Functionalist and Subcultural Theories of Crime and Deviance

Functionalist and Subcultural Theories of Crime and Deviance

Early Theories of Crime

  • Lombroso's Theory: Linked criminality to physical characteristics, body types, and chromosomes.
  • Psychological Explanations:
    • Eysenck: Criminals exhibit more extrovert tendencies, potentially inherited.
    • Bowlby: Juvenile delinquency results from maternal deprivation.
  • Critique of Non-Sociological Theories: They often neglect the social context of criminal behavior.

Sociological Theories of Crime

  • Focus on the relationship between the individual and society, emphasizing the impact of social forces on behavior.
Durkheim's Functionalism
  • Social Order: Depends on shared values and norms (value consensus).
  • Agencies of Social Control: Formal (law) and informal (religion, family) agencies socialize individuals into consensus and deter deviance.
  • Functions of Deviance:
    • Early Warning Signal: Indicates societal malfunctions and the need for change.
    • Reinforcement of Social Order: Provokes moral outrage, reinforcing social integration.
    • Normalization: Yesterday's deviance can become today's normality.
  • Anomie (Moral Confusion): Increasingly common in modern societies, undermining value consensus and increasing the likelihood of deviance.
  • Optimal Level of Deviance: Societies need some deviance, but too much indicates social breakdown, while too little suggests a totalitarian society.
Criticisms of Durkheim
  • Negative Impact of Crime: Crime has traumatic effects on individuals, families, and communities.
  • Marxist Perspective (Box): Crime benefits the rich and powerful capitalist class, diverting attention from inequalities.
  • Vagueness of Anomie: Difficult to operationalize and measure its impact on values and norms.
Merton's Strain Theory
  • American Dream: The cultural belief that hard work leads to material success, regardless of background.
  • Strain: Mismatch between the pursuit of material success and access to the means (education, jobs) to achieve it.
  • Blocked Opportunities: Leads to feelings of anomie, alienation, and frustration, potentially resulting in crime.
  • Cultural Agencies: Mass media promotes materialism and conspicuous consumption, exacerbating anomie.
  • Roots of Behavior: Both conventional and deviant behavior stem from the social structure, setting cultural goals and constructing the means to achieve them.
  • Individual Responses to Anomie:
    • Conformity: Accepting one's lot despite disappointment.
    • Innovation: Rejecting conventional means and turning to crime.
    • Ritualism: Losing sight of goals but continuing in meaningless jobs.
    • Retreatism: Dropping out of society (e.g., drug addicts, vagrants).
    • Rebellion: Replacing shared goals with alternative, revolutionary values.
  • Crime as a Reaction to Capitalism: Crime, a deviant activity, is caused by conformity to the dominant value system.
Criticisms of Merton
  • Overemphasis on Consensus: Surveys indicate the poor do not believe they will achieve material success equally.
  • Altruism: Some individuals are more motivated by helping others than material success.
  • Limited Scope: Useful for economic crime but not for crimes of violence or juvenile delinquency.
  • White-Collar Crime: Fails to explain why the wealthy commit crimes despite having access to opportunities.
  • Marxist Critique: Does not adequately address the issue of power and who benefits from the capitalist system.

Subcultural Theories

Albert Cohen's Subcultural Theory
  • Explains juvenile delinquency (gang violence, joyriding) not linked to material gain.
  • Focuses on delinquency as a collective response.
  • Subculture: Exists alongside the dominant culture but with important differences labeled as deviant.
  • Pursuit of Status: Central cultural goal is a feeling of self-worth.
  • Juvenile Delinquency: Caused by societal organization.
  • Status Frustration: Lower-working-class boys are inadequately socialized and experience low self-esteem due to educational and occupational systems; this leads to anti-school delinquent subcultures that reverse mainstream values.
Criticisms of Cohen
  • Status Goal: Paul Willis found that some working-class youths reject the goal of educational qualifications.
  • Generalization: Cohen generalizes about working-class parents and culture.
Miller's Focal Concerns Theory
  • Juvenile delinquency results from an extension of lower-working-class subcultural values.
  • Working-Class Values: Product of routine, boring manual labor.
  • Focal Concerns: Compensate for the boredom of manual labor, including:
    • Acceptance of violence.
    • Heightened sense of masculinity (toughness).
    • Fatalism.
    • Smartness (looking good).
    • Excitement (seeking 'kicks').
    • Autonomy ('nobody will push me around').
  • Explains how individuals and groups navigate social situations and communicate.
Criticisms of Miller
  • Oversimplification: May oversimplify factors influencing social norms and downplay individual agency.
Matza's Interpretivist Perspective
  • All subcultural theories over-predict delinquency.
  • We are all potentially deviant, but only a minority become so.
  • Neglects the influence of the social environment and power distribution.
  • We all subscribe to deviant values (craving excitement, being outrageous).
  • Powerless groups (young working-class and black people) are more likely to be labeled as deviant.
  • Deviant youth subcultures are temporary.
Sutherland's Differential Association Theory
  • Deviance is learned from other criminals through family, friends, or gangs.
  • Criminal behavior is not inherent but learned from interactions with others.
Cloward & Ohlin's Opportunity Structure
  • Combined ideas of Merton and Cohen.
  • Legitimate opportunity structure (passing exams, getting a job).
  • Illegitimate opportunity structure (being in a gang, committing crime).
  • Access to the illegitimate opportunity structure can be unequal.
  • Explains why not all frustrated working-class boys turn to crime.
Cloward & Ohlin's Subcultures
  • Criminal subcultures: established criminal culture teaches young people utilitarian crimes.
  • Conflict subculture: gangs engage in non-utilitarian crimes (violence, vandalism).
  • Retreatist subculture: Individuals retreat from society and turn to drink and drugs.
General Criticisms
  • Functionalist explanations overemphasize consensus about cultural goals.
  • Subcultural theories assume most people aspire to mainstream goals of success.
  • Taylor, Walton & Young: Hippies do not share these goals.
  • Subcultural theories assume no overlap between subcultures.