Essay
AQA A Level Sociology Paper 3 Crime and Deviance Essay Plans
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- AQA
These are the essay plans that I memorised which helped me to achieve an A* grade. There is an essay plan for every topic within crime and deviance.
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FUNCTIONALIST APPROACHES:PEELE 1: DURKHEIM POSITIVE FUNCTIONS
P – Durkheim argues that crime has 2 positive functions
E – Boundary Maintenance (function of punishment to reaffirm social solidarity) and Social
solidarity.
E – Crime brings society together in the condemnation of criminals. Boundary maintenance
= desirable amount of crime in society.
L – Cohen and folk devils
E – Doesn’t always reinforce social solidarity and may cause the opposite effect of isolation
e.g as a result of secondary vicitmisation
PEELE 2: DURKHEIM ADAPTION AND CHANGE
P – Durkheim argues that deviance is necessary for society to adapt and change.
E – Individuals with new ideas and values should not be stifled by the weight of social
control. Initially, appears as deviant.
E – Authorities often persecute religious visionaries, in the long run their views may rise new
culture and morality. Society would stagnate without changes.
L – Davis prostitution acts a safety valve for the release of male’s sexual frustration
E – Marxists criticise this view as in a capitalist society not everyone is punished equally.
Views of those who are in opposition to capitalists may be shut down.
PEELE 3: MERTON STRAIN THEORY
P – Merton says deviance is the result of strain between goals a culture encourages and the
opportunities to achieve the goals legitimately.
E – ‘American Dream’ and lack of opportunity to achieve.
E – Strain between cultural goal of material wealth and the lack of legitimate opportunities
to achieve it produces frustration. There are 5 adaptions to strain: conformity (accept goals
and means – middle-class), rebellion (reject goals and means – hippies) , retreatism (reject
goals and means – psychotics, vagrants), innovation (accept goals, new means – theft, fraud)
and ritualism (give up on goals, internalised means – lower m/c).
L–
E – Only accounts for utilitarian crime, and not crimes of violence, vandalism etc; He also
assumes that everyone will fit into one adaptation of strain.
,PEELE 4: COHEN DEVIANT SUBCULTURES
P – Cohen focuses on understanding deviance among working-class boys. They suffer
anomie in middle-class-dominated school system.
E – Boys suffer status frustration and form/join a delinquent subculture.
E – Alternative status hierarchy – inverted mainstream values.
L–
E – Assumes the boys share the same goals as the middle class.
PEELE 5 : CLOWARD AND OHLIN - 3 TYPES OF DEVIANT SUBCULTURE
P – Cloward and Ohlin say that different subcultures respond to status frustration differently
depending on their location.
E – Criminal subcultures, Conflict and Retreatist.
E - Criminal = areas with a stable gang culture, alternative status hierarchy, adult criminals.
Conflict = high population, loosely organised gangs, non-utilitarian crimes. Retreatist =
‘double failures’, school dropouts and drug takers.
L–
E – South (2014) – many drug dealers also take them. Not everyone can fit into one strand
of subculture.
, MARXIST APPROACH
PEELE 1: RATIONAL RESPONSE
P – Crime is inevitable as Capitalist society is criminogenic, it's nature causes crime.
E – David Gordon says crime is a rational response to the capitalist system that is found in all
classes.
E – Capitalism breeds crime by exploiting the working-class. Poverty = crime for survival.
Capitalist advertising = crime. Alienation = crime. / Capitalism encourages greed and self-
interest. Encourages capitalists to commit white-collar crimes.
L–
E – Not all Capitalist societies have high crime rates e.g homocide rate in Japan and
Switzerland is 1/5 of that in the US.
PEELE 2 : STATE AND LAW-MAKING
P – Chambliss says The law is made by the elite and supports their interests such as
protecting their property.
E - Trespass, theft, copyright, main purpose of the law is to prevent others from possessing
private goods.
E - Working class crime is more likely to be punished and criminals jailed due to selective
law enforcement.
E – Laws are created on a consensus agreement.
PEELE 3: CLASS CRIME
P – Snider argues that all classes commit crime
E – Crimes of the elite are more harmful and they are more likely to get away with them
(Hall et al – scapegoats)
E – Bernie Madoff
E – Not pragmatic, doesn’t offer a solution to crime
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