Earlgi's Crime and Deviance Active Recall Notes
Functionalist, Strain, and Subcultural Theories of Crime and Deviance
Mechanisms for Social Solidarity: Functionalists argue that society utilizes two main mechanisms to maintain solidarity: socialisation and social control.
The Normality of Crime: Émile Durkheim stated, "Crime is normal… An integral part of all healthy societies."
Inevitability of Crime: Durkheim argues crime is inevitable for two reasons:
Individuals are socialised differently into distinct lifestyles, making some more prone to deviance.
The complex division of labour in modern society leads to diverse subcultures and values that may be perceived as deviant.
Anomie in Modern Society: Durkheim posits that a complex division of labour increases individualism, which undermines the collective conscience (shared culture) and leads to people straining toward a state of anomie ().
Positive Functions of Crime according to Durkheim:
Boundary Maintenance: Deviance unifies society as members come together to punish criminal acts, reaffirming shared values.
Adaptation and Change: Deviance challenges existing norms, potentially fostering the creation of new morality and culture.
Case Study: Boundary Maintenance: Stanley Cohen argues that the media’s dramatisation of crime creates "folk devils," which serves as a contemporary example of performing boundary maintenance.
Balance of Crime: Durkheim argues that too little crime suggests a society is repressing its members excessively, while too much crime threatens to tear the social fabric apart.
Specific Positive Functions (Safety Valves):
Kingsley Davis: Argues prostitution acts as a "safety valve" by allowing men to release sexual frustrations without threatening the monogamous nuclear family unit.
Polsky: Argues pornography safely channels sexual desires that might otherwise manifest as more threatening acts like adultery.
Institutional Monitoring: Albert Cohen argues deviance helps society recognize when an institution is not functioning properly. Erickson argues that society is organized specifically to promote crime.
Criticisms of Functionalism:
It fails to quantify exactly how much crime is "needed."
It ignores that crime does not benefit everyone (e.g., the victimhood of trafficked sex workers).
Just because a society produces crime does not mean that is the reason why it necessarily exists.
Mnemonic for Criticisms: "HOW. WHO. WHY."
Merton’s Strain Theory: Robert K. Merton uses Durkheim’s concept of anomie to explain structural and cultural factors:
Structural Factors: Refers to society’s unequal opportunity structure.
Cultural Factors: Refers to the strong emphasis on success but a weaker emphasis on the legitimate means to achieve it.
The American Dream: Merton argues this cultural phenomenon causes individuals to strain toward deviance because of the unequal opportunity structure in the US.
Merton’s Five Adaptations to Strain:
Conformity: Accepting goals and legitimate means.
Innovation: Accepting goals but using illegitimate means (e.g., theft).
Ritualism: Abandoning goals but sticking to legitimate means.
Retreatism: Rejecting both goals and means (e.g., drug addiction).
Rebellion: Rejecting existing goals and means and replacing them with new ones.
Mnemonic for Adaptations: "Can I Really Run Right."
Crime Statistics Explained by Merton:
Explains why most crime is property crime, as society values material wealth.
Explains higher lower-class crime rates due to limited legitimate opportunities for wealth.
Criticisms of Merton:
He takes official crime statistics at face value.
Marxists argue he ignores the ruling class's power to enforce laws that criminalise the poor while ignoring corporate crime.
He only accounts for utilitarian crime (crimes for financial gain) and ignores non-utilitarian crimes like vandalism or violence.
Subcultural Strain Theories: Albert K. Cohen argues that status frustration among boys leads them to reject middle-class values and join delinquent subcultures.
Alternative Status Hierarchy: Delinquent subcultures invert mainstream values, allowing individuals to gain status through an illegitimate opportunity structure.
Cloward and Ohlin’s Three Subcultures:
Criminal Subcultures: Provide an "apprenticeship" in utilitarian crime.
Conflict Subcultures: Emerge in disorganized areas, resulting in gang memberships and "turf wars."
Retreatist Subcultures: Formed by "double failures" who fail in both legitimate and illegitimate structures.
Recent Strain Theory: Messner and Rosenfield argue the American education system exerts pressure to commit crime. Savelsberg argues the replacement of capitalism in former communist countries led to increased crime.
Interactionism and Labelling Theory
Cause of Deviance: Labelling theorists argue crime is caused by the societal reaction to an act, not the act itself. Howard Becker states that crime is "in the eye of the beholder."
Moral Entrepreneurs: Individuals who lead moral campaigns to change laws, resulting in the creation of new "outsiders" and the expansion of social control agencies (e.g., police).
Case Studies in Labelling:
Platt: Argues "juvenile delinquency" was created by Victorian moral entrepreneurs to protect/control at-risk youth.
US Federal Bureau of Narcotics: Becker argues they campaigned for drug law changes to increase their own institutional power.
Arrests and Convictions: Piliavin and Briar found police decisions are based on physical cues and character judgements. Aaron Cicourel argues that justice is "negotiated."
Typifications: Cicourel’s term for the stereotypes social control agents hold about "typical delinquents" (e.g., coming from broken homes or poverty).
Statistics as Topic vs. Resource: Cicourel argues official statistics are not a valid picture of crime (resource) but should be studied for what they reveal about the activities of agents of control (topic).
Primary vs. Secondary Deviance: Identified by Edwin Lemert:
Primary: Trivial acts that are not publicly labelled.
Secondary: Acts resulting from being publicly labelled; the individual accepts the label as their "master status."
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Occurs when an individual acts out their deviant label.
Jock Young’s Marijuana Study: Conducted in Notting Hill; showed how police labelling led hippies to see themselves as outsiders, forcing them into a deviant subculture where drug use became a central activity.
Deviance Amplification Spiral: The process where attempts to control deviance lead to a further increase in deviance (e.g., folk devils vs. the "dark figure" of unrecorded crime).
Types of Shaming (Braithwaite):
Disintegrative Shaming: The crime and offender are labelled bad and excluded from society.
Reintegrative Shaming: Labels the act but not the actor, encouraging forgiveness.
Interactionist View on Suicide: J.D. Douglas rejects Durkheim’s statistics, arguing they reflect coroners' labels rather than the true meaning. Atkinson focuses on "coroner commonsense knowledge."
Institutionalisation (Goffman): In "total institutions" (prisons, armies, monasteries), identities are symbolically killed and replaced through the "modification of the self."
Class, Power, and Marxism
Criminogenic Capitalism: Marxists argue capitalism is inherently crime-producing because:
Poverty may make crime a survival necessity for the working class.
Advertising encourages consumerism that cannot always be met legitimately.
Alienation leads to frustration and non-utilitarian crimes (vandalism).
Rational Response: David Gordon argues crime is a rational response to capitalism found in all social classes.
Law Making: William Chambliss studied British colonies in East Africa where laws were used to force locals into the plantation labour economy. Laureen Snider argues the state is reluctant to pass laws that threaten business profitability.
Selective Enforcement: The state tends to ignore the crimes of the powerful while criminalising the poor.
Ideological Function: Frank Pearce argues workplace safety laws provide a "caring face" to capitalism but actually keep workers fit for exploitation and maintain false class consciousness.
Neo-Marxism (Critical Criminology): Taylor, Walton, and Young argue for a "fully social theory of deviance." They criticize traditional Marxism as deterministic, arguing criminals have free will (voluntarism) and commit crimes as a political act to redistribute wealth.
White-Collar and Corporate Crime:
Sutherland defines white-collar crime as committed by persons of respectability in the course of their occupation.
Occupational Crime: For personal benefit.
Corporate Crime: For the benefit of the business.
Trust Abuse: Harold Shipman ( victims) is an example of a professional abusing trust.
Invisibility of Corporate Crime: Causes include lack of political will, complex nature of the crimes, and under-reporting in the media.
Realist Theories of Crime
Right Realism (Neo-Conservative):
Causes of Crime: Biological differences (low IQ/temperament), inadequate socialisation (Charles Murray blames lone-parent mothers), and Rational Choice Theory.
Rational Choice (Ronald Clarke): Individuals weigh the rewards of crime against the costs.
Routine Activity (Felson): Requires a motivated offender, a suitable target, and an absence of a capable guardian.
Tactics: Target hardening and Zero Tolerance (Wilson and Kelling's "Broken Windows").
Left Realism (Reformist/Socialist):
Jock Young and Lea argue crime is a real problem for the working class.
Three Causes of Crime: Relative deprivation, marginalisation, and subcultures.
Lethal Combination: Relative deprivation plus individualism leads to crime.
Policing: Criticize "military policing" as it leads to community distrust; 90% of crimes are reported by the public, necessitating consensus policing.
Policies: Influenced New Labour's "New Deal" and ASBOs.
Gender, Crime, and Justice
Statistics: out of convicted offenders are men. By age , of females have a conviction compared to of males. Men are times more likely to be convicted of homicide.
Chivalry Thesis: Pollack argues the CJS is more lenient toward women because men are socialised to be chivalrous. Graham and Bowling found men admitted to times more crime than women in self-reports, but official stats show they are convicted times more.
Bias Against Women: Heidensohn argues courts have "double standards," punishing girls more harshly for sexually promiscuous behavior (Sharpe). Pat Carlen argues women are controlled through "class deals" (material rewards) and "gender deals" (emotional rewards).
Liberation Thesis: Freda Adler argues that as patriarchal control lessens, female crime rates increase (e.g., female participation in "male" crimes like embezzlement).
Masculinity and Crime: Messerschmidt argues men use crime to "accomplish masculinity." Winlow studied bouncers in Sunderland, showing how violence becomes a commodity in a deindustrialised, postmodern society.
Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice
Overrepresentation: Black people make up of the UK population but of the prison population. Asian people make up of the population but of the prison population.
Institutional Racism: The Macpherson Report (Stephen Lawrence case) found the Metropolitan Police to be institutionally racist.
Gilroy - Myth of Black Criminality: Argues black crime is a form of political resistance against a racist state.
Stuart Hall - Policing the Crisis: Argues the "myth of the black mugger" in the was an ideological distraction from the crisis of capitalism.
Victimisation: Racist victimisation includes incidents where victims feel racially attacked. Minority communities often respond through self-defence campaigns.
Crime and the Media
Distortion: Williams and Dickinson found newspapers devote up to of space to crime. The media over-represents violent/sexual crime and exaggerates police success.
News Values: Criteria like immediacy, personalisation, and high-status individuals determine newsworthiness.
Media as Cause: May cause crime through imitation, arousal, or desensitisation. Left realists argue media increases relative deprivation by displaying unattainable lifestyles.
Moral Panics: Cohen’s "Mods and Rockers" study showed how media exaggeration leads to a deviance amplification spiral and the creation of folk devils.
Commodification: Brands like "FCUK" and slogans like "Section " market deviance as a fashionable cultural symbol.
Globalisation, Green Crime, and State Crime
Global Criminal Economy: Manuel Castells estimates this is worth over per year (e.g., arms trafficking, money laundering).
Glocalism: Hobbs and Dunningham argue crime is "glocal" — locally based but with global connections.
McMafia: Misha Glenny describes criminal organisations formed after the fall of communism in the former USSR.
Green Crime: Primary green crimes (direct destruction like air/water pollution) vs. secondary green crimes (flouting rules to prevent environmental disasters).
State Crime: McLaughlin defines state crime in categories: political, economic, social/cultural, and police/security crimes.
Modernity and the Holocaust: Zygmunt Bauman argues the Holocaust was made possible by modern features: division of labour, bureaucratisation, instrumental rationality, and science/technology.
Spiral of State Denial: Stanley Cohen identifies three stages: "It didn't happen," "If it did, it’s something else," and "It is justified."
Control, Punishment, and Victims
Situational Crime Prevention (SCP): Ronald Clarke focuses on altering the environment to increase the effort/risk of offending. Example: the Port Authority Bus Terminal redesign.
Displacement: Cracks in SCP can lead to spatial, temporal, target, tactical, or functional displacement.
Environmental Crime Prevention: Based on Wilson and Kelling’s "Broken Windows." Involves zero-tolerance policing and environmental improvement.
Social/Community Crime Prevention: Long-term strategies like the Perry Pre-school project (saving dollars for every dollar spent).
Surveillance:
Foucault: Distinguishes between sovereign power (corporal punishment) and disciplinary power (monitoring). The Panopticon is the model for modern surveillance.
Synoptic Surveillance: Thomas Mathiesen argues today "everybody watches everybody" (e.g., filming police via smartphones).
Actuarial Justice: Feeley and Simon argue the CJS now uses risk management and profiles groups based on statistical risk.
Punishment: Durkheim distinguishes between retributive justice (vengeance in traditional society) and restitutive justice (compensation in modern society).
Victimology:
Positivist: Focuses on "victim proneness" (Hentig) and "victim precipitation" (Wolfgang found of homicides were triggered by the victim).
Critical: Focuses on structural factors (poverty/patriarchy) and the state’s power to deny the label of "victim."