Durkheim
- Durkheim sees crime as inevitable and universal, in every society some individuals are inadequately socialised and prone to deviate.
- Due to the increased diversity and specialised labour, the shared rules of behaviour become less clear (anomie)
Functions of crime
- Boundary maintenance
- Crime produces a reaction from society, uniting its members against the wrongdoer and reinforcing their commitment to the value consensus.
- This is the function of punishment, to reaffirm shared rules and reinforce solidarity e.g. courtroom rituals publicly stigmatise offenders reminding everyone of the boundary between right and wrong.
- Adaptation and change
- For Durkheim all change starts as deviance, for new ideas to form, people must challenge existing norms and this at first will appear to be deviance.
- Other functionalists identify further positive functions of deviance
- Safety value – Davis argues that prostitution act to release men’s sexual frustrations without threatening the nuclear family
- Warning light – K Cohen argues that deviance indicates an institution is malfunctioning e.g. truancy means education is failing.
Merton’s strain theory
- Merton argues that people deviate because they cannot achieve socially.
- He combines both structural and cultural factors
American Dream
- Merton used the concept of the American Dream which emphasises money success through meritocracy but in reality the meritocracy is limited by poverty etc.
- The resulting strain leads to those with the goal of money success but without the means of which to achieve the money success so they turn to illegitimate means of succeedinge. theft.
Deviant adaptations to strain
- Conformity – accept the goals and the legitimate means of achieving them.
- Innovation – accept the goals but go about the illegitimately
- Ritualism – Individuals give up on the goal but internalised legitimate means and follow the rules for their own sake.
- Retreatism – rejection of both goals and means, they drop out of society
- Rebellion – replace existing goals and means with new ones with the aim of bringing about social change.
Strengths of Merton’s approach
- He shows how both normal and deviant behaviour can arise from the same mainstream goals, conformists and innovators both pursue the same goal, but by different means.
He explains the patterns shown in official statistics
- Most crime is property crime, because American society values material wealth so highly.
- Working-class crime rates are higher, because they have least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimacy.