Deviance, on the other hand, is behaviour which moves away from conventional norms and values such as burping and farting in public. If what is considered to be crime and deviance changes, it can’t be inherently wrong but must be culturally specific. Emile Durkheim speaks of crime as being functional to society. According to item A, ‘the publicity given to crime highlights the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.' Durkheim expands on this saying we are aware of these boundaries following social reactions to deviance.
Labelling theory was developed by Howard Becker, and is primarily concerned with societal reaction to crime; thus straying away from the deviant act and instead looking more closely at how and why certain people become defined as deviant. It suggests deviance is not an inherent act, but instead the result of people negatively labelling those that deviate from the norm. Edwin Lemert put forward a typology of deviance, extremely relevant in terms of highlighting labelling theory. He suggested Primary Deviance was a simple deviant act, not as a result of a label, but instead may result in a label. And Secondary Deviance, he suggested, was the idea criminality is a response to being labelled as deviant.
Also, it is important in this process to prove a person guilty by legally-found facts and evidence. However the crime control model does not protect a suspected offender’s rights as much. The crime control model is based more on helping the victim, even if defendant’s rights are compromised. This model attempts to repress crime and give expansive power to police. It looks to find guilt rather than prove innocence.
Running Head: UNDERSTAND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR Criminologist Attempt to Understand Criminal Behavior by Constructing Theories of Crime In an attempt to curve crime rates and to fully understand the criminal mind; criminologist must construct theories that will enable us to implement effective policies to negate criminal behavior. I. Introduction A. Definition of Criminology B. Deviance vs. Crime C. Purpose of Theories II. Social Process Theories A.
c) Assess the view that crime is functional, inevitable and normal. Emil Durkheim a functionalist sociologist studied crime and deviance. He concluded that crime and deviance are necessary to understand how society functions. Durkheim saw both a functional inevitable side of crime that has positive effects on society. As well as a negative side that can lead to social disruption.
Due process protections under the Constitution force the state to fulfill its burden of proving its case against the accused. I personally prefer the due process model rather than the crime control model, The crime control model assumes guilt by fact. The person is guilty unless proven innocent. This is one of the downfalls of the Crime Control Model. The concern with this model is a quick and speedy conviction despite the innocence of the alleged criminal.
| Criminal Justice as Rational: | Understanding Search and Seizure Procedural Law | | | | The focus of this paper is on the criminal justice as rational legal perspective and how it relates to my chosen topic of study, search and seizure procedural law. First I will give a brief background of this perspective using the pain and pleasure hypothesis as suggested by Jeremy Bentham, as well as the social contract theory relating to the rational legal perspective. I will then attempt to define and discuss the basic components of the rational legal orientation; democracy, the constitution and the rule of law. Using these three basic components of the rational legal perspective I will then be able to draw conclusions analyzing search and seizure procedural law and its relation to the rational legal orientation. Criminal justice as rational is a perspective of the criminal justice system that adopts the utilitarian belief that human beings are reasonable and rational creatures.
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.
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.
( Exodus 21 23-5,Newburn 2007,p22).The approach is based on the fact that punishment such as Imprisonment had to be in proportion to the crime and no more than that. Cesare Beccaria a classical criminal theorist and author “On crimes and Punishment” who like all classical theorists supported the Rational Choice Theory that all individuals have freewill “At the heart of the classical school of criminological thought is the assumption that the criminal is someone exercising free will and rationality” (Newburn, 2007 pg 115.) Due to this that meant not only should the punishment be painful or costly it should mainly outweigh the pleasure of when the crime was initially committed. Like Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham’s writings where