Sociology - Crime and Deviance
Contents
➔Definition of crime
➔Functionalist perspective
➔Left realist perspective
➔Measuring crime
➔Gender and crime
➔Ethnicity and crime
➔Media and crime
➔Globalisation and crime
➔Green crime
➔State crime
➔Example 30 marker
Definition of Crime:
Crime and deviance is:
- Culturally determined
- Arranged marriages are legal in India but not UK
- Situational deviance
- Being naked at home VS being naked in public
- Societal deviance (everyone agrees that it is deviant)
Psychological explanations:
- Maternal deprivation to maladjusted personalities/criminality
- Genetic abnormalities affects personality: extra Y chromosome
creates aggression
- PET scans: psychopaths have brain abnormalities
1
,Biological explanations:
- Lombroso: Italian criminals have abnormal physical features
- Genetic abnormalities: some people are born criminal
Functionalist perspective of Crime
Durkheim: Crime is normal, an integral part of all healthy societies
- Not everyone is equally socialised into shared culture
- Diversity of lifestyles/values - deviance differs as a definition
- Tendency towards anomie as rules are less clear cut
- Weakened collective conscience - higher level of crime
- Free will is higher than historically
Durkheim says crime fulfils two positive functions:
1. Boundary maintenance - punishment reaffirms shared values
a. Ceremony of court cases
b. Bind to collective conscience
2. Adaptation and change
a. Deviance exists even in a society of saints
b. Allows evolving of society - progress
c. All change led by deviance
d. Reflects public attitudes
Other positive functions:
1. Acts as safety valve to relieve stresses
a. Controversial: prostitution helps men relieve sexual
frustrations to preserve monogamy
2. Acts as warning device to show current social control is not
working
AO3 Criticisms
- Does not focus on specific crimes - some crimes benefit no one
but the offender (sexual assault)
2
, - Not everyone is punished equally (class, gender)
- Norms and values are not universal
- Does not explain why some people are more likely to commit
crime than others
- Crime may ostracise groups, not promote solidarity
- Ignores concept of power - that certain groups control the law
(protecting private interests)
Merton: Strain theory
- Durkheim’s Anomie: people commit crime to achieve the
American Dream due to inequality of access
- Type 1: Conform: working hard to reach goal, share goal
- Type 2: Innovate: achieve goals in new ways (may be criminal),
share goals
- Type 3: Rituals: follow rules but given hope in goals
- Type 4: Retreatist: rejected goals and ways to obtain
- Type 5: Rebel: create new goals
- Crime arises from societal structure
- Assumes everyone’s goals are the same
- Does not explain non-utilitarian crimes like vandalism
Hirschi: Control theory
- Breaking laws due to breakdown of societal bonds
1. Attachment to others’ opinions
2. Belief on upholding laws
3. Commitment onto ourselves, what to lose
4. Involvement and integration into society
AO3 Doesn’t explain varieties of crime, such as white collar crimes at
senior positions, but recognises importance of social control
3
Contents
➔Definition of crime
➔Functionalist perspective
➔Left realist perspective
➔Measuring crime
➔Gender and crime
➔Ethnicity and crime
➔Media and crime
➔Globalisation and crime
➔Green crime
➔State crime
➔Example 30 marker
Definition of Crime:
Crime and deviance is:
- Culturally determined
- Arranged marriages are legal in India but not UK
- Situational deviance
- Being naked at home VS being naked in public
- Societal deviance (everyone agrees that it is deviant)
Psychological explanations:
- Maternal deprivation to maladjusted personalities/criminality
- Genetic abnormalities affects personality: extra Y chromosome
creates aggression
- PET scans: psychopaths have brain abnormalities
1
,Biological explanations:
- Lombroso: Italian criminals have abnormal physical features
- Genetic abnormalities: some people are born criminal
Functionalist perspective of Crime
Durkheim: Crime is normal, an integral part of all healthy societies
- Not everyone is equally socialised into shared culture
- Diversity of lifestyles/values - deviance differs as a definition
- Tendency towards anomie as rules are less clear cut
- Weakened collective conscience - higher level of crime
- Free will is higher than historically
Durkheim says crime fulfils two positive functions:
1. Boundary maintenance - punishment reaffirms shared values
a. Ceremony of court cases
b. Bind to collective conscience
2. Adaptation and change
a. Deviance exists even in a society of saints
b. Allows evolving of society - progress
c. All change led by deviance
d. Reflects public attitudes
Other positive functions:
1. Acts as safety valve to relieve stresses
a. Controversial: prostitution helps men relieve sexual
frustrations to preserve monogamy
2. Acts as warning device to show current social control is not
working
AO3 Criticisms
- Does not focus on specific crimes - some crimes benefit no one
but the offender (sexual assault)
2
, - Not everyone is punished equally (class, gender)
- Norms and values are not universal
- Does not explain why some people are more likely to commit
crime than others
- Crime may ostracise groups, not promote solidarity
- Ignores concept of power - that certain groups control the law
(protecting private interests)
Merton: Strain theory
- Durkheim’s Anomie: people commit crime to achieve the
American Dream due to inequality of access
- Type 1: Conform: working hard to reach goal, share goal
- Type 2: Innovate: achieve goals in new ways (may be criminal),
share goals
- Type 3: Rituals: follow rules but given hope in goals
- Type 4: Retreatist: rejected goals and ways to obtain
- Type 5: Rebel: create new goals
- Crime arises from societal structure
- Assumes everyone’s goals are the same
- Does not explain non-utilitarian crimes like vandalism
Hirschi: Control theory
- Breaking laws due to breakdown of societal bonds
1. Attachment to others’ opinions
2. Belief on upholding laws
3. Commitment onto ourselves, what to lose
4. Involvement and integration into society
AO3 Doesn’t explain varieties of crime, such as white collar crimes at
senior positions, but recognises importance of social control
3
