Theories of Crime and Deviance
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ShortCutstv www.shortcutstv.com Crime and Deviance Theories of Crime and Deviance Chris Livesey ShortCutstv www.shortcutstv.com Contents 1. Types of Deviance 2 2. Functionalism 5 3. Ecological 7 4. Critical 10 5. References 16 Crime and Deviance 1. Explanations Different theories of crime, deviance, Ex-Liberal social order and social control. Democrat party leader Charles Kennedy shows his support for the ban on smoking in The concept of deviance refers public places by Introduction to ‘rule-breaking’ behaviour being caught smoking on a train (actions that violate (or ‘deviate in 2007. He was from’) a social norm or rule) “spoken to” by and while this relatively simple statement hides a police after he number of sociological questions we will, at some explained that he thought it was legal point, need to confront and answer (questions about if he “blew the who makes rules, how rules are applied and why smoke out of the people break rules) for the moment we can begin by window” (and they wonder why young noting two basic types of rule: people don’t bother voting...) 1. Formal norms include laws and organisational rules and they represent official standards that apply in a given situation. Punishment (or a ‘negative sanction’ if you prefer) for deviance is clearly specified as part of that in terms of the informal norms operating within a the rule. For example, the punishment for murder in group such behaviour may not be considered deviant. our society is a prison sentence of 25 years - a significant point because it illustrates the idea that This example illustrates a couple of important ideas where formal norms are concerned someone doesn’t about deviance in terms of what Plummer (1979) have to break the law in order to understand the considers to be the distinction between: punishment involved. Societal deviance, where there’s a broad consensus Organisational rules – while they have the same in a society that behaviour is morally wrong, illegal, general characteristics as laws because they derive and so forth, and from formal norms – differ in the sense that they apply to a particular group or organisation, rather than to a Situational deviance, where a group defines its society as a whole. For example, in an organisation behaviour as non-deviant, even though such like McDonalds there is a normative behaviour is considered societally deviant. expectation that employees will wear a certain type of uniform In everyday use, ‘deviance’ has certain while working in one of their pejorative (negative) overtones, but restaurants. This rule doesn’t sociologically we can think about different apply to customers, nor does it types of deviance as involving ideas such apply to an employee outside as: their workplace. ‘Good’ (admired) behaviour, such as 2. Informal norms vary from heroism (or altruistic behaviour – group to group and there putting the needs of others before your are no formal punishments own) for deviation. Smoking with a group of friends, for ‘Odd’ behaviour, such as eccentricity example, may be – the person who shares their house considered deviant or non- with 50 cats, for example deviant depending on their particular attitudes towards ‘Bad’ behaviour, examples of which such behaviour. Even if range from a misbehaving child to this is in a public place – a murder. practice that is illegal – it wouldn’t change the fact These general behavioural categories give us a flavour of the complexity of McDonald’s staff - modelling their new uniforms created by deviance, but they’re not that useful in well-known fashion designer terms of thinking about deviance ‘in the Bruce Oldfield - get ready to party real world’, mainly because of the (or flog you a Big Mac with Xtra Cheese relationship they presuppose between: - it’s one or the other but I can’t quite make up my mind which...) 2 © www.onlineclassroom.tv Crime and Deviance 1. Explanations Interpretation and classification: To classify behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ involves taking a moral • Biology - a genetic predisposition to standpoint – to judge, in other words, different forms of deviance. behaviour before classifying them. This means deviance has two important characteristics: • Psychology - the deviant as someone who is "not normal". 1. Subjectivity: If decisions about deviance are based on judgements about behavioural norms, all • Sociology - explaining deviance in terms of behavioural classifications are based on subjective social factors such as poverty or faulty understandings and interpretations – an idea that socialisation. raises questions about whether any behaviour can be ‘inherently deviant” (deviant in all societies and at all times). It also raises questions about ‘who decides’ Deviance, in this whether behaviour is classified as deviant or non- interpretation, is a quality deviant – something that involves: "of the individual" in the sense that something 2. Power: This relates not only to how deviance is they possess (such as defined by social groups, but also to how it’s being raised in poverty) explained. We can, for example, explain deviance in is the key determining terms of ideas such as the qualities possessed by the factor in explaining why deviant, the social processes by which rules are people deviate. If this is created (as Becker, 1963, puts it: ‘Social groups the case, therefore, in create deviance by making the rules whose infraction order to construct constitutes deviance’), or a combination of the two. theories about why people These observations lead to some further dimensions to deviate it is the concept of deviance that we need to note: necessary to examine the Absolute conceptions have two main various Absolute dimensions. causes (genetic, First, the idea that some forms of behaviour are psychological proscribed (considered deviant) and negatively and / or sanctioned in all known societies at all times. social) that propel people Second, particular types of individual are inherently into (genetically, socially or psychologically) predisposed to deviance, deviance – they can’t help breaking social rules. The key idea here is that the causes of deviance (whether Are you looking at me? it be murder, theft or whatever) can be located "within" the individual in terms of something like their: 3 © www.onlineclassroom.tv Crime and Deviance 1. Explanations also extends to individuals and groups who have Relative Relative concepts also have two certain ascribed forms of deviance; that is, they are dimensions. given deviant status on the basis of certain characteristics. Examples in our Firstly the idea that no behaviour has always been society might include – at different considered deviant in all societies (a cross-cultural times – homosexuals, the dimension) and at all times (a historical dimension). mentally ill and the Secondly, that deviance, according to Becker (1963), physically disabled. is not a quality of what someone does but rather a quality of how someone reacts to what someone does; Finally, we can note the relative dimension here is that the same behaviour that a significant can, for example, be seen as deviant in some societies dimension of deviance but not in others. Attitudes to drinking alcohol differ involves the distinction from culture to culture (illegal in a Muslim culture such between behaviour as Saudi Arabia, legal, in Britain). In addition, thinking which is criminal and about a concept like "killing someone" it's apparent behaviour that, while that at different times and in different places there are deviant, is not criminal. different interpretations of•this behaviour. Under some This distinction is circumstances the behaviour may be classified as important for a couple murder, whereas in other circumstances - such as of reasons, the first of soldiers on a battlefield – killing the enemy is not only which relates to not classified as murder it’s something soldiers are sociological actively trained and encouraged to do. preoccupations with the general idea of rule- The main point to note here, therefore, is that relative breaking behaviour; sociologists are just as interested concepts of deviance see it as something that is highly in why people break informal, non-criminal, rules as to sensitive to social contexts and locations. Roberts why they break formal, criminal, rules. In this respect (2003), for example, argues that ‘swinging’ (‘an “deviance” is a much broader social category than increasingly popular leisure choice for married and “crime” in the sense that it covers a wider range of courting couples’) fits this particular category – an idea behaviours – some criminal, some not – that have a that suggests deviance can be a matter of personal common root (rule-breaking). choice (if I don’t want to ‘swing’ then I don’t go to swinger parties). Secondly, although “criminal deviance” is clearly an important area of study (much of the remainder of this Leading on from chapter, for example, will focus on criminal deviance Culpable and Non-culpable the idea of and how it can be theorised and explained) it needs to “choice”, deviant be remembered that crime is, at root, merely a subset behaviour carried out with an awareness of its deviant of deviance – an idea that can be simply and nature is called: succinctly summarised by the observation that while "all crime is, by definition, deviant behaviour, not all Culpable deviance; that is, behaviour for forms of deviance are criminal", although, having duly which the offender can be held noted this idea it’s possible to identify forms of personally accountable because they “criminal behaviour” in our society that are not did something, such as break the law, necessarily always seen as being particularly deviant. in the knowledge that such Examples here might include: behaviour is deviant (although we can stretch the idea of culpability Victimless crimes – so-called because there is either to include the notion that the no identifiable “victim” of the criminal behaviour (a individual could be reasonably motorist caught breaking the speed limit, for example, expected to know that what may have broken the law but no-one has actually been they were doing was deviant).