Crime is inevitable in society due to poor socialization and inequality, leading to the absence of taught norms and values.
Crime can be positive; Boundary Maintenance is when crime is functional in society when there is the right amount.
Punishment for crimes teaches society not to go against norms and values, strengthening boundaries and preventing further crime.
Adaptation and change: crime facilitates social adaptation and change, allowing societal norms and values to evolve through criminal acts.
Davis agrees that crime can be positive because prostitution provides positive functions because it allows men to express sexual frustration without threatening the nuclear family.
Ignores the women who are illegally sex trafficked to fit the men's needs.
Merton:
The 'American Dream' ideology promotes the idea that society is meritocratic, where social mobility and success can be achieved through hard work.
However, disadvantaged groups face blocked opportunities to achieve legitimately due to poverty, inadequate schools, and discrimination.
The strain between the cultural goal of money success and lack of legitimate opportunity leads to frustration, resulting in crime.
Five responses to the American Dream:
Conformism: Accepting the goals and legitimate means to achieve them.
Innovation: Subscribing to the goals but using illegitimate means.
Ritualism: Rejecting the goals but conforming to the legitimate means.
Retreatism: Rejecting both the goals and legitimate means.
Rebellion: Replacing the goals and means with their own.
Merton over-represents working-class crime, viewing crime as mainly a WC phenomenon.
Marxists argue that Merton ignores the power of the ruling class to make and enforce laws that criminalize the poor but not the rich.
Cohen:
Working-class boys face status frustration as they fail to succeed in middle-class environments like schools.
They form delinquent subcultures to oppose the middle-class habitus.
WC boys seek success within these subcultures by rising in the hierarchy.
This explains non-utilitarian crimes.
Cloward and Ohlin:
They develop Cohen's theory by suggesting three types of subcultures:
Criminal subcultures provide 'apprenticeships' for utilitarian crime in areas with stable criminal cultures and hierarchies (e.g., drug dealers).
Conflict subcultures exist in areas of high population turnover, characterized by social disorganization and loosely organized gangs (e.g., turf wars).
Retreatist subcultures form among those who fail in both legitimate and illegitimate means and may turn to illegal drug use (e.g., junkies).
Topic 2: Interactionism/Labelling
Becker:
The social construction of crime: Deviance is behaviour that people label, and a deviant is someone who the label has been successfully applied.
Labeling is influenced by gender, class, and ethnicity.
Cicourel:
Officer typifications (stereotypes) of the typical criminal lead to them concentrating on types of people that are more likely to offend (e.g., patrolling WC areas).
Justice is not fixed but negotiable; a young middle-class male was less likely to be charged because he didn't fit the stereotype.
Lemert:
Distinguishes between two types of deviance:
Primary deviance: deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled as criminal.
Secondary deviance: deviant acts and individuals that are labelled.
Once labelled, an individual may be defined by their master status, leading to a deviant career due to difficulty finding employment.
Braithwaite:
Distinguishes between types of shaming:
Reintegrative shaming: punishes in a way that strengthens their bonds with society.
Disintegrative shaming: punishment isolates the individual and causes secondary deviance.
Douglas:
Rejects official statistics when examining suicide.
Whether a death is labelled suicide depends on interactions and negotiations between social actors (doctors, coroner, family).
Stats tell us nothing about the meaning behind an individual's decision to commit suicide.
Topic 3: Class, Power & Crime
Criminogenic Capitalism:
Marxists believe that capitalism causes crime. Poverty may mean that crime is the only way the working class can survive.
Crime is the only way the WC can obtain consumer goods encouraged by capitalist advertising, resulting in utilitarian crimes such as theft.
Alienation and lack of control may lead to frustration and aggression, resulting in non-utilitarian crimes such as violence and vandalism.
Chambliss - the state and law making:
Laws to protect private property are a cornerstone of the capitalist economy.
Snider argues that the capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities of businesses or threaten their profitability.
Selective Enforcement:
Marxists believe that although all classes commit crime, there is selective enforcement when it comes to the application of the law by the criminal justice system.
Powerless groups such as the WC and ethnic minorities are criminalised, the police and court tend to ignore the crimes of the powerful.
Pearce - Ideological functions:
Laws give capitalism a 'caring' face and create a false consciousness among workers.
The state enforces the law selectively, so crime appears to be largely a working-class phenomenon.
This divides the working class due to how it encourages workers to blame criminals for their problems, rather than capitalism.
Taylor et al - Neo-Marxism:
Taylor et al critique Marxists for economic determinism and see crime as meaningful action and a conscious choice by the actor.
Crime often has a political motive (e.g., redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor).
Criminals are not passive puppets shaped by capitalism; they deliberately strive to change society.
Taylor et al produced 'a fully social theory of deviance' to understand crime in society, considering:
The wider origins of the deviant act: the unequal distribution of wealth and power in capitalist society.
Immediate origins of the deviant act: the context in which the individual decides to commit the act.
The act itself: its meaning for the actor.
Immediate origins of social reaction: the reactions of those around the deviant act.
The wider origins of societal reaction: who has the power to define actions as deviant and why some acts are treated more harshly than others.
The effects of labelling: what effects does the deviant have on future actions.
White collar & Corporate crime:
Reiman and Leighton argue that the more likely a crime is to be committed by high-class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an offence.
There is a much higher rate of prosecutions for the typical 'street crimes' that poor people commit (such as burglary and assault).
Crimes committed by the higher classes are more likely to get a more forgiving view from CJS.
Tombs notes that corporate crime has enormous costs:
Physical (deaths, injuries, illnesses), environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments).
The media:
The invisibility of corporate crime:
Gives very limited coverage to corporate crimes, thus reinforcing the stereotype that crime is a working-class phenomenon.
Lack of political will to tackle corporate crime:
Politicians' rhetoric of being 'tough on crime' only applies to street crime.
Crimes are complex:
Law enforcers are often understaffed, under-resourced and lack technical expertise.
Delabelling:
At the level of laws and legal regulations, corporate crime is consistently filtered out from the process of criminalisation.
Under-reported:
Individuals may be unaware they have been victimised.
Explanations of Corporate crime
Box argues that if a company cannot achieve its goal of maximising profit by legal means, it may employ illegal means instead.
Differential association:
Sutherland sees crime as behaviour learned from others in a social context.
The less we associate with people who hold attitudes favorable to the law and the more we associate with people with criminal attitudes, the more likely we are to become deviant ourselves.
Labelling theory:
Cicourel argues that typically, WC are more likely to have their actions labelled as criminal.
The middle class are more able to negotiate non-criminal labels for their misbehaviour.