Functionalist Theories of Crime and Deviance

Positive functions of crime

Boundary maintenance, social solidarity, adaptation and change, safety valve and warning sign.

What is boundary maintenance and social solidarity?

Boundary Maintenance- It clarifies what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour.

Social Solidarity- the crime produces a sense of community/solidarity against criminality and reinforces value consensus.

What are explanations and examples of boundary maintenance and social solidarity?

Durkheim found that criminal trials and the punishment of offenders function to reassure members of society that value consensus and social order are of benefit to all.

What are explanations and examples of adaptation and change?

Durkheim found that deviance can provoke social change by highlighting problems in the way society is organised or the inadequacies of the law. For example, a social group breaks the law to draw society’s attention to some injustice, so that the law and, therefore, social definitions of deviance can be changed.

Warning sign

Cohen's crime and deviance act as a warning sign that an institution is not working properly, for example, high rates of truancy in the education system.

Safety valve

Davis- it protects other institutions in society. He argued that married men using prostitutes could show that crime is functional if it prevented divorce.

Evaluation of positive functions of crime

Durkheim never properly explains why some individuals and social groups are more prone to committing crimes than others. Although Durkheim may have a point in arguing that some types of crimes are functional in some way, there are some types of crime (e.g. child abuse, rape, etc) that are always going to be dysfunctional (i.e. wrong, negative and damaging).

What is control theory (Hirschi)?

He studies why people do not commit crimes. He argues that criminal activity occurs when an individual’s attachment to society is weakened. This attachment depends on the strength of social bonds that hold people to society.

What were the 4 bonds of attachment identifies by Hirschi?

Attachment, commitment, involvement and belief.

What is attachment?

To other people and therefore sensitive to their wishes and needs.

What is commitment?

To conventional activities that people don’t want to jeopardize crime.

What is involvement?

In activities that reduce time to commit crime.

What is belief?

People share moral beliefs that prevent them from crime.

What is an evaluation of Hirschi?

It does not explain why people commit crimes or why some social groups commit more crimes than others.

What is Merton’s strain theory?

Merton argued that the cultural goal of the American Dream does not align with the social structure. This means that not everyone can access the institutional means (i.e. education and jobs) that are needed to achieve the cultural goal. Merton noticed an imbalance/strain (‘strain to anomie’) between people’s pursuit of cultural goals and their access to the legitimate institutions. 

What are the 5 types of strain?

Conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion.

What does conformity, innovation and ritualism mean?

Conformity: they continue to do their best and make the most of what society offers them, i.e. working hard to achieve material success.

Innovation: they remain committed to the cultural goal of material success, but their commitment to the legitimate means of achieving it weakens.

Ritualism: people who lose sight of the goal of material success- they plod on in meaningless jobs. These people are obsessed with rituals and regulations which underpin their jobs.

What does retreatism and rebellion?

Retreatism: people who drop out of conventional society and reject the cultural goal of material success and education/jobs. These people become drug addicts, alcoholics and vagrants.

Rebellion: they rebel and seek to replace the cultural goal of material success with alternative goals, like saving the environment or being anti-capitalists and anti-anarchists.

What is an evaluation of Merton?

Merton focuses on the negative functions of crime- unlike Durkheim, who looks at the positive functions of crime. 

Merton’s strain theory is important because it led to subcultural strain theories, like left-realism.