Samples may under-represent groups who are hard to access, unwilling to cooperate, or do not view certain acts as criminal

Functionalists view on official crime statistics

• Accept statistics as accurate and representative

• Useful for establishing patterns of crime

Marxism view on official crime statistics

• Biased view of crime - underrepresent the crimes of the powerful

• Gives the impression that the main criminals are the working class

Feminism view on official crime statistics

Under present the extent of female crime and crimes by some men against women such as domestic abuse

Labelling theory view on official crime statistics

• Official statistics are ‘social constructs’

• Useful to reveal the stereotypes, labelling of the public and of the criminal justice system

• Official statistics further fuel stereotypes which generates a self fulfilling prophecy

Functionalist society - socialisation and social control

• Socialisation - values and a shared culture is internalised into its members and they feel they know what is right and wrong to do that in that society

• Social control - rewards and punishment for doing the right and wrong thing, more opportunities with a clean criminal record, and prison if you are deviant

Durkheims beliefs on crime

• Crime is inevitable because some people are just not socialised adequately because we are all individuals and have different experiences, influences and circumstances

• Also modern societies promote a diverse and specialised labour force, and a diversity of subcultures, which can divide individuals and groups making the value consensus blurred creating crime and deviance which can then result in anomie

Functionalists - positive functions crime serves

• Boundary maintenance - reaffirm society’s shared values and norms and enforce social solidarity and enable everyone to join together to show what is acceptable and what is not

• Safety valve - crimes can act as a release of stress in society

• Warning device - statistics like truancy and suicide highlight serious issues in society

• Adaptation and change - all change starts with deviance as change is a deviation from norms

Davis - prostitution as a safety valve

• Prostitution, though condemned, was actually functional for society. He argued that its existence helped to preserve the family, which, in the view of functionalist sociologists, is the key social institution of all societies

• Implicitly, Davis accepted the Freudian view that men’s powerful sexual drive inevitably threatened the stability of the family. Prostitution served to preserve the family by offering an outlet for male sexual needs that were not being met within a marriage - know as a safety valve to release sexual tensions outside of the family

• Prostitution provided impersonal sexual gratification, which in contrast to having an affair, was unlikely to lead to an emotional attachment that would threaten the marital relationship

Functionalists - negative functions crime serve

Anomie - lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group

Strain theory

Merton adapted Durkheim’s anomie and developed ‘strain theory’ to explain why anomie occurs. Merton argues that deviance is a result of strain between our goals and the means we have to get these goals.

Responses to strain

• Conformity

• Innovation

• Ritualism

• Retreatism

• Rebellion

Conformity

• Most people continue to accept the culture and norms even if they aren’t successful

• Have goals and means

• Eg work hard legally to succeed

• Doesn’t result in crime

Innovation

• People accept the goal of success but lack the ability to achieve, reject legitimate way of success and find alternative ways

• Have the goals but not uses illegitimate means

• Eg theft and fraud

• Results in crime

Ritualism

• Reject the culture of success but stick to the rules

• Don’t have the goals but have the means

• Eg stick to rules without aiming for success

• Doesn’t result in crime

Retreatism

• Reject both the goals and the rules, drop out of society

• Eg drug addiction, homelessness

• Likely to lead to crime

Rebellion

• People who reject the rules and norms and wish to replace them with the whole new/ different ones

• Eg political radicals, revolutionaries

• Can lead to crime

Backwards law

Media constructs crime and justice that are an opposite version of reality

Ways backwards law is done

• Hugely over-representing and exaggerating sex, drug and serious violence related crimes, and by under-representing the risks of the risks common offence of property crime

• By portraying property crime as far more serious and violent than most recorded offences, which are fairly routine and trivial

• By over-exaggerating police effectiveness in solving crimes

• By exaggerating the risks of becoming victims faced by higher status white people, older people, women and children

• By emphasising individual incidents of crime, rather than providing and understanding or analysis of crime patterns or the causes of crime