Assess Functionalist Approaches to the Study of Crime and Deviance Functionalists such as Emile Durkheim, Robert Merton and Albert Cohen all attempt to explain the nature and extent of crime in today’s society. In essence, Functionalists argue that society is based on value consensus and social solidarity which is sustained via socialisation and social control mechanisms within society. Emile Durkheim states that whilst crime is obviously a social negative with the ultimate power to destabilise society, he stands by the claim that crime is inevitable, universal, and integral to a healthy society and even having positive benefits. He claims that crime occurs in society due to two fundamental reasons; firstly, not everyone is effectively socialised to the same norms and values which leads to people being prone to deviation and secondly, due to the diverse lifestyle and subcultures in contemporary society, subcultures act out different norms and values and what members of that subculture regard as normal, mainstream culture may deem it as deviancy. The Functionalist approach to the study of crime states that crime has two positive functions for society.
Bentham states that; “pleasures then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends which the legislator has in view,” (Bentham, pg 106), meaning that crime and action are determined by the end goal of whether it brings pleasure or pain to the individual. This is important to the study of criminal justice as rational because people are
they believe in shared values and consensus in society and talk about the march of progress which is that everything is getting better. The founding father of sociology, Durkheim who is a functionalist tries to explain the causes and extent of deviance in society as well as Merton who puts forward his strain theory. Durkheim believed that crime is necessary, inevitable and functional for society so much that without it society wouldn’t function without a certain amount of crime. However, he does recognise that too much crime is bad for society and causes it to be dysfunctional and break down. He therefore says the amount of crime is the important factor.
I do believe that the danger of punishment commands the felony estimate. I agree that human behaviors are controllable as well as predictable. Also, I agree that the government has the right to all formations impose communal control on their citizens to a definite degree. They monitor as well as balance activity formally as well as conversationally. In larger assemblies, I believe the best perceived emerges of social control are the laws, the courts, along with the police.
Whereas, Marxists believe that capitalism creates potential criminals. Functionalists believe that all crimes are functional and has both positive and negative effects to society. Durkheim, French sociologist, hold beliefs that “too much crime or deviance constitutes to a threat, too little is unhealthy”. The three main positives are that it reaffirms boundaries by the public degradation ceremonies such as criminal trails to remind everyone of social norms and to reinforce society’s toleration to deviance. Another positive is that crimes change values, when someone is prosecuted it results in public outcry which triggers sympathy, this changes values in society.
When the group with the most power changes, the acts that are considered to be criminal change. Society is affected by the concept of the “choice theory” because it needs to figure out what punishment fits the crime to keep other criminals from committing the same crimes. Society need to make this laws to have control over law and order within their societies. It allows them away to keep law abiding citizens saver in their own
The criminal justice system ensures that everyone that commits a crime is punished as a result of the crime they commit. The prison system (incapacitation) was initially developed to keep offenders off the streets thus preventing them from committing crimes in the community resulting in the reduction of crime rates. Capital punishment is also part of the prison system were it is carried out but, in society not everyone feels that criminals should receive the death penalty for a murder they committed. People also believe that capital punishment does not in any way deter future murders committed by other criminals. According to the article “The Death Penalty Does Not Deter Murder,” Hentoff says, “statistics [show] that the murder rate in states with the death penalty is higher than the murder rate in states without capital punishment.” (2004) On the other hand in the article “The Death Penalty Deters Murder,” the author says, “by removing a
‘Asses the usefulness of functionalist approaches to our sociological understanding of crime and deviance’ (21 Marks) This essay will look at how functionalist have made it clearer and easier for us to understand the reasons crime and deviance is needed for society and will also look at different theories and their usefulness. Durkheim looks at how crime and deviance is inevitable and needed in society as it performs two important positive functions: boundary maintenance and adaptation and change, he says that boundary maintenance is when society reacts to crime and there is social cohesion, and this leads to society condemning the criminal and the punishment given by the social agencies is a way of reaffirming societies shared rules and reinforce social solidarity. The media portrays the court case and the punishment; this acts a way of informing members of society and discourages others from rule breaking. Adaptation and change for Durkheim is when an individual has an idea or belief which is seen to be deviant by rest of the members of society, they fight and challenge the existing norms and values, in time there values may give way to a new culture and morality and not seen as deviant anymore such as cohabiting couples would be seen as deviant due to the couples not been married but in current times it is not deviant as it is more popular in society. These changes in values and in society allow society to progress and evolve.
From Item A, it is clear that labelling theory explains how actions become labelled as criminal or deviant in society. Rather than simply taking the definition of crime for granted, labelling theorists are interested in how and why certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place. They argue that no act is inherently criminal or deviant in itself, in all situations and at all times. Instead, it only comes to be so when others label it as such. Piliavin and Briar found that police decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical cues, from which they made judgements about the youth's character.
The first explorations of deviance and crime was done by Durkheim who identified two different sides of crime for the functioning of society: positive and negative. According to Durkheim, crime was necessary for society. He argued that the basis of society was a set of shared values that guide our actions, which he named the collective conscience. The collective conscience provides boundarie which distinguishes between actions that are acceptable and those that are not. The problem for any society is that these boundaries are unclear and change over time.