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Topic 4: Sociological Theories & Evaluation (Interactionism…

- - - - Strengths
        
        Bad socialisation as a child leads to more risk taking as an adult.
      - Weaknesses
        
        Criticised for ignoring wider structured causes of poverty
        
        Overstates offenders rationality and how much they calculate costs over rewards
        
        Focus on young males and street crime whereas other crimes such as corporate crime costs society more and can be harmful
        
        Overemphasises IQ- Lilly found IQ to make 3% difference in offending
  - - - Weaknesses
        
        Focuses only on Street crimes- neglects white collar crime
        
        Over predicts crime (Jones) surely most of us experience individualism and relative deprivation- Why is there not more crime?
        
        Focus on inner city areas gives an unrepresentative view
        
        Crimes have fallen recently and governments have implemented more inclusion policies so it's not as bad as they suggest.
- - - - Conform and accept the situation
      - Innovate by adopting non-conventional or criminal ways to gain material success
      - Become ritualistic, where sight of goals is lost
      - Become retreatists and drop out of conventional society
      - Become rebels, who set alternative, opposing goals and values rather than those promoted by society.
    - - Strengths
        
        Explains how normal and deviant individuals can arise even whilst sharing the same goals (conformity and innovation)
        
        Explains how individuals adopt to social strain
        
        Explains why working class crime rates may be higher
        
        Explains the reasons for crime and deviance as a result of social strain
      - Weaknesses
        
        Explains only utilitarian crime ignoring reasons for non utilitarian crime
        
        Takes an individualistic approach, ignoring group crime
        
        Too deterministic; not all working class individuals resort to crime
        
        Ignores ruling class power to create and enforce laws to prevent the deviant adaptations (innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion)
- - - - Shows that the law is sometimes enforced in a discriminatory way
      - His drawn attention to importance of labelling and social reaction
      - Shows that certain types of people are singled out for labelling
      - This results from definitions & perceptions of the agents of social control; the typical criminal
    - - Deterministic- if you are labelled deviant you will be deviant
      - Ignores freewill- some choose to be deviant
      - The emphasis in labelling gives the offender a 'victim' status. Realists argue they ignore the real victims of crime.
      - Marxists criticise labelling theory for not showing where these labels originated from- unequal societal structure as they see it