Crime and deviance
Alternative status hierarchy
Cohen: subculture offers an illegitimate opportunity structure for boys who have failed to achieve legitimately
- Subculture provides an alternative status hierarchy where they can win status through delinquent actions
- Its values are spite, malice, hostility, and contempt for those outside it. Subculture inverts mainstream values. What society praises, it condemns; e.g. society respects property, whereas the boys gain status from vandalising it
Cloward and Ohlin: three subcultures
C + O agree with M that WC youths are denied legitimate opportunities to achieve and that their deviance stems from their response to this
However, they note that not everyone adapts to a lack of legitimate opportunities by turning to ‘innovation’ (utilitarian crime). Some subcultures resort to violence; others turn to drug use
• The key reason for these differences is not only unequal access to legitimate opportunity structures but unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structures. E.g. not everyone who fails at school can become a successful safecracker
• Different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities to learn criminal skills and develop criminal careers. They identify three types of subcultures that result:
1. Criminal subcultures:
- provide youths with an apprenticeship with utilitarian crime
- arise in neighbourhoods where there’s a long-lasting, stable criminal culture and a hierarchy of professional adult crime
- adult criminals can select and train those youths with the right abilities and provide them with opportunities on the criminal career ladder
2. Conflict subcultures:
- arise in areas of high population turnover that prevent a stable professional criminal network from developing. The only legitimate opportunities are within loosely organized gangs.
- violence provides a release for frustration at blocked opportunities and an alternative source of status earned by winning ‘turf’ from rival gangs
3. Retreatist subcultures:
- the ‘double failures’ who fail in both legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures often turn to a retreatist or ‘dropout’ subculture based on illegal drug use
A03:
• Ignore crimes of the wealthy and the wider power structure, and over-predict the amount of WC crime
• They try to explain different types of WC deviance in terms of different subcultures
• Draw the boundaries too sharply between the different types. Actual subcultures often show characteristics of more than one ‘type’
• Reactive theory – explain deviant subcultures as forming in reaction to the failure to achieve mainstream success goals. Wrongly assumes everyone starts off sharing these same goals.
Interactionism and labelling theory
The social construction of crime
Labelling theorists = no act is deviant in itself = deviance is simply a social construct
- Becker: social groups create deviance by creating rules and applying them to particular people whom they label as ‘outsiders’
- Thus an act or a person only becomes deviant when labelled by as others as deviant
Differential enforcement:
- LT = social control agencies tend to label certain groups as criminal
- Piliavin + Briar found police decisions to arrest were based on stereotypical ideas about manner, dress, gender, class, ethnicity, time, and place
Typifications:
Cicourel argues police use typifications (stereotypes) of the ‘typical delinquent’. Individuals fitting the typification are more likely to be stopped, arrested, and charged:
- WC and minority ethnic youths are more likely to be arrested. Once arrested, those from broken homes etc are more likely to be charged
- MC youths are less likely to fit the typification, and have parents who can negotiate successfully on their behalf. They are less likely to be charged.
Social construction of crime statistics:
WC people fit police typifications, so police patrol WC areas, resulting in more WC arrests
- Thus crime statistics recorded by police don’t give a valid picture of crime patterns
- Cicourel argues we can’t take crime stats at face value or use them as a resource (source of facts). We should treat them as a topic and investigate the processes by which they’re constructed
The dark figure = difference between official stats and ‘real’ rate of crime – don’t know for certain how much crime goes undetected, unreported, and unrecorded
- Some sociologists therefore use victim surveys or self-report studies to gain a more accurate view
The effects of labelling:
LT interested in effects of labelling. Lemert argues by labelling certain people as deviant, society actually encourages them to become more so: societal reaction causes ‘secondary deviance’
Primary and secondary deviance:
Primary deviance is deviant acts that haven’t been publicly labelled. They have many causes, are often trivial and mostly go uncaught. Those who commit them do not usually see themselves as deviant
Secondary deviance results from societal reaction, i.e. from labelling. Labelling someone as an offender can involve stigmatising and excluding them from normal society. Others may see the offender solely in terms of the label, which becomes the individual’s master status or controlling identity
Self-fulfilling prophecy:
- Being labelled may provoke a crisis for the individual’s self-concept and lead to a SFP in which they live up to the label, resulting in secondary deviance
- Further societal reaction may reinforce the individual’s outsider status and lead to them joining a deviant subculture that offers support, role models, and a deviant career
Young’s study of hippy marijuana users illustrates these processes
- Drug use was initially peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyle (primary deviance), but police persecution of them as junkies (societal reaction) led them to retreat into closed groups, developing a deviant subculture where drug use became a central activity (SFP)
- The control process aimed at producing law-abiding behaviour thus produced the opposite
Deviance amplification spiral:
In a deviance amplification spiral, attempt to control deviance leads to it increasing – resulting in greater attempts to control it and, in turn, yet more deviance, in an escalating spiral, as with the hippies described by Young
Folk devils and moral panics: Cohen’s study of the mods and rockers uses the concept of deviance amplification spiral:
- Media exaggeration and distortion began a moral panic, with growing public concern
- Moral entrepreneurs called for a ‘crackdown’. Police responded by arresting more youths, provoking more concern
- Demonising the mods and rockers as ‘folk devils’ marginalised them further, resulting in more deviance
The work of Cohen and Young points to a key difference with functionalism:
- Functionalists see deviance producing social control
- Labelling theorists see control producing further deviance
Mental illness and suicide:
Interactionists are also interested in behaviour regarded by some sociologists as deviant, such as mental illness and suicide
Douglas: the meaning of suicide:
Douglas argues that to understand suicide, we must discover its meanings for the deceased. He rejects the use of official suicide stats: they’re social constructs that only tell us about the labels applied by coroners. To discover the deceased’s meanings, we must use qualitative methods, e.g. the analysis of suicide notes or unstructured interviews with the deceased’s relatives
Atkinson: coroners’ commonsense knowledge
Atkinson focuses on how coroners use taken-for-granted assumptions to construct social reality
He found that their ideas about a ‘typical suicide’ affected their verdict; e.g. they saw certain modes of death, locations and circumstances of the death, and life histories as typical of suicides
Mental illness:
Interactionists reject the use of official stats on mental illnesses as social constructs – just a record of activities of doctors with the power to attach labels such as ‘schizophrenia’
Paranoia as a SFP:
Interactionists are interested in how a person comes to be labelled as mentally ill and effects of this labelling. Lembert shows how socially awkward individuals may be labelled and excluded from groups
The individual’s negative response gives the group reason to fear for the individual’s mental health and this may lead to a medical label of paranoia. The label ‘mental patient’ becomes their master status
Institutionalisation:
Goffman shows possible effects of being admitted to a ‘total institution’ such as a psychiatric hospital
Patients undergo a ‘mortification of the self’ in which their old identity is ‘killed off’ and replaced by a new one: ‘inmate’. This is achieved by ‘degradation rituals’, e.g. confiscation of personal effects
Class, power, and crime
Explaining class differences in crime:
Official stats show WC as more likely than higher classes to offend. Different perspectives offer different explanations for this
Functionalism = crime is product of inadequate socialisation into a shared culture. Miller argues LC has an independent subculture opposed to mainstream culture and this explains their higher crime rate
Strain theory = class structure denies WC people opportunity to achieve by legitimate means, so they’re more likely to innovate (use utilitarian crime)
Subcultural theories = (Cohen) WC youths are culturally deprived and unable to achieve in education. Failure gives rise to status frustration. As a solution, they form delinquent subcultures in which they gain status from peers. Cloward and Ohlin identify three deviant subcultures: criminal, conflict, and retreatist
Labelling theory = reject view official stats are valid picture of which class commits most crime. Focus on role of law enforcement agencies, which have power to label WC as criminals
Marxism, class, and crime:
Marxists agree law is enforced mainly against WC and that official stats are flawed
Criticise labelling theory for ignoring structure of capitalism within which law making, enforcement and offending take place. Marxist explanations of crime flow from their analysis of nature of capitalist society
Marxism sees capitalist society as divided into ruling capitalist class, who own the means of production, and the WC, whose labour capitalists exploit for profit
Marxism is a structural theory: society is a structure whose capitalist economic base determines the superstructure, i.e. all other institutions, inc. state, law, and criminal justice system. Function is to serve RC interests. For Marxists, structure of capitalism explains crime
Criminogenic capitalism:
Crime is inevitable in capitalism, because crime is criminogenic – its very nature causes crime
WC crime: capitalism is based on exploitation of WC for profit. As a result:
- Poverty may mean crime is the only way some can survive
- Crime may be the only way of obtaining customer goods encouraged by capitalist advertising, resulting in utilitarian crimes, e.g. theft
- Alienation may cause frustration and aggression, leading to non-utilitarian crimes, e.g. violence, vandalism
RC crime: capitalism is a win-at-all-costs system of competition, while the profit motive encourages greed. This encourages capitalists to commit corporate crimes, e.g. tax evasion, breaking health and safety laws
As Gordon argues, crime is a rational response to capitalism and thus is found in all classes
The state and law making:
Marxists see law making and enforcement as serving the interests of the capitalist class. Chambliss argues that laws to protect private property are the basis of the capitalist economy
RC also have the power to prevent introduction of laws harmful to their interests. Few laws challenge the unequal distribution of wealth
Selective enforcement:
While all classes commit crime, there’s selective enforcement of the law
- Reiman shows crime of powerful are much less likely to be treated as criminal offences and prosecuted. Carson, in a sample of 200 firms, found all had broken health and safety laws, yet only 1.5% of cases were prosecuted
- By contrast, there’s a much higher rate of prosecutions for the crimes of the poor
Ideological functions of crime and law:
Crime and law perform ideological functions for capitalism
- Some laws benefit workers, e.g. health and safety. However, Pearce argues that these also benefit capitalism. By giving it a ‘caring’ face, they create false consciousness
- Because the state enforces law selectively, crime appears to be largely WC. This divides WC, encouraging workers to blame WC criminals for their problems, rather than capitalism
- Selective enforcement distorts crime stats. By making crime appear largely WC, it shifts attention from more serious RC crime
Neo-Marxism: critical criminology:
Neo-Marxists Taylor, Walton and Young agree with traditional Marxists that:
- Capitalism is based on exploitation and inequality. This is key to understanding crime
- The state makes and enforces laws in the interests of capitalism and criminalises the WC
- Capitalism should be replaced by a classless society, which would greatly reduce crime
However, Taylor criticises Marxism for its determinism; e.g. it sees workers as driven to commit crime out of economic necessity. They reject this view, along with other theories that claim crime is caused by external factors, e.g. anomie, blocked opportunities
Voluntarism:
Instead, Taylor take a more voluntaristic view (the idea that we have free will): crime is a conscious choice often with a political motive, e.g. to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Criminals are deliberately struggling to change society
A fully social theory of deviance:
Taylor et al aim to create a ‘fully social theory of deviance’ – comprehensive theory that would help to change society for the better. This theory would have two main sources:
- Marxist ideas about the unequal distribution of wealth and who has power to make and enforce law
- LT’s ideas about meaning of deviant act for the actor, societal reactions to it, and the effect of deviant label on individual
Crimes of the powerful:
Although all classes commit crime, the law is selectively enforced and higher-class and corporate offenders are less likely to be prosecuted
White collar crime: Sutherland defines white collar crime as crime committed by a person of respectability and high status in the course of their occupation. This can include:
- Occupational crime committed by employees for personal gain, e.g. stealing from the company
- Corporate crime committed for the company’s benefit, e.g. to increase its profit
The scale of corporate crime: CC does far more harm than ‘ordinary’ crime. It has enormous physical, environmental and economic costs. Tombs concluded CC is ‘widespread, routine and pervasive’. It includes:
- Financial crimes, e.g. tax evasion
- Crimes against consumers, e.g. selling unfit goods
- Crimes against employees, e.g. breaking health and safety laws
- Crimes against the environment, e.g. toxic waste dumping
The abuse of trust:
Professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability that give them the opportunity to violate this trust. E.g. accountants have been involved in tax fraud and money laundering
In Sutherland’s view, this makes white collar crime a greater threat to society than WC ‘street’ crime because it promotes distrust of key institutions and undermines the fabric of society
The invisibility of CC:
CC is often invisible, or else not seen as ‘real’ crime, because:
- The media give very limited coverage to CC and often describe it as technical infringements. This reinforces the stereotype that crime is a WC phenomenon
- Lack of political will to tackle CC
- CC is complex. Law enforcers are under-resourced and lack technical expertise to investigate effectively
- De-labelling. Offences are often defined as civil; penalties are often fines, not jail
- Under-reporting. Often the victim is society at large rather than one particular individual. Victims may not know they have been victimised, not regard it as ‘real’ crime, or feel powerless and not report the offence
Explanations of corporate crime:
Strain theory. If a company can’t achieve its goal of maximising profit by legitimate means, it may employ illegal ones instead. Clinard and Yeager found companies’ law violations increased as their profitability declined
Differential association. Sutherland sees crime as socially learned behaviour. If a company’s deviant subculture justifies committing crime, employees will be socialised into criminality. They may learn ‘techniques of neutralisation’ to justify their crimes
Labelling theory. An act counts as a crime only if it has been labelled. Companies often have the power to avoid labelling e.g. by hiring expensive lawyers. The inability of enforcement agencies to investigate effectively also reduces the number of offences officially labelled
Marxism. See CC as resulting from normal functioning of capitalism. Because capitalism’s goal is to maximise profits, it inevitably causes harm, e.g. to employees and consumers. Corporations comply with the law only if it is enforced strictly
Capitalism creates the ideology that CC is less widespread or harmful than WC crime. It also controls the state, so it can avoid making laws that conflict with its interests
Realist theories of crime:
Realists theories differ from LT and critical criminology, which see crime as socially constructed, rather than a real fact. Realists see crime as a real problem, especially for its victims, and they propose policies to reduce crime
Realist approaches divide along political lines:
- Right realists share a conservative, New Right political outlook and support a ‘zero tolerance’ stance on crime. They have been very influential in the UK and USA
- Left realists are reformist socialists and favour policies to promote equality
Right realism:
RR see crime, esp. street crime, as a growing problem
Attitude to other theories: RR believe other theories have failed to solve the problem of crime. They regard LT and critical criminology as too sympathetic to the criminal and hostile to police and courts
Practical solutions: RRs are mainly concerned with practical solutions to reduce crime. In their view, the best way to do so is through control and punishment, rather than by rehabilitating offenders or tackling causes such as poverty
The causes of crime:
- RRs reject idea that structural or economic factors such as poverty are the cause of crime; e.g. they point out the old tend to be poor yet have a very low crime rate
- For RRs, crime is the product of three factors: biological differences, inadequate socialisation and the underclass, and rational choice to offend
Biological differences:
Wilson and Herrnstein = crime is caused by a combination of biological and social factors
- Biological differences between individuals make some people innately predisposed to commit crime, due to personality traits such as aggressiveness, risk-taking or low intelligence , which RRs see as biologically determined
The underclass:
Effective socialisation decreases the risk of offending by teaching self-control and correct values. RRs see nuclear family as best agency of socialisation
- Murray = nuclear family is being undermined by welfare state, which is creating welfare dependency and encouraging growth of an underclass who fail to socialise their children properly
- Generous welfare provision has led to growth of benefit-dependent lone parent families, since men no longer take responsibility for supporting their families