The Usefulness of Sociological Theories in Explaining Crime and the Control of Crime

This weeks question which sociological perspective would I choose to best understand how race, class, and gender impact the rates of crime in the United States? I choose to go with the functionalist prospective because of the train theory and how it explained how people adapted to life in their anomic situations. This prospective later goes on to give 5 ways of adaption that I agreed with them being, conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion. From what I understand is that it later goes on to state that people of all social classes and races commit a crime to pursue their own personal desires no matter what it is at what level of crime. I also see that individuals have control of them committing a crime but they have a opportunity

In order to prevent crime, classicism has the idea of how to avert it before happening. As Beccaria believed, punishments should be equal to offences, to hold off offenders from committing crime. As Jeremy Bentham considered, society is based on the concept of pain and pleasure. By Bentham’s ‘moral formula’ to prevent crime punishment it has to be more painful than the crime itself. Jeremy Bentham believed that damnation of someone’s actions is more useful than physically harming

Hood, R., Zedner, L. and Ashworth, A. (2003). The Criminological Foundations of Penal Policy: Essays in Honour of Roger Hood. 1st ed. Oxford: University Press.

Unit 1 Assignment The sociological perspective says, that social context of where people live, effects and explains a lot of human behaviors. This paper will go into detail on the crime rates in the US using the sociological perspectives/theories; symbolic interaction, functionalist theory, conflict theory, and the effects they hold on the recorded criminal activities in the United States. Sociologist use these perspectives/theories to help provide a solid framework to understand and explain the unwanted criminal behaviors presented in society. Symbolic interaction says, “symbols-things which we attach meaning to are the key to how we view the world and communicate to one another.” (Henslin, 2014, p. 32) Edwin Sutherland, sociologist studied

The approach, involving philosophers such as the founder of modern criminology, Cesare Beccaria, (1738–94) who was an Italian mathematician and the author of ‘Dei Delitti e Delle Pene’(On Crimes and Punishment) (Burke, 2014) John Locke, and Jeremy Bentham essentially expanded upon ‘social contract theory’, they desired a reform of the existing criminal justice system by replacing the ‘archaic, barbaric, repressive or arbitrary’ criminal law structure with a system that highlighted the liberal values or ideals that emerged with the Enlightenment. (Ugwudike, 2015) Throughout the Enlightenment, Europe was changing drastically, this change influenced the early proponents of classical theory and their exploration for a more humane and legal penal system. Across Europe, the law was wildly inconsistent and applied even more incoherently, many people recognized the need for a more uniform and effective justice system, and ‘classical criminology’ was the result.

The prevalence of crime is a substantial part of society. As a result, the development of punishment has been essential in contributing to social order. Despite extensive research conducted into the ideals surrounding crime and punishment, this research does not act as a solely relied upon source of information for society.

From a sociological perspective, explanation for criminality is found in two levels which are the subculture and the structural explanations. The sociological explanations emphasize aspects of societal arrangements that are external to the actor and compelling. A sociological explanation is concerned with how the structure of a society, institutional practices or its persisting cultural themes affect the conduct of its members. Individual differences are denied or ignored, and the explanation of the overall collective behavior is sought in the patterning of social arrangements that is considered to be both outside the actor and prior to him (Sampson, 1985).

Criminological theories have been used on a micro and macro level scale in order to search for an answer as to why people commit crimes. The broken windows theory and routine activity theory have been selected as the two theories provide different perspectives as to why crime occurs, and how to solve crime. The theories will be examined in order get a historical origins, outline main principles, distinguishing characteristics, misconceptions and critaziams of each theory.

This essay is aiming to compare and describe sociological theories of crime. First explaining Social Control, Strain, Differential association, and neutralization theories and how they are different from one another. I will discuss strength and weakness of each theory and provide information before providing my own conclusions. I will explain the classical and positivist approach to criminal theory. Furthermore, explain the differences between the two in detail and how they play a part in our society today.

During the Interactive Oral today, we discussed the philosophies found in Crime and Punishment. The presenters focused their presentation on the presence of French Utopian Socialism, German Left Hegelianism, and English Utilitarianism. In our following discussion, we explored how Dostoyevsky applied these philosophies in Crime and Punishment through the character’s actions and their personal philosophies.

Crime has always been a part in society and reacting to crimes and the severity of crimes has been and ever evolving issue on how authorities should punish in order to deter people from breaking the laws of the land. Therefore, certain people have created theories on why individuals commit crimes. The two most famous schools of that are Classical Theory and Biological/Positivist Theory. These theories contain insights to why people commit crimes and the most effective way to deal with these individuals and eventually reduce the crime rate. This paper will discuss how these schools of thought compare to each other, the Christian Worldview and to United States current criminal justice system.

This essay will specifically relate to adult male offenders. It will begin by giving a brief definition of crime. It will apply strain theory to attempt to explain why crime occurs and provide a critique. It will examine the welfarist approach during the early 1970s and will go onto look at the controversial phrase ‘nothing works’, which emanated from a paper in 1974 by Robert Martinson. This will be followed by the shift to ‘what works?’ evidence based practice. The Risk,

In a contemporary society where crime takes place we expect the state authority to dispense justice in the form of punishment to maintain social solidarity. There are many forms of punishment that can be given to an offender, each with their own functions for the offender and society itself.

Classical criminology is a theory based on the principle that all people, criminals included, are rational and have the complete ability to make their own choices. This theory presumes criminals as normal people who are fully responsible for their offending and have chosen to commit a crime because the outcome of the crime is presumed to benefit their self-interest. If modern criminal justice systems were based on classical criminology, all offenders would be treated the same, regardless of any factors that would impede them from being rational or making their own sensible choices. Thus, classical criminology should not be the basis of the modern criminal justice system because it fails to account for people’s biological and mental differences, that different types of criminals need different types of interventions and, the fact that people are constrained in the choices they can make.

Speculation has been raised about whether incarceration is effective for criminal offenders. When an offender goes against the law, it has been argued that they must take a 'social debt'. Therefore, they are sent to prison to protect the public community, and to be punished. This solution hopefully prevents criminals from committing crime. However, future crime policies should turn away from incarceration and work more to preventing