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Crime and Deviance

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Assignment Title: Functionalism claims to account for the functions and causes of crime and deviance within contemporary British society, yet it fails to account for white collar crime. Evaluate this statement.
Every society is guided by laws and regulations, therefore, breaking of the law is known as crime or deviance. Crime and deviance will be defined with examples and how what is crime and deviance depend on culture and society will be analysed. Thus, a criminal act in one place is a norm in another place. Crime and Deviance changes as the society evolve, there were some activities that were classified as crime or deviance historically in England but are no longer crime and vice versa some activities that were not crime historically
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‘Crime and deviance are relative concepts’ that are based on a given society, culture and religion and there are no ‘fixed laws and norms’ (Marsh. Et al, 1997:511). Thus, a criminal behaviour in one society could be a norm in another society and a norm in a particular place could be a deviant in another place, crime and deviance are subject to change. Example of what used to be a crime but it is no longer a crime is homosexuality as mentioned above was a criminal act but is no longer a criminal act. However, homosexuality could still have been a criminal offence in UK if people did react that it should be made legal. The act that was not considers being illegal but now illegal is smoking in public places; it was not illegal to smoke in public places in England until 1 July 2007 when the smoke free regulations came to effect (smokefreeengland.co.uk). Although, homosexuality is not a crime in the UK but it is a crime in another country, for instance; homosexuality is a criminal and deviant act in Nigeria; it is culturally, socially and religiously unacceptable. The reason for this is because many Nigerians find it difficult to understand how one could be attracted to the same sex, and they believe that a marriage should be between a male and a female according to the Bible and Quran. Therefore, anyone caught in the act would be condemned by the society and prosecuted accordingly (missionislam.com: Qur’an 7:80-81), (bbc.co.uk) and (skepticsannotatedbible.com:
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