2.2.1 Crime and Deviance: Functionalist strain and subcultural theories Flashcards
Cloward and Ohlin
Evaluation of Cloward and Ohlin
(3-, 1+)
- Ignore crimes of the wealthy and the wider power structure and over-predict working class crime. (like Merton and Cohen)
- They draw boundaries too sharply between subcultures, in reality they are normally a mixture of all.
- Define crime as a reaction, assuming individuals and groups started with same capitalist success goals. (like Merton and Cohen)
- Positive - they identify different types of working class crime, unlike Merton and Cohen.
Cloward and Ohlin
What are Cloward and Ohlin’s three subcultures?
Criminal subcultures
* Provide youths with an apprenticeship in utilitarian crime.
* Arise in neighbourhoods with a longstanding, stable criminal culture.
* Adult criminals can select and train youths.
Conflict subcultures
* Arise in neighbourhoods with high population turnover which prevents stable criminal culture.
* Mainly violent, non-utilitatian crime to release frustration and gain status.
* Loosely organised gangs and crimes.
Retreatist subcultures
* The double failures who fail both legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures.
* Often turn to ‘retreatist’ / ‘drop out’ subculture and resort to drug use.
Cloward and Ohlin
What do Cloward and Ohlin define as the key reason people turn to different types of violence?
- Not only differences in opportunities to legitimate structures, but unequal opportunities to illegitimate structures. E.g not everyone who drops out of school is going to be a successful safecracker.
- Different neighbourhoods offer different opportunities for criminal careers
Merton’s strain theory
What are the strengths of Merton’s strain theory?
- Most crime is property crime because American’s value wealth so highly.
- Working class crime rates are higher because they have the least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately
Merton’s strain theory
What are the 5 responses to strain that merton identifies?
- Conformity - accept goals and strive to achieve them
- Innovation - accept goals but use illegitimate means to achieve them
- Ritualism - give up on goals but go through the motions of society
- Retreatism - reject both goals and means and drop out of society
- Rebellion - replace existing goals and means with new ones with the aim of bringing about social change.
Merton’s strain theory
What is Merton’s strain theory?
Merton argues that deviance is the result of strain between the goals a culture encourages individuals to aim for and what the structure of society actually allows them to achieve by legitimate means.
Merton’s strain theory
Explain how Merton argues strain is caused
(3 steps)
- The ‘American dream’ emphasises ‘money sucess’ which Americans are supposed to pursue by legitimate means.
- This ideology claims that the system is meritocratic, but in reality poverty and discrimincation block opportunities.
- The resulting strain between cultural goal and lack of legitimate opportunities produces frustration and a pressure to resort to illegitimate means.
Durkheim’s functionalist theorist of crime
What are two further functions of crime that functionalists argue? (and theorists)
- Safety valve - Davis argues that prostitution acts to release men’s sexual frustrations without threatning the nuclear family.
- Warning light - A.K. Cohen argues that deviance indicates that an institution is malfunctioning e.g high truancy rates may indicate problems within education.
Durkheim’s functionalist theorist of crime
What are Durkheim’s two functions of crime?
- Boundary maintenence - crime produces a reaction from society, untiting its members against the wrongdoer and reinforcing value consensus.
- Adaptation and change - For Durkheim, all change starts with deviance, as individuals challenge existing norms which lead to adaptive changes. e.g civil rights movement.
Durkheim’s functionalist theorist of crime
What is Durkheim’s anomie?
A sense of normlessness when individuals become increasingly different from each other, and the shared rules of behaviour becomes less clear.
Durkheim’s functionalist theorist of crime
How does Durkheim see crime?
As inevitable and universal
Durkheim’s functionalist theorist of crime
What are the criticisms of Durkheim?
(3)
- Durkheim claims that society requires a certain amount of deviance to function but offers no way of knowing how much is the right amount.
- Durkheim and functionalists explain crime in terms of its function - e.g to strengthen solidarity - but that doesn’t explain why its their in the first place.
- Crime isn’t positive for the victim.
A.K Cohen status frustration
What ways does Cohen argue subcultures give boys alternative status hierarchy?
- It provides alternate status hierarchy through delinquent actions.
- Values invert that of mainstream - value malice and violence.
A.K Cohen status frustration
What are the ways that Cohen notes working class boys face anomie in education?
- They are culturally deprived and lack the skills to achieve, leaving them at the bottom of the official status heirarchy.
- They suffer status frustration, and turn to delinquent subcultures.
A.K Cohen status frustration
What are the two ways that Cohen disagrees with Merton?
- Merton sees defiance as an individual response to strain but Cohen argues he ignores group deviance of delinquent subcultures
- Merton focuses on utilitarian crime and ignores non-utilitarian crime, such as vandilism and assult.
