CRIME AND DEVIENCE

 

 Many theories, best way to organise is to simplify groupings under Durkheimian, Marxist and Interactionalist.

DURKHIEMIAN THEORIES

  •  Deviance is breaking consensual rules. Popular explanations are functionalism and some sub-culture theories. 
  • They use a positivist approach. Methods can be biographical, looking at a deviant's past and comparing it to a 'normal' person.
  • Crime statistics are useful, used in comparative studies.

 Evaluation

 Marxists and other conflict theories deny consensual values, saying they are only accepted by the falsely conscious.

MARXIST THEORIES

 The main question is who makes the rules and how do they serve the ruling class? Marxists often study 'crimes of the powerful', eg. employers' dangerous working conditions.

 Evaluation

  •  Economic explanation of crime overemphasised.
  • Studies ignore victims and glorify crime.
  •  Genuinely consensual norms are avoided, their possibility.

INTERACTIONALIST THEORIES

 Deviance is only a label. Agents of control attach negative stereotypes. Labeling may change behaviour. The main question is why are some people more likely to be labelled? Participant observation tries to see interactions with authorities form offenders point. Crime stats. are not important as they are a social construct that tell us more about the justice system and the police. Interactionists often study non-criminal forms of deviance, such as suicide, stuttering and mental illness.

 Evaluation

  •  No attempt to explain why some people commit crimes.
  •  Marxists say they don't see the underlying economic reasons.

THE 'NEW' THEORIES OF DEVIENCE

 Only new in that they derive from the three major approaches of above.

 The New Criminology

 Combined interactionist and Marxist views. Taylor, Walton and Young felt the labelling theories they had previously been into hadn't covered wider issues of power and class inequality.

 New Left Realism

  •  Young and Lea didn't like the new criminology as it discounted the victim and dismissed crime as a real problem. They said that crime has three main causes:
  •   Marginalisation, unemployed, ethnic etc. are excluded.
  •   Relative deprivation, feeling of being denied rewards.
  •   Criminal subcultures, are adaptations to economic conditions, usually promoting indicidualism, aggression and masculinity.

 Evaluation

  •  It's old fashioned to focus on working class street crime rather than white collar.
  •  It's been used to support racism
  •  It overemphasised victims, better explanations are found looking form offenders viewpoint.
  • These new theories can be applied to questions which link crime with race, class and gender.

 

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