SOC 1500 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Labeling Theory, Ritualism In The Church Of England, Mass Media
1 Jun 2018
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SOC 1500
CHAPTER 5
CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CRIME
Introduction
• Sociological theories for exploring crime focus on the group
• Sociological criminologists are more interested in understanding group action
o Why majority of prison inmates are from lower-class social backgrounds
• Answer questions by examining group characteristics rather than individual distinctiveness
o Social class
o Gender
o Age
o Culture
Durkheim
• Work on suicide had major impact on criminological theory
• Suicide rates
o Lower for Catholics than Protestants
o Higher for people living in larger cities than small towns
o Higher for people living alone than with families
• Explained these differences on the basis of varying degrees of social integration and social cohesion
o People with weak links to their communities are more likely to take their lives than people with
strong social ties
• Did not pay enough attention to how suicide stats were collected
o Not addressing the problems surrounding how coroners interpret cause of death and produce
inaccurate stats
• Proposal challenges biological and psychological assumptions
• Society is not the result of individual plan
• Society was not a direct reflection of the characteristics of its individual members
o Was more than the sum of its parts
The Chicago School
• Examining crime in Chicago
• Argued that crime was not randomly distributed across the population
• Levels of crime in Chicago were not distributed evenly throughout the city
o Crime was geographically patterned
• Park and Burgess
o Crie as oetrated i the zoe of trasitio
o Area of the city surrounded by central business district and old housing
o Affordable housing attracted people with little money
▪ New immigrants
▪ Racial minorities
• Model is important because it associates criminal activity with areas in cities that are socially disorganized
• Criminals gravitate to certain areas in the city
• Ecological explanations
o Rates of crime rise for people who are displaced because their inability to successfully integrate
into a foreign city and a strange culture
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▪ New immigrants
Crime and Social Disorganization
• Crime and juvenile delinquency were not randomly distributed in the population
• Police-reported crime was concentrated in the zone of transition
o Area characterized by substandard housing, low incomes, concentration of visible minorities
• High delinquency rates were caused by the types of neighbourhoods in which youth grew up
• Social disorganization was responsible for crime
• Zone of transition
o Social controls were broken down because of immigrants who populates these areas
▪ Have few social ties and being disadvantaged (economically) in the means of effective
parental control over their children
• Thrasher
o Social disorganization
o Gangs emerge in environments where conventional controls on youth are absent or lacking
• Social disorganization criticism
o Not all cities grow the same
o Crime is not limited to the powerless and disenfranchised
o Juvenile delinquency is not restricted to the inner city
• Society in the form of community and its controls exert a powerful influence on human behaviour
• Most street rie is oitted y oral people liig i aoral eiroets
o Efforts to control crime need to focus on reorganizing disorganized communities
Strain/Anomie Theory
• Durkheim
o Anomie: normlessness
o Anomic suicide is characterized by a social condition causing the individual to feel lost or in a
predicament of normlessness
▪ Following stock market crash, there was an increase in American suicide rate
▪ Predicted because many investors had nowhere to turn for emotional or financial support
• Merton
o Anomie is a situation where societies inadvertently bring to bear pressure on individuals that can lead
to rule-breaking behaviour
▪ Strain is caused by discrepancy between culturally defined goals and the institutionalized
means available to achieve these goals
o Dominant cultural goal in the United States is the acquisition of wealth
o Message that happiness is equated with material success is transmitted through a variety of social
institutions
▪ Mass media
▪ Family
▪ Educational system
o Idea that hard work and education are what is required to achieve these material goals
▪ Those ho apply theseles to study ad ork ill sueed fiaially ad those ho do’t
are labelled lazy or defective
o Legitimate means for achieving material success are not evenly distributed
o Aoie is geerated ad produes ertai odes of adaptatio that disadataged people use to
deal with pressures that are brought on to bear on them
o 5 modes of adaptation
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▪ Conformity
▪ Innovation
• Innovator is the one who believes in culturally defined goals in society but rejects
the legitimate means to achieve these goals
• Individuals use proceeds from fraud, theft, and illegal drug dealing
▪ Retreatism
▪ Ritualism
▪ Rebellion
• Cohen
o Crime is likely to be found in the ranks of the working class
o Working-class boys attain social status based on a middle-class value system
o Working-class exclusion took place in the educational system
o Working-class children share the status of their parents, they start off as handicap
▪ If working-class starts to care about what middle-class people think
• iddle-lass attitudes toards soial lass positio
▪ Youth feel shame
▪ Youth from socially deprived backgrounds are unable to compete within the context of this
educational system react by turning to delinquency
▪ Delinquent subculture
• Where they can achieve an alternative source of status
• Strain theory
o Low social class leads to crime
Control Theory
• Youth deviance
• Set of institutions that acts to control and regulate rule-breaking behaviour
• Based on the assumption that humans by nature are risk-takers
• If individual is properly bonded to society, they will not engage in crime
o If social bonds are broken or weak, individual could engage in crime
• Hirschi - 4 types of social bonds
o Inner controls
▪ Commitments
• Idea that a person has an investment or stake in conforming behaviour
o E.g. is high school student is doing academically well, engaging in
illegal behaviour could put this goal into jeopardy. She will try to
control her behaviour toward the end
▪ Beliefs
• Refers to a person’s loyalty to a dominant value system
• Committing an act that violates beliefs causes a person to experience a deep
sense of guilt or remorse
o E.g. if a Jew accepts the 10 Commandment, they will believe that
stealing is a violation of the eighth commandment
o Outer controls
▪ Involvements
• Physical activities
o Organized sports
o Youth involved in organized sports (hockey) have less time and
inclination to engage in illegal activities
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