functionalist, strain and subcultural theories

Durkheim’s functionalist theory - the inevitability and universality of crime

every society has some level of crime and deviance → even in a society of saints, deviance would exist in some form - relative.

not everyone is equally effectively socialised into the shared norms and values, so some individuals will be prone to deviate.

particularly in complex modern societies, there’s a diversity of lifestyles and values. Different groups develop their own subcultures with distinctive norms and values, and what the members of the subculture regard as normal, mainstream culture may see as deviant.

modern societies tend towards anomie - feeling frustrated and alienated by society’s social structure, leading to moral confusion. consequently, the rules governing behaviour become weaker and less clear-cut. This is cuz modern societies have a complex, specialised division of labour, which leads to individuals becoming increasingly different from one another. This weakens the shared culture or collective conscience and results in higher levels of deviance. e.g. Durkheim sees anomie as a cause of suicide.

limitation: Functionalists explain the existence of crime in terms of its supposed function - e.g. to strengthen solidarity. But this doesn't mean society actually creates crime in advance with the intention of strengthening solidarity.

Durkheim’s functionalist theory - the positive functions of crime - boundary maintenance

clarifies what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour through punishment and social control.

crime produces a reaction from society, uniting its members in condemnation of the wrongdoer and reinforcing their commitment to the shared norms and values.

this explains the function of punishment. This isn’t to make the wrongdoer suffer or mend their ways, nor is it to remove crime from society. the purpose of punishment is to reaffirm society's shared rules and reinforce social solidarity.

This may be done via the rituals of the courtroom, which dramatise wrongdoing and publicly shame and stigmatise the offender. This reaffirms the values of the law-abiding majority and discourages others from rule breaking.

Cohen (1972) → media coverage of crime and deviance often creates 'folk devils' which leads to 'dramatisation of evil'.

limitation: Crime doesn't always promote solidarity. It may have the opposite effect, leading to people becoming more isolated, e.g. women staying indoors for fear of attack. but, some crimes do reinforce collective sentiments, e.g. uniting the community in condemnation of a brutal attack.

Durkheim’s functionalist theory - the positive functions of crime - adaptation and change

all change starts with an act of deviance. Individuals with new ideas, values and ways of living must not be too restricted by social control. There must be some scope for them to challenge and change existing norms and values, and in the first instance this will inevitably appear as deviance.

e.g. the authorities often persecute religious visionaries who espouse a new 'message' or value-system. but, in the long run their values may give rise to a new culture and morality. If those with new ideas are suppressed, society will stagnate and be unable to make necessary adaptive changes.

Thus, neither very high nor low level of crime desirable. Each signals malfunctioning of the social system:
- Too much crime problematic cuz it means that too many people aren’t committed to the value consensus and thus social order is in danger of breaking down.
- Too little → society is repressing and controlling its members too much, stifling individual freedom and preventing change. problematic cuz indicates that social control mechanisms are too strong and whoever oversaw society was being too dictatorial. such controls are unhealthy cuz societies require criticism, dissent and deviance in order to healthily evolve.

limitation: For Durkheim, society requires a certain amount of deviance to function successfully, but he offers no way of knowing how much is the right amount.

Durkheim’s functionalist theory - the positive functions of crime - other functions of crime

Davis → prostitution acts as a safety valve for the release of men's sexual frustrations without threatening the monogamous nuclear family.

Cohen → a warning that an institution isn’t functioning properly. e.g. high rates of truancy → problems with the education system → policy-makers need to make appropriate changes to it.

Erikson (1966) → if deviance performs positive social functions, perhaps society is organised to promote deviance. the true function of agencies of social control such as the police may actually be to sustain a certain level of crime rather than to rid society of it.

Societies sometimes also manage and regulate deviance rather than seeking to eliminate it entirely. e.g. demonstrations, carnivals, festivals, etc. license behaviour that in other contexts might be punished. Similarly, the young may be given leeway to 'sow their wild oats'. From a functionalist perspective, this may be to offer them a way of coping with the strains of the transition from childhood to adulthood.

limitation: Functionalism looks at what functions deviance performs for society as a whole and ignores how it might affect different groups or individuals within society. e.g. prostitution may be 'functional' as a safety valve for male sexual frustrations, but it isn't functional for the illegally trafficked sex worker who has to meet his needs.

Merton's strain theory

people engage in deviant behaviour when they’re unable to achieve socially approved goals by legit means. e.g. they may become frustrated and resort to criminal means of getting what they want, or lash out at others in anger, or find comfort for their failure in drug use.

- Structural factors - society's unequal opportunity structure.
- Cultural factors - the strong emphasis on success goals and the weaker emphasis on using legit means to achieve them.

deviance is the result of a strain between two things:
- The goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve.
- What the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimately.

e.g. American culture values 'money success' - individual material wealth and the high status that goes with it.

limitation: overly deterministic: the wc experience the most strain, yet they don't all deviate.

Merton's strain theory - The American Dream

society is meritocratic → anyone who makes the effort can get ahead - there are opportunities for all.

reality different: many disadvantaged groups are denied opportunities to achieve legitimately.

strain between cultural goal and the lack of legit opportunities to achieve it produces frustration → pressure to resort to illegit means such as crime and deviance. Merton calls this pressure to deviate, the strain to anomie.

Merton → pressure to deviate increased by the fact that American culture puts more emphasis on achieving success at any price than upon doing so by legit means.

strength: explains the patterns shown in official crime stats:
- Most crime is property crime, cuz American society values material wealth so highly.
- wc crime rates are higher, cuz they have least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately.
COUNTER: It takes official crime stats at face value. These over-represent wc crime, so Merton sees crime as a mainly wc phenomenon.

Merton's strain theory - Deviant adaptations of strain

an individual's position in the social structure affects the way they adapt or respond to the strain to anomie. 5 types of adaptation, depending on whether an individual accepts, rejects or replaces cultural goals and the legit means of achieving them.

Conformity → accept goals and strive to achieve them legitimately. most likely mc who have good opportunities to achieve, but Merton sees it as the typical response of most Americans.

Innovation → accept goal but use 'new', illegit means such as theft or fraud to achieve it. those at the lower end of the class structure are under greatest pressure to innovate.

Ritualism → give up on goals, but have internalised the legit means and so they follow the rules for their own sake. This is typical of lower-mc office workers in dead-end, routine jobs.

Retreatism → reject both goals and legit means and become dropouts. Merton includes ‘psychotics, outcasts, vagrants, tramps, chronic drunkards and drug addicts' as examples.

Rebellion → reject goals and means, replace in a desire to bring about revolutionary change and create a new kind of society. e.g. political radicals and counter-cultures e.g. hippies.

limitation: Marxists → it ignores the power of the rc to make and enforce the laws in ways that criminalise the poor but not the rich.

subcultural strain theories - Cohen (1955): status frustration

Cohen agrees with Merton that deviance is largely a wc phenomenon. It results from the inability of those in the lower classes to achieve mainstream success goals by legit means e.g. educational achievement. but, Cohen criticises Merton's explanation of deviance on 2 grounds:
1. Merton sees deviance as an individual response to strain, ignoring the fact that much deviance is committed in or by groups, especially among the young.
2. Merton focuses on utilitarian crime committed for material gain, e.g. theft or fraud. He largely ignores crimes such as assault and vandalism, which may have no economic motive.

Cohen focuses on deviance among wc boys. they face anomie in the mc dominated skl system. They suffer from cultural deprivation and lack the skills to achieve. Their inability to succeed in this mc world leaves them at the bottom of the official status hierarchy.

As a result of being unable to achieve status by legit means (education), the boys suffer status frustration. They face a problem of adjustment to the low status they’re given by mainstream society. In Cohen's view, they resolve their frustration by rejecting mainstream mc values and they turn instead to other boys in the same situation, forming or joining a delinquent subculture.

alternative status hierarchy
- Cohen → the subculture's values are spite, malice, hostility and contempt for those outside it. The delinquent subculture inverts the values of mainstream society. What society condemns, the subculture praises and vice versa. e.g. society upholds regular skl attendance and respect for property, whereas in the subculture, boys gain status from vandalising property and truanting.
- Cohen → the subculture's function is that it offers the boys an alternative status hierarchy in which they can achieve. Having failed in the legit opportunity structure, the boys create their own illegit opportunity structure in which they can win status from their peers through their delinquent actions.

strength: it offers an explanation of non-utilitarian deviance. Unlike Merton, whose concept of innovation only accounts for crime with a profit motive. Cohen's ideas of status frustration, value inversion and alternative status hierarchy help to explain non-economic delinquency e.g. vandalism and truancy.

limitation: like Merton, Cohen assumes that wc boys start off sharing mc success goals, only to reject these when they fail. He ignores the possibility that they didn't share these goals in the first place and so never saw themselves as failures.

subcultural strain theories - Cloward and Ohlin (1960): three subcultures

Like Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin take Merton's ideas as their starting point. They agree that wc youths are denied legit opportunities to achieve 'money success', and that their deviance stems from the way they respond to this situation.

Cloward and Ohlin → not everyone in this situation adapts to it by turning to 'innovation' - utilitarian crimes e.g. theft. Different subcultures respond in different ways to the lack of legit opportunities.

different subcultural responses occur not only due to unequal access to the legit opportunity structure, as Merton and Cohen recognise - but unequal access to illegit opportunity structures.

e.g. not everyone who fails by legit means, such as skling, then has an equal chance of becoming a successful safecracker. Just like the apprentice plumber, the would-be safecracker needs the opportunity to learn their trade and the chance to practise it.

Cloward and Ohlin → different neighbourhoods provide different illegit opportunities for young people to learn criminal skills and develop criminal careers. They identify 3 types of deviant subcultures that result:

Criminal subcultures provide youths with an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime. They arise only in neighbourhoods with a longstanding and stable criminal culture with an established hierarchy of professional adult crime.

Conflict subcultures arise in areas of high population turnover. This results in high levels of social disorganisation and prevents a stable professional criminal network developing. it’s absence means that the only illegit opportunities available are within loosely organised gangs.

Retreatist subcultures In any neighbourhood, not everyone who aspires to be a professional criminal or a gang leader actually succeeds - just as in the legit opportunity structure, where not everyone gets a well-paid job. many of these 'double failures' - those who fail in both the legit and the illegit opportunity structures - turn to a retreatist subculture based on illegal drug use.

limitation: They agree with Merton and Cohen that most crime is wc, thus ignoring crimes of the weathy. Similarly, their theory over-predicts the amount of wc crime. Like Merton and Cohen, they too ignore the wider power structure, including who makes and enforces the law.

limitation: Although Miller agrees deviance is widespread in the wc, he argues that this arises out of an attempt to achieve their own goals, not mainstream ones.

subcultural strain theories - recent strain theories

Recent strain theorists have argued that young people may pursue a variety of goals other than money success. These include popularity with peers, autonomy from adults, or the desire of some young males to be treated like 'real men'.

Like earlier strain theorists, they argue that failure to achieve these goals may result in delinquency. They also argue that mc juveniles too may have problems achieving such goals, thus offering an explanation for mc delinquency.

institutional anomie theory
- Messner and Rosenfeld's (2001) institutional anomie theory focuses on the American Dream. its obsession with money success and its 'winner-takes-all' mentality, exert pressures towards crime by encouraging an anomic cultural environment in which people are encouraged to adopt an ‘anything goes’ mentality in pursuit of wealth.
- In America (and arguably UK), economic goals are valued above all, and this undermines other institutions, e.g. skls become geared to preparing pupils for the labour market at the expense of inculcating values such as respect for others. Messner and Rosenfeld conclude that in societies based on free-market capitalism and lacking adequate welfare provision, such as USA, high crime rates are inevitable.

strength: Downes and Hansen (2006) offer evidence for this view. In a survey of crime rates and welfare spending in 18 countries, they found societies that spent more on welfare had lower rates of imprisonment. This backs up Messner and Rosenfeld's claim that societies that protect the poor from the worst excesses of the free market have less crime.