The Inevitability And Universality Of Crime

Crime and deviance are acts that will elicit dissent from society. They take various forms and involve various concepts and theories. It will be the aim of this paper to explore those that are considered to be functional for society. It was Emile Durkheim who first clearly established the logic behind the functional approach to the study of crime and deviance[1] when he wrote The Rules of Sociological Method and The Division of Labour[2].

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior (Siegel 4). Criminology is not just understanding criminal actions but also studying how to correct and prevent crime, overall. There are five major Criminological theories, (1) Classical Theory, (2) Positivist Theory, (3) Marxist / Conflict Theory, (4) Sociological Theory, and (5) Multifactor / Integrated Theory.

This essay will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of sociological explanations of crimes with links to Durkheim’s anomie theory, Merton’s strain theory and the Labelling theory which will draw upon different academics that will highlight these specific areas of research. In sociological terms, crime is a social concept as it does not exist as an autonomous entity, but it is socially constructed by people. It can be analysed that sociological explanations of crime attribute deviance to various aspects of the social environment. For example, crime is strongly related to modern city life where this type of social environment creates cultural enclaves which results in producing criminal or deviant behaviour (Carrabine et al, 2014).

Crime is the product of the social structure; it is embedded in the very fibres of society. In this essay, I aim to explore different theories as to why crime exists within society and how we as a society therefore construct it. Crime is a social construct; it is always in society and is on the increase. It is inevitable. Where does it come from? It comes from legislation, from the making of laws.

Criminology is a complex subject chock-full of theories that attempt to explain crime and criminal behavior. Each base theory has several branches of theory which expand upon and compliment their predecessors. Even some of the sub-theories have branches of theories.

Durkheim (1982) argued that crime is an inevitable feature of social life, because individuals are composed to different influences and circumstances, and so not everyone can be equally committed to the shared values and moral beliefs of society. Despite crime and deviance’s threat to society, Durkheim saw it as beneficial as it could perform positive functions in society, such as, firstly; By strengthening collective values. Values can waste away unless

Most theories of crime tend to be ‘ahistorical.’ “They do not treat the question of how the material conditions of society and crime evolve together as relevant to the study of crime” (Chambliss, 1974, page 25). For Marxists this is a problem because ahistorical theories fail to link the phenomenon under investigation – in this case, crime. Ahistorical theories attempt to reason that crime occurs outside of social systems and is something that develops on its own. Two important elements develop

Crime and deviance are seemingly effortlessly defined by the Oxford dictionary. However sociological prospectives have differing views on crime and the explanations for it.

This essay will offer different definitions of crime, suggesting that it is a social construction as it varies across culture, time and belief. It will examine the role of social construction, through interpretation and meaning, in the identification, reporting and legal consequences of criminal acts. After illustrating how fear, escalated by the media, can directly affect crime, it will conclude that crime and its consequences are socially constructed.

As the statistical data have become known and charted, they can now analyze one to another, concluding crime has become a normal social factor. Crime is the most widely experienced as a prominent fact of modern life. It has come to be regarded as an everyday risk that must be routinely assessed and managed in much the same way that we have come to cope with road traffic - another mortal danger that has become a normal feature of the modern landscape. The high crime rate over time had become the standard and was thought to be due to the upspring of delinquents” first starting in WWII (this is also known as people in welfare)”. The idea of welfare became the excuses that

Crime was seen by Durkheim as inevitable, he argued that a constant level of crime can be functional and only becomes harmful to society when crime rates are abnormally high or low. According to Durkheim the purpose of punishment is not to eliminate crime completely but rather to maintain the norms and values of the majority, in order to keep a relative amount of “social order”.

1). Criminology arose from the social scientific community over the year and has since come into its own discipline, it examines the entire process of lawmaking, law breaking, and law enforcing” (as cited in Akers, & Sellers, 2013). Criminology seeks to discover the depth of crime at both the micro and macro levels, from the individual’s natural biological and psychological characteristics, the nurturing of social and structural institutions, to policy, prevention and control.

For criminals, participating in crime is often caused by the absence of legal means to provide and support for themself and his or her family. For sociologists, one yearns to know what is the final reason, the final straw, to the criminal’s decision to participate in said crime? If this answer is possible to determined, sociologists can work to prevent this occurrence from happen in the first place. However, I believe, for individuals to turn to illegal means, it is not one, single event but instead it is the idea that one’s history, surroundings, and personality must all align together. More specifically, it is one’s background factors, situational dynamics, and foreground factors that causes an individual to succumb or to not succumb to

a. Imagine asking 100 strangers to describe a criminal. Predict whether those descriptions would be likely to focus on street criminals, or the variety of topics covered in this video.

Criminology is a study of crime, criminals and criminal justice. Ideas about criminal justice and crime arose in the 18th century during the enlightenment, but criminology as we know it today developed in the late 19th century. Criminology has been shaped by many different academic disciplines and has many different approaches. It explores the implications of criminal laws; how they emerge and work, then how they are violated and what happens to those violators. Laws are relative and historically shaped; they vary from time to time and from place to place (Carrabine et al, 2009).