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.
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. Officers' decisions were also influenced by the suspect's gender, class, and ethnicity, as well as by time and place. Aaron Cicourel found that officers' typifications led them to concentrate on certain 'types'. This resulted in law enforcement showing a class bias, in that working class areas and people fitted the police typifications most closely. In turn, this led police to patrol working class areas more intensively, resulting in more arrests and confirming their stereotypes.
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.
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.
Whereas on the other hand the Conflict Model of the contemporary criminal justice system refers to a model of crime where the criminal justice system is seen to be used by the ruling class to control the lower class. It argues that the organizations of the criminal justice system should work competitively to produce justice instead of cooperatively. It argues things like worries over fame promotion and other things like wages cause the criminal justice system to conflict its self. One example from within the system is between Police and prison officials. Police desire to put criminals into prison whereas prison officials are concerned about overcrowding facilities may desire to release criminals from prison 2.
Rather than focusing on social situations, the criminal and deviant act, the interactionists focused on the reaction to the act and its effects on the deviant individual. One main possible criticisms of interactionist theory is that to some extent ignores and privatisation and its effect on crime. Can negative labelling be the only reason that crime is predominantly more in working class area than in middle class ones? The “new criminology” was a radical development of traditional Marxist theory (Young, Walton and Taylor) they attempted to combine the process of labelling with Marxist explanations of social inequality to explain crime. A criticism of both the original interactionists and the new criminology came from the “New Left Realists”
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.
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
This theory is also sociological in its emphasis on the role of social forces in creating deviance. Deviant behavior can consist of different definitions. Some believe that deviance is the violation of any social norm and other feel that you can be deviant without breaking any rules or behavior that does not conform to a social norm which may be disapproved. Some people feel that getting away with something and not being punished will be an excuse for deviants to continue to commit a crime. In other words, I think that people feel that if they get away with it once they can get away with it again.
Criminological Theories of Deviance Kristie Barela American Intercontinental University Criminological Theories of Deviance What are criminological theories? It is understood that criminology is the study of crime, but criminological theories provide us with an explanation of criminal behavior. These theories help one to understand why people commit crime. Social control theory, strain theory, differential association theory, and neutralization theory are just a few examples of sociological theories of crime that will be examined within this paper. Along with a brief description of the criminological theories, an attempt to show how they differ from one another and discussion of one strength and one weakness unique to each theory will be made.