Crime

Durkheim view on crime

Durkheim- Crime is inevitable - Poor socialization results in not everyone being taught the same norms and values.

In Durkheim's view, the purpose of punishment is to reaffirm society’s shared rules and reinforce social solidarity.

For Durkheim, all change starts with an act of deviance. Individuals with new ideas, values and ways of living must not be completely stifled by the weight of social control. 

Polsky

Porn is good for society

Merton

Merton's 'strain theory' states that crime is caused by the failure to achieve the goals of the American dream through legitimate means. 

Status frustration

Cohen focuses on working class boys in school who fail to succeed in middle class environments and end up at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Cohen believes that because of failure, students are likely to join delinquent subcultures which turn middle class values on their heads. 

 

Marxist view on crime

 

David Gordon (1976) argues, crime is a rational response to the capitalist system. Dog eat Dog

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

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

Pearce- Law give capitalism caring face

Labelling theory crime

Becker Labelling is a significant cause of criminality because it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading individuals to internalise deviant identities. 

Cicourel (1968) found that officers’ typifications

Stanley Cohen’s (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, a study of the societal reaction to the ‘mods and rockers’

Lemert's Master status

Jock young- labelling by the control culture (the police) led the hippies increasingly to see themselves as outsiders. They retreated into closed groups where they began to develop a deviant subculture, wearing longer hair and more ‘way out’ clothes. Drug use became a central activity, attracting further attention from the police and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Crime of the powerful

Sutherland (1949), which he defined as: ‘a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation’.

Tombs (2013) notes that corporate crime has enormous costs 

Box (1983) calls a ‘mystification- they spread the idea that corporate crime is rare or accidental to hide the true extent of it.

Corporate crime

Sutherland (1949) if a company’s culture justifies committing crimes to achieve corporate goals, employees will be socialised into this criminality. 

Right realism causes of crime

Wilson and Herrnstein , personality traits such as aggressiveness, extroversion, risk taking and low impulse control put some people at greater risk of offending. Argue that the main cause of crime is low intelligence.

Socialization- Charles Murray (1990) argues that the crime rate is increasing because of a growing underclass or ‘new rabble’ who are defined by their deviant behaviour and who fail to socialize their children properly. 

Rational choice theory Clarke (1980)

Left realism causes

Lea and Youngargue that crime is a product of relative deprivation, subculture formation, and marginalization. They emphasize the need to understand crime from the perspectives of those who experience it.

Why females commit less crime

Pollack chivalry thesis

Talcott Parsons (1955) traces differences in crime and deviance to the gender roles in the conventional nuclear family.  

Heidensohn: patriarchal control

Dobash and Dobash (1979) show, many violent attacks result from men’s dissatisfaction with their wives’ performance of domestic duties.   

Women commit more crime

Heidensohn (1996) argues, the courts treat females more harshly than males when they deviate from gender norms

Adler argues that, as women become liberated from patriarchy, their crimes will become as frequent and as serious as men’s.   

Males commit more crime

Messerschmidt (1993) argues that masculinity is a social construct or ‘accomplishment’ and men have to constantly work at constructing and presenting it to others.

Winslow loss of many of the traditional manual jobs through which working-class men were able to express their masculinity by hard physical labour and by providing for their families. Night-time leisure economy of clubs, pubs and bars, for some young working-class men, this has provided a combination of legal employment, lucrative criminal opportunities and a means of expressing their masculinity 

Ethnicity difference in crime

Over policing- Phillips and bowling 

Lea and young- Blacks commit more because they are marginalized

Gilroy’s view, ethnic minority crime can be seen as a form of political resistance against a racist society, and this resistance has its roots in earlier struggles against British imperialism.  

Hall- Black muggers

 

Globalastion

Manuel Castells (1998) argues, there is now a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum. Trafficking in women and children, often linked to prostitution or slavery.

Glenny (2008) calls ‘McMafia’

Hobbs and Dunningham therefore conclude that crime works as a ‘glocal’ system.  

Taylor (1997) argues that globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime. By giving free rein to market forces, globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime.  

Types of green crime

Primary Green Crime: Direct harm to the environment (e.g., pollution, deforestation).

Secondary Green Crime: Crimes related to the environment, like illegal waste disposal or violations of environmental laws.

Explanation of green crime

White (2004): Argues that green crime is a response to the exploitation of the environment for economic gain.

Explaining state crime

Adorno identify an ‘authoritarian personality’ that includes a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question. They argue that at the time of the Second World War, many Germans had authoritarian personality types due to the punitive, disciplinarian socialisation patterns that were common at the time. 

Surveillance

Foucault- Suggests that constant surveillance causes people to regulate their own behaviour, thus making formal punishment less necessary. 

Norris and Armstrong (1999) also found that surveillance disproportionately targets young Black men

Situational crime prevention

Right Realism- Clarke (1992) describes situational crime prevention as ‘a pre-emptive approach 

Target hardening measures, such as locking doors and windows, increase the effort a burglar needs to make

Chaiken argue that this may lead to displacement, where crime simply moves to a different time, place, or victim.  

Environmental crime prevention

Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows’ theory.

Zero tolerance

Right realist- New york

Social and community crime prevention 

The Perry pre-school project One of the best-known community programmes aimed at reducing criminality is the experimental Perry pre-school project for disadvantaged black children in Ypsilanti, Michigan. An experimental group of 3–4-year-olds was offered a two-year intellectual enrichment programme