As well as a negative side that can lead to social disruption. Durkheim (1982 originally 1895) believed that a certain amount of crime was necessary for any society. Durkheim argued that a collective conscience which provides the framework for people to distinguish between acceptable behaviour and unacceptable behaviour was evident in society. However, Durkheim found that there were problems in society when these boundaries become unclear; Durkheim stated that the boundaries change over time. Therefore it is functional for crime to keep the people informed on the boundaries of their society.
Labeling theory involving Gangs There is a separation that is prevalent in today’s society between the rich and the poor. People who are born rich are able to commit crimes and avoid the punishment that follows, while the poor must face full punishment of the law and have few if any rights when it comes to formal sanctions of law enforcement. When you think of a gang more than likely, you do not think of a large group of close friends but rather a group of people who are menaces to society who carry guns, sell drugs, and cause havoc and violence in many different types of neighborhood’s. This is why we will investigate in further detail the labels that are placed on gangs using labeling theory and the effects it has on their social interactions. A sociologist by the name of Walter Miller did a study where he interviewed law enforcement personnel and social service professionals who dealt with youth gangs.
The consensus model is the model that most of people in the world live by moral values and beliefs. Knowing that criminal acts will be punished. The conflict model, criminal acts are determined by the group or groups that hold the power. Those groups would be the powers in the community such as political, social, and economic powers. When the group with the most power changes, the acts that are considered to be criminal change.
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.
The Conflict Model is used to determine the content of criminal law. The constant power struggle is between the ones who hold political, economic, and social power within the community and they determine the content of the
Conflicting social values contribute to the gangs and gang violence we see in society. Social strain theory is conflict between goals and means. This conflict has to do with unequal distribution of wealth and power, frustration, and choosing
This helps to define why some individuals with similar strains commit crimes and why others chose legal manners in which they deal with their strains and emotions. General Strain Theory can help to explain any act that is considered deviant by society, and carries with it some sort of punishment, either formally or informally (Agnew, 2006). Failure to achieve
Perspectives of Social Problems and Social Responsibility Within criminology there has been multiple theories suggested to explain the numerous motives behind why crime exists in our world. The two most central arguments surrounding criminal activity is whether the crime is the individuals fault, or if it is the fault of the society that they grew up in. These views are termed social responsibility and social problems, and will be discussed in this paper along with their respected perspectives that withhold why their view on criminology is the paramount reason on why criminals commit crimes. The view of social responsibilities approach to crime termed by Schmalleger essentially states that crime is an individual responsibility, and in terms of the criminal, victim, and justice system we all play a role within the social aspect of criminal behavior. Although he feels that this way of looking at crime is not fair to the victim or the justice system, but that the media over the years has influenced this way of thinking, giving the conception that certain conditions surrounding when, where, or how the crime took place may be the factor in why it happened in the first place.
I think that a lot of criminals engage in criminal behavior because they are dealing with some pretty intense stuff and they use crime as a way to handle the situation they are in. The independent variable involving this theory would be what is causing the strain on the individual, and the dependent variable would be what the individual does to deal with the specific strain. I read a research article called, The Relationship between injustice and crime: A general strain theory approach. This article focused on how people handled different situations depending on specific stresses happening in their life. The article surveyed 160 males and
England and France were amongst the first two countries to design penitentiaries in response to the growing criticism where extreme public violence as the means of a deterrence of a crime. Hence, the basis of a penitentiary was that it was the punishment within the detention itself and the “penitentiary ideal” itself was the extreme isolation of the criminals from society, their daily lives supervised extensively and physical labor was compulsive (Browne, 1995). So based on these penitentiary ideals, hardened criminals need to be separated from others to keep it safer, and give others the chance to reform and put back into society. Penitentiaries were established with a certain goal in mind. There were several reasons behind this.