In-depth notes on Class, Power and Crime in terms of Crime and Deviance. It includes the necessary sociologists and recent statistical data to take your grade to the next level. Exams come pre-highlighted to focus on the essential aspects needed in an essay/exam. These notes gave me an A* in Sociol...
Crime and deviance - Topic 3: Class, power and Crime
Explaining class differences in crime-sociologist list
Key:
Heheh-Sociologist Heheh-Important information
Functionalism
- Functionalist perspective → view the law as a reflection of society’s shared
values, and crime as the result of ineffective socialisation in the mainstream
society
- Difficult for modern, complex societies as everyone is different, and may
create their own culture(values/norms)
● Miller
- The lower class has made their own independent subculture
- They have their own values/norms which do not apply to the norms/values
adopted by the mainstream society
- Result → lower class have a higher crime rate
- Subcultural norms(e.g. excitement/toughness) clash against the law
Strain theory
- Strain theory perspective → when legitimate opportunities are blocked,
people will then deviate(e.g. Merton → American dream only applies to
middle-upper classes, and denies w/class of achieving ‘money success’,
through legitimate means)
- Illegitimate means are the only reasonable option, as legitimate means are
denied(e.g. Educational qualifications)
- New uses of deviate means(innovation → e.g. theft) used by w/class
- Explains the higher rates of w/class utilitarian crime, than the m/class
1
, Subcultural theories
● Cohen
- A branch from Merton’s strain theory on w/class restriction on legitimate
means
- Working-class youths are culturally deprived
- Not learning the mainstream culture/values, leaves them at the bottom of the
official status hierarchy
- Failure to achieve → status frustration
- Delinquent subculture is the solution to gain status(from peers via delinquency)
- Cohen → explains the reasons for w/class youth non-utilitarian crime
Labelling theory
- Official statistics do not give a valid picture of w/class crime
- Focus on why w/class people become to be labelled as criminal, not on the
causes of w/class criminality → emphasise stereotypes held by
ASC(Agencies of Social Control) on w/class people(‘typical criminals’)
→ powerful labelling the powerless
- ‘Problem takers’(functionalist, strain and subcultural theorists) → take
official statistics for granted, and want to explain the reasons for w/crime
- ‘Problem makers’(labelling theorists) → official crime statistics are not valid
and want to explain the reasons for the construction/labelling of the
powerful
2
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