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Crime and Deviance - Coggle Diagram
Crime and Deviance
Functionalist theory
Society has 2 key mechanisms-
- Socialisation --> How we learn our shared norms + values
- Social control --> Rewards for conformity and punishment to help ensure individuals behave in a way that society expects
Crime is inevitable and universal
- Every known society has some level of crime
- Crime is normal and integral part of all healthy societies
Durkheim Positive functions of crime
A limited amount of crime is necessary as it fulfils 2 important functions for society
- Boundary maintenance --> It invites people in condemnation of the wrongdoer and reinforces norms + values Manchester bomb attack
- Adaption and change --> Social change acts with an act of defiance
Too much crime is damaging for society
Too little crime is controlling of its members
:red_cross: Claims society needs a certain amount of deviance but does not say how much in order for it to be successful
:red_cross: Claims that crime serves a positive function for society by promoting solidarity but ignores its negative effect on the victims
Davis Prostitution acts as a safety valve to relieve a males frustration
:check: Polsky claims that porn helps to channel sexual desires away
Cohen Crime acts as a warning that institution is not working properly
High levels of truancy = problems within the education system
Erikson Deviance has a positive social function meaning the function of institutions is to maintain a certain level of crime
Institutions reproduce crime
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Neo marxism
Critical criminology
Taylor et al
- The state enforces laws that benefit the capitalist class and criminalises the working class
- Capitalist society is based on exploitation and class conflict
:check: Hall et al is evidence to support the idea that criminal behaviour can have a social wider cnotext
:red_cross: Feminists criticise this approach for being gender blind as they focus too much on male criminality
Hall
- :check: the act itself --> black mugging is given more attention
- :check: the immediate origins of the deviant act --> increased number of riots (Mark Duggan)
- :check: the immediate origins of social reaction --> media outrage at the extent of muggings, linked to racism
Crimes of the powerful
Sutherland
- coined the term white collar to show that crime isn't just a working class phenomenon
- Crime is often committed by persons operating through large and powerful organisations
Tombs claimed that white collar and corporate crime do far more harm that street crimes
- Financial crimes --> Tax evasion
- Crimes against consumers --> Apple fitting phones with faulty batteries
- Crimes against employees --> 16 year old stuck in a lathe in factory
- Crimes against the environment --> Fracking
- State corporate crime --> NHS track & trace app not being run by the NHS
The abuse of trust
Carrabine et al claim that people trust professionals with their finances, health, security and personal info giving them the opportunity to abuse this trust
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Strain theories
'American dream' - society holds opportunities and anyone who makes the effort can get ahead
Society creates "the strain to anomie" achieving success at any price whether that be legitimate or illegitimate
People can either -
- Accept the goals (legitimately)
- Reject the goals (achieve the goals illegitimately or reject the goals and stay legitimate)
- Retreat (reject all)
Merton's strain to anomie and its 5 adaptations -
- Conformity Individuals accept the culturally approved goals and strive to achieve them legitimately
- Innovation Accepting the goals of money success but using new illegitimate ways to achieve them (theft + fraud)
- Ritualism Individuals give up trying to achieve the goals but have internalised legitimate means (school + work)
- Retreatism Rejecting both goals and become drop outs (tramps, alcoholics)
- Rebellion Individuals reject societal goals and seek to replace them with new ones of a particular group/ culture (hippies)
:check: Shows how both normal and deviant behaviours can arise from the same mainstream goal (shows how conformists + innovators are pursuing money success)
:check: Explains the differences in crime rates by different types of crime and social groups (lower class crime rates are higher because they have the least opportunity to obtain money legitimately)
:red_cross: Assumes value consensus in everyone sharing the same goal of money success and ignores that everyone may not be interested in this
:red_cross: Only accounts for utilitarian crimes and doesn't account for non-utilitarian crimes or state crimes (genocide, torture)
Marxist theories
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The State and Law making
Chambliss argues that all laws created benefit the ruling class (the protection of private property)
- Studied crime in Seattle (1978) and concluded that crime is committed throughout the social strata BUT prisons were filled with WC & their petty thefts
- The powerful & wealthy had the money to corrupt police and politicians (they pay laws to benefit themselves)
:check: Reiman found that the more likely a crime is to be committed by higher class people, the less likely it is to be treated as a criminal offence by the criminal justice system
:check: Box claims these laws are to placate the working classes as things such as an employer's failure to maintain safe working conditions isn't included in murder meaning these common laws aren't to protect all members of society but to benefit the higher classes
Box most of the serious offences are committed by uneducated unemployed males and often belong to ethnic minorities
- Street crimes such as robbery and assault may be increasing as the material conditions of these groups deteriorate
- This is conveyed by the media as "the" crime problem and not "a" crime problem meaning we are distracted from larger scale crimes
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