Functionalist and Strain Theory

Ever wondered why crime exists in every society? Functionalists reckon it's actually inevitable and can even be helpful for keeping society together.

Durkheim argued that sharing culture creates social solidarity through socialisation and social control. But modern societies face anomie - basically a breakdown of social rules when life gets too complex and diverse. Think about how different your Instagram feed is from your gran's Facebook - we're all living in completely different worlds now.

Merton's strain theory explains why people turn to crime when they can't achieve society's goals (like wealth and success) through legitimate means. He identified five responses to this strain: conformity (playing by the rules), innovation (crime to get rich), ritualism (going through the motions), retreatism (dropping out entirely), and rebellion (trying to change the system).

Key Point: Crime isn't just about individual choices - it's about how society's structure creates pressure and opportunities.

Crime actually serves positive functions according to functionalists. It maintains boundaries between right and wrong, and can even signal that society needs to change. Think about how protests (technically illegal) helped win votes for women or legalise same-sex marriage.

Cohen's status frustration theory focuses on working-class lads who feel frozen out of middle-class success. Unable to achieve status through education, they create their own deviant subcultures where they can gain respect through different means.

Interactionism and Labelling Theory

What if crime isn't about the act itself, but about who gets caught and labelled? Interactionists see crime as a social construction created through everyday interactions.

Becker famously argued that "social groups create deviance by creating the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance." It's not what you do, but whether you get labelled for it that matters. Police are more likely to arrest certain types of people based on their appearance, background, and where they're hanging about.

Cicourel found that police have typifications - basically stereotypes about what criminals look like. Middle-class parents can often talk their kids out of trouble, whilst working-class families struggle to do the same. It's like having different rule books for different social groups.

Lemert distinguished between primary deviance $minor rule-breaking that everyone does, like fare dodging$ and secondary deviance (when you start living up to your criminal label). Once you're labelled as a "thief" or "troublemaker," that becomes your master status - the main thing people see about you.

Reality Check: Getting labelled doesn't automatically make someone a career criminal - people still have choices.

The deviance amplification spiral shows how trying to control crime can actually create more of it. Young's study of marijuana users in Notting Hill revealed how police crackdowns pushed users underground, making drug use more central to their identity and lifestyle.

Marxist Approaches to Crime

Think capitalism is fair? Marxists reckon the whole system is rigged to protect the wealthy whilst criminalising the poor.

For traditional Marxists, capitalism is criminogenic - it literally causes crime by its very nature. Poverty forces people into survival crime, whilst consumer culture creates desires that can't be legally satisfied. Meanwhile, the competitive business world encourages white-collar crime like tax evasion and fraud.

The law isn't neutral - it's designed to protect private property and capitalist interests. Chambliss showed how colonial laws forced people to work for British plantation owners by making them pay taxes in cash they could only earn through employment.

Selective enforcement means working-class crimes get heavily policed whilst corporate crimes often go unpunished. When did you last see a CEO doing time for environmental damage or worker safety violations?

Think About It: The 2008 financial crisis caused massive harm, but how many bankers went to prison compared to benefit fraudsters?

Neo-Marxists like Taylor argue that crime can be a form of political resistance against capitalism. They want a fully social theory that considers both structural inequalities and individual meanings behind criminal acts.

Corporate crime includes financial fraud, crimes against consumers $like mis-selling$, employee exploitation, and environmental destruction. These crimes often cause more harm than street crime but receive less attention and punishment.

Realist Theories

Tired of theories that seem to excuse crime? Realists want practical solutions to real problems affecting ordinary people.

Right realists blame crime on poor socialisation, especially in single-parent families lacking father figures. They argue some people are naturally more aggressive due to biological differences, whilst others make rational choices to commit crime when the benefits outweigh the risks.

Their solution? Zero tolerance policing that cracks down on minor disorders like graffiti and fare dodging. The idea is that fixing "broken windows" prevents more serious crime from taking hold. New York's crime drop in the 1990s is often cited as proof this works.

Left realists focus on relative deprivation - feeling unfairly deprived compared to others. Media exposure makes everyone aware of wealth inequality, creating resentment that can lead to crime. Marginalised groups like unemployed youth have no legitimate ways to express their frustration.

Local Knowledge: Left realists use victim surveys to understand how crime really affects working-class communities.

Subcultures emerge as collective solutions to shared problems of deprivation. Different groups develop different responses - some positive, others criminal. The key is addressing both immediate policing issues and deeper structural causes like poverty and inequality.

Left realists influenced New Labour's approach of being "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - combining better policing with tackling social problems.

Gender, Crime and Justice

Why do men commit about 80% of crimes? Gender patterns in crime reveal fascinating insights about masculinity, power, and social control.

The chivalry thesis suggests women get treated more leniently by male-dominated criminal justice systems. Evidence shows women are more likely to receive cautions rather than prosecutions, and lighter sentences when they do go to court.

But feminists argue the opposite - that women face bias when they deviate from gender norms. Girls get punished for sexual behaviour that boys get away with, and female defendants are judged as wives and mothers rather than just on their crimes.

Heidensohn's patriarchal control theory explains why women commit fewer crimes through controls at home (domestic responsibilities), in public (fear of male violence), and at work (glass ceiling limiting opportunities). Women face more social control throughout their lives.

Messerschmidt sees crime as a way some men "accomplish masculinity" when other routes are blocked. White middle-class youths might engage in drinking and vandalism outside school whilst conforming inside. Working-class lads might develop oppositional attitudes, whilst some young black men join gangs to express masculine identity.

Modern Twist: Winlow's study of bouncers shows how de-industrialisation created new criminal opportunities for men to express masculinity through violence in the night-time economy.

Carlen's study found working-class women are kept in line by the class deal (legitimate work providing decent living standards) and the gender deal (family life providing emotional rewards). When these deals fail to deliver, crime becomes more likely.

Ethnicity and Crime

Black people make up 2.8% of the population but 11% of prisoners. Is this evidence of higher offending or institutional racism?

Stop and search figures show massive disparities - black people are 9 times more likely to be stopped than white people. This could reflect different offending patterns, but high discretion stops (without specific intelligence) suggest discrimination plays a role.

The MacPherson Report after Stephen Lawrence's murder found the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist. Canteen culture among officers includes racial stereotyping that affects policing decisions. However, victim surveys and self-report studies challenge simple assumptions about ethnic differences in offending.

Left realists like Lea and Young argue some ethnic minorities do have higher crime rates due to relative deprivation, marginalisation, and social exclusion. The puzzle is why Asians have lower rates than both black and white groups if discrimination alone explains everything.

Neo-Marxists see ethnic minority crime as political resistance against racism and economic exclusion. Hall et al analysed the 1970s moral panic over "mugging" as scapegoating black youth during economic crisis.

Intersectionality: Young, male, unemployed people from all ethnic groups face higher victimisation risks - but ethnic minorities experience additional racist victimisation.

Links to education show black and mixed-heritage pupils have the highest exclusion rates. With 85% of prisoners having been excluded from school, this creates a school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects certain ethnic groups.

Media and Crime

Your Netflix queue is probably packed with crime shows - but how does media coverage shape our understanding of crime and deviance?

Media over-represents violent and sexual crimes whilst ignoring boring property offences that make up most real crime. Ditton and Duffy found 46% of media reports covered violent crime, but official stats show it's only 3% of recorded crime. This creates dramatic fallacy - making crime seem more exciting than reality.

News values determine what gets coverage: immediacy, drama, personalisation, high-status people, simplification, novelty, risk, and visible violence. Crime ticks these boxes perfectly, which is why it dominates headlines.

Fictional representations follow the "law of opposites" - showing the reverse of official statistics. Property crime gets ignored whilst murders become entertainment. Real killings usually involve domestic disputes or pub fights, but TV murders are calculated schemes by criminal masterminds.

Social Media Impact: Modern crime coverage includes "reality" shows featuring younger, working-class offenders, plus viral videos that can trigger moral panics instantly.

Moral panics occur when media creates exaggerated fear about particular groups. Cohen's study of mods and rockers showed how minor beach scuffles got blown up into national hysteria about youth culture threatening social order.

The deviance amplification spiral means media attention can actually create more of the problem it's reporting. Sensational coverage leads to calls for crackdowns, which marginalise groups further and can push them towards more deviant behaviour.

Cyber-crime represents new opportunities for both crime (hacking, identity theft, online harassment) and moral panics about technology corrupting young people.

Global Crime and Environmental Issues

Crime has gone global - from cyber-attacks crossing continents instantly to toxic waste dumped in poor countries by rich corporations.

Globalisation creates new criminal opportunities through supply and demand. Poor countries supply drugs, people for trafficking, and cheap labour, whilst rich Western countries provide the demand and consumption. Castells estimates the global criminal economy is worth over £1 trillion annually.

Rothe and Friedrichs focus on crimes of globalisation by international bodies like the World Bank. Their "structural adjustment programmes" force poor countries to cut public spending and privatise services, creating conditions for mass unemployment and crime.

Environmental crime shows how risk has become global. Beck's risk society thesis argues we've created "manufactured risks" like climate change that threaten everyone. The 2010 Russian heatwave destroyed crops, pushing up global food prices and causing bread riots in Mozambique.

Green criminology takes two approaches. Traditional criminology only considers environmental crimes when laws are broken. White's green criminology focuses on environmental harm regardless of legality, distinguishing between anthropocentric views (humans can exploit nature) and ecocentric views (humans and environment are interdependent).

Climate Reality: Environmental crimes often involve state-corporate collaboration - governments failing to regulate business environmental destruction.

Primary green crimes directly destroy Earth's resources: air pollution, deforestation, species extinction, and water contamination. Secondary green crimes emerge from flouting environmental regulations: organised crime dumping toxic waste, state violence against environmental protesters, and environmental discrimination affecting the poorest communities most.

State Crime

The most serious crimes are often committed by states themselves - governments have killed an estimated 262 million people during the 20th century.

State crime is uniquely dangerous because states have enormous power to cause harm and can avoid defining their own actions as criminal. Green and Ward define it as illegal or deviant activities by state agencies to further government policies.

Defining state crime is tricky. Domestic law lets states make their own rules. International law provides agreed standards but reflects power relationships. Human rights approaches offer universal principles but remain contested. Zemiology studies all state harms whether legal or not.

Crimes of obedience occur when normal moral rules get replaced by duty to authority. Kelman and Hamilton identify three processes: authorisation (orders from above), routinisation (making atrocities routine work), and dehumanisation $portraying victims as sub-human$.

Bauman's analysis of the Holocaust shows how modern society's features - bureaucracy, division of labour, instrumental rationality, and technology - made systematic genocide possible. It wasn't a breakdown of civilisation but its logical extension.

Denial Mechanisms: Modern states rarely admit wrongdoing - they follow a spiral from "it didn't happen" to "it was justified" whilst using techniques like victim-blaming.

Rwanda's genocide in 1994 shows how colonial legacy, ethnic manipulation, and propaganda combined with modern organisation to enable mass killing. The culture of denial means states increasingly try to conceal or re-label their crimes rather than openly justifying them.

State-corporate crime occurs when governments and businesses collaborate in harmful activities, like the Challenger disaster or Gulf oil spill.

Crime Control and Prevention

How do we actually reduce crime? Different approaches reflect different theories about why crime happens in the first place.

Situational crime prevention assumes criminals make rational choices by weighing costs and benefits. Target hardening (better locks, CCTV, security guards) increases effort and risk whilst reducing rewards. The approach focuses on immediate environments rather than social causes.

Displacement is a major criticism - crime might just move to easier targets, different times, or new methods. Situational prevention also ignores root causes like poverty and focuses mainly on petty street crime rather than harmful corporate offences.

Environmental crime prevention uses Wilson and Kelling's broken windows theory - addressing minor disorder immediately prevents serious crime taking hold. Zero tolerance policing means cracking down on every sign of disorder, no matter how small.

Social and community prevention tackles underlying causes through education, employment, and housing programmes. The Perry Pre-School Project showed how early intervention with disadvantaged children reduced crime rates decades later.

Different Justice Types: Durkheim distinguished between retributive justice (punishment expressing collective outrage) and restitutive justice (repairing damage done).

Surveillance has evolved from Foucault's panopticon model to modern surveillance assemblages combining multiple technologies. CCTV operators make discriminatory judgements about who to watch, potentially creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

Actuarial justice uses risk assessment rather than individual rehabilitation. Feeley and Simon argue this represents damage limitation - managing dangerous populations rather than transforming them.

Victimology shows how victim status itself is socially constructed. Critical victimologists highlight how structural factors like poverty create victimisation whilst powerful groups avoid being labelled as victims.