Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories

Crime

An act that breaks the laws of society

Deviance

Behaviour which deviates from the norms and values of societies and is disproved of by most people

Inevitability of crime

• ‘crime is normal'

• Not everyone is equally and effectively socialised

• Different groups and subcultures have their own definition of what’s deviant

• Modern societies tend towards anomie, weakening collective conciousness

Positive functions of crime

• Boundary maintenance, it reinforces societies shared values and social solidarity

• Adaptation, it allows for social change and progress, as new norms can emerge from criminal behaviour

Cohen warning signals

• Crime is a warning signal that an institution isn’t functioning correctly

  • High truancy rates means that something is wrong with the schools

• Erikson developed this point, suggesting that if crime and deviance have positive functions, the perhaps society is designed to promote it

Criticisms of Durkheim

• Doesn’t explain how much deviance is needed for a functional society

• Functionalist assign meaning to crime, but that doesn’t always mean that was the intended effect

• Ignores the impact of crime on the victims

• Crime can generate fear and isolation rather than social cohesion and solidarity.

Control Theory

• Most people don’t commit crimes because they are controlled by social institutions (e.g family)

• The fewer social commitments (family, work) a person has, the more likely they are to commit crime

• The unemployed,, young, and men are more likely to commit crime

Hirschi bonds of attachment

• Attachment: sensitivity to other’s opinions

• Commitment: investment of time and energy for the sake of conformity

• Involvement: engrossment in conventional activity

• Belief: a person’s conviction that they should follow the rules

If these bonds are weak it will lead to crime and deviance

Farrington and West delinquent development

• A longitudinal study with 411 working-class males was conducted until the participants were in their 30s

• They found that offenders were more likely to come from, poorer, single-parent families

• The study suggests that good primary socialisation is key in preventing crime

Parent deficit

• Martin Glyn noted that many young offenders suffer from a parent deficit

• He argues that this is the most important factor in youth offending because most children need both discipline and love, two things that aren’t available with absent parents

Merton’s strain theory

• Merton adapted Durkheim’s concept of anomie to explain deviance

• Merton’s explanation combines two elements:

  • Society’s uneven structure

  • Cultural emphasis on success goals

• For Merton, deviance is the result of strain between goals that society wants people to achieve, and what institutional strucutures allow people to obtain

The American Dream

• This dream is founded on the fallacy that American society is meritocratic

• The pressure to conform creates status frustration which causes people to turn to illegitimate means of achieving their goals

  • Merton calls this the strain to anomie

Deviant adaptations to strain

• Conformity: people who accept the culturally approved goals

• Innovation: people who escape the goals but use different ways to reach them (theft)

• Ritualism: people who have given up on the goals but still participate in legitimate means

• Retreatism: people who reject the means and goals

• Rebellion: people who reject society’s goals but want to replace them with new ones through revolutionary change

Evaluation of Merton

Strengths

Weaknesses

-Explains patterns found in official crime stats (property crime is most popular because American society values wealth) -It explains how individuals respond to the strain to anomie

-His theory is criticised for taking stats at face value; they over-represent the working-class -Marxists argue that it ignores how the ruling class make laws that criminalise the poor and not the rich (white collar and blue collar crime) -It only accounts for utilitarian crime not violent crime or state crimes like genocide -Doesn’t look at the role of delinquent subcultures and their deviance ~Cohen found that the working-class boys who struggled in a middle-class dominated school system formed delinquent subculture where they rejected mainstream norms and values to resolve their frustration

Alternative status hierarchy

• Delinquent subcultures invert mainstream societal norms and values in order for those subcultures to achieve their own goals through, what they see, as legitimate means

• Whilst this does provide an explanation for non-utilitarian crime and non-economic crime, it assumes that these boys even accepted middle-class values to begin with; if they never did then they cannot see themselves as failures

Cloward and Olin three criminal subcultures

• Criminal subcultures: in neighbourhoods with longstanding and stable crime, they provide youths with an apprenticeship in utilitarian crime

• Conflict subcultures: in areas with high population turnover, social disorganisation can occur which can result in loosely disorganised criminal gangs that have illegitimate opportunities available

• Retreatist subcultures: double failures in both legitimate and illegitimate systems; this might lead to a subculture based on illegal drug use

Evaluation of Cloward and Olin

Strengths	Weaknesses
-They categorise types of working class deviance in terms of subcultures	-Deterministic and over-predicts working-class crime -They ignore the wider power structure, like law enforcement -The definitions of different subcultures are too rigid- can someone not be a retreatist and a drug dealer? -Assumes that everyone cares about middle-class values

Drift theory

• Young people do not feel constrained by the bonds of society and will drift in and out of crime

• Many young people are susceptible to peer pressure

• Neither of these things mean that they will have a deviant career or live a life of crime

British studies on criminal subcultures

• WIlmott conducted a study on working-class London and found no subcultures; rather people committed opportunist crimes because they were bored

• Downed conducted a study in East London found evidence that supported Matza’s drift theory and that young people want to have fun

• Both of these studies show that there is little evidence in Britain that supports American subcultural theories on the deviant minority vs the mainstream majority