A2 Sociology Crime and Deviance

I'm an A2 student studying for the Crime and Deviance unit in january 2013. This is my attempt at creating a database containing all the necessary information needed to pass the test. Pretty much all the information I post will be adapted from "AQA Sociology - A2" by Julie Cameron et al.

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Sykes and Matza

Name: Sykes and Matza

Perspective:

Year: 1957

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory – Techniques of Neutralisation

Research: Sykes and Matza found that juveniles caught committing crime would neutralise the situation by trying to rationalise or justify a crime in five possible ways: denial of responsibility; denial of injury; denial of victim; condemnation of the condemners; and the appeal to higher loyalties.

Denial of responsibility is basically just saying “It wasn’t my fault”

Denial of injury refers to the belief or excuse that it wasn’t a crime because no one got hurt.

Denial of victim is basically when the juveniles commit crime as an act of revenge against a person they believe deserved it or had it coming to them.

Condemnation of the condemners applies to the perpetrators accusing their prosecutors of being hypocrites or being prejudiced and targeting the juveniles unfairly.

Appealing to higher loyalties is when a person claims to have committed the crime for the benefit of another person or group of people.

  Matza and Sykes based their theory on four basic facts seen in society.

1) Many delinquents feel or express remorse and guilt because of the criminal act.

2) Delinquents frequently show respect for those citizens who are law-abiding.

3) There is a limit to whom they victimize; they must distance themselves from their victims.

4) Delinquents can be affected by their surroundings and are susceptible to conformity.

(Sykes and Matza, 1057:665)

  Pretty much all the info in this post was found here. Check the link out.

  Relevant sociologists/ research: Just look up subcultural theory or juvenile delinquency

Criticisms:

Page: AQA 250

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Female Gang Members

Though there has been a lot of research into gangs and their impact on the likelihood of deviant and criminal behaviour, not many researchers have paid much attention to female gangs and gang members. This is mainly due to the fact that gangs are predominantly male and females probably have a harder time proving themselves worthy of membership because of the social expectations projected onto girls and women. The few sociologists who have paid attention to female gang members found that within gangs, girls have to conform to gender roles which mark them apart from the males and usually translate into lower ranking than their male peers.

Name: Thrasher

Perspective:

Year: 1920s

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory – Female Gangs

Research: Thrasher researched a total of 1,313 gangs in the US and found that only 6 of these were female gangs. He argued that females in gangs were only there to serve the higher-ranking males. Many sociologists agree.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Campbell, Laidler and Hunt

Page: AQA 249

  Name: Anne Cambell

Perspective:

Year: 1984

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory – Female Gangs

Research: Campbell documented the experiences of three girl gang members in New York and noted the limited choices available to working class girls in inner-city America at the time.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Laidler and Hunt, Thrasher

Criticisms: Three girls from the same area isn’t a very representative sample to study from, so the data collected is unlikely to be reliable. Laidler and Hunt conducted much more representative research by interviewing 141 female gang members, albeit from a similarly small area.

Page: AQA 249

  Name: Laidler and Hunt

Perspective:

Year: 2001

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory – Female Gangs

Research: Laidler and Hunt interviewed 141 female gang members in San Francisco about their experiences as members of mostly male gangs. They found that while the women did engage in deviant and criminal activity with the gang, they also had separate gender roles within the gang itself which they had to conform to.  

Relevant sociologists/ research: Campbell, Thrasher

Criticisms: The study was conducted in San Francisco Bay area, not nation-wide so it isn't representative of the experiences of female gang members across the US

Page: AQA 249

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Korem

Name: Korem

Perspective:

Year: 1994

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory- Middle Class Gangs

Method: Longitudal study – non-participant observation

Research: Studied middle class boys who joined gangs and observed that they did so because of family problems rather than because of a strain between capitalist ideals and their own wealth. He argued that problems at home are a more important factor in the creation of gangs than poverty or rebellion. Because of a lack of support at home, the boys used gangs as a substitute family which could offer them support and companionship.

Relevant sociologists/ research: look up gangs, subcultural theory

Strengths: Conducted research over a number of years in a number of countries = More reliable results.

Criticisms: Matza would say Korem's theory is too deterministic; doesn't acknowledge female gang members.

Page: AQA 249

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Downs and UK Gangs

Name: David Downs

Perspective:

Year: 1966

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory

Research: Downs found that there was comparatively little gang activity in England with nothing like the scale of organised crime in America. Working class boys would hang around in groups but without any intent of being a gang, and even in inner-city areas, gang activity was nowhere near as noticeable as in America.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Everything to do with Subcultural theory, and some environmental theory.

Criticisms:

Page: AQA 248

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Nightingale

Name: Nightingale

Perspective:

Year: 1993

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory

Research: Nightingale studied young black gangs in inner-city areas in America and found that they wanted to achieve the American dream of material wealth. However, failure at school and rejection by society has led to the young men gaining consumer goods via criminal means.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Merton’s Strain Theory; Messner and Rosenheld; Cohen’s Status Frustration.

Criticisms:

Page: AQA 248

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Rosenhan and Labelling of Mental Illness

Name: Rosenhan ( I like this one)

Perspective: Social Action Theory

Year: 1973

Topic of research: Mental illness and labelling

Method: Covert Participant Observation

Research: Rosenhan conducted an experiment with the help of 8 researchers who admitted themselves to different hospitals by pretending to hear voices. The researchers stayed in the institutions for 7-52 days and spent the entire time behaving as they usually would but were still labelled by staff as mentally ill and treated as such. Funnily enough, some of the real patients suspected them of being imposters.

Rosenhan then furthered the experiment by telling another institution which knew of his research that he would be sending a number of pseudo-patients to be admitted in the coming three months. The staff then suspected 41 patients out of the 191 admitted to the clinic of being imposters, despite the fact that Rosenhan hadn’t actually sent any more researchers.

The fact that the staff in different institutions consistently accepted a sane person’s label as mentally ill without question proved that labels can be extremely detrimental to a person’s reputation and status within society.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Howard Becker’s labelling theory.

Criticisms: Rosenhan couldn’t get informed consent from the people he observed, raising some ethical issues.

Diagnosis and care of mentally ill people has changed drastically in the last forty years so the same experiment wouldn’t have the same results if conducted nowadays. People are also treated less often inside hospitals and institutions, but can have counselling and medication while still leading a relatively normal life making a label less deterministic.

The sample he used was relatively small, although the fact that he observed numerous institutions bumps the representative ( and therefore reliability) factor up.

  Page: AQA 258-259

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Miller

Name: Miller

Perspective: I want to say Right Wing, but I don’t actually know

Year: 1962

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory

Research: Miller argued that the “focal concerns" of young working class men (in America) made deviant and illegal behaviour inevitable because of their “rough” culture. Some of the focal concerns put forward by Miller included finding excitement and, by extension, trouble, appearing tough, and “having a laugh”. Because of this run-ins with the law are bound to happen even if the men don’t mean to break the law.

Relevant sociologists/ research:

Criticisms: Ignores female delinquency; The majority of working class people conformed to social norms and abided by the law; It’s a very biased view to take, as well as deterministic; he doesn’t take into account the fact that not all working class men fit his description. It could also be argued that most men regardless of class will go through a phase of typically masculine behaviour.

  Page: AQA 247

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Cloward and Ohlin

Name: Cloward and Ohlin

Perspective:

Year: 1961

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory

Method

Research: Cloward and Ohlin furthered Cohen’s research into working class delinquency by defining three types of subculture: Criminal, Conflict and Retreatist.

Criminal Subcultures were often organised with a hierarchy in which members could gain status.

Conflict subcultures were formed when two or gangs rose and warred.

Retreatest subcultures were formed of delinquents who chose a relatively private life of drug and alcohol addiction in order to cope with poverty and inequality.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Cohen’s theory of status frustration and Merton’s Strain theory. It could be argued that the subcultures described by Cloward and Ohlin are a reaction to the difference between reality and the “American dream”.

Criticisms: Ignores female delinquency; Deviancy is often a phase which people grow out of; Most working class people would have conformed to society's norms and abided by the law.

Page: AQA 247

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Albert Cohen and Status Frustration

Name: Albert Cohen

Perspective:

Year: 1955

Topic of research: Subcultural Theory – Status Frustration

Research: Cohen argued that delinquent behaviour was most likely to come from working class boys (in America) who had no academic status within school and so looked to deviant means of gaining status and power over their peers.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Can be linked to Merton’s strain theory in that the boys are rebelling against the American dream by rejecting their education.

Cloward and Ohlin’s definition of three working class subcultures

Criticisms: Ignores female delinquency; Deviancy is often a phase which people grow out of; Most working class boys would have conformed at school and gotten average and above grades.

Page: AQA 247

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Sociology and Social Policies

A social policy is an initiative launched by the government to tackle a social problem such as high unemployment or youth delinquency. Peter Worsley defines a social problem as "some piece of social behaviour that causes public friction and/or private misery".

Here are a few relevant sociologists:

Name: Mills

Year: 1970

Perspective:

Topic of research: Social Policies and sociology

Method:

Research: Mills believed that sociology should not only be the observation and explanation of crime and deviancy, but should suggest solutions in the form of social policies.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Everyone else on this page. And you can use him against everyone who explains some aspect of crime/deviancy without suggesting a solution to the problem.

Criticisms: The goverment gets in the way of his theory. The initiation of policies depends very heavily on the government for a number of reasons

Funding/budgets

Whether or not the government thinks the policy will make them popular with the public

The government might not be open to the suggestions of a sociologist whose research criticises the way things are run

Pressure from the public either for or against something can sway the government’s decision to establish a policy.

Page: AQA 397

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Name: Giddens

Year: 2001

Perspective:

Topic of research: Social Policies and sociology

Method:

Research: Giddens points out that Sociologists are useful to the government because they can illuminate social problems which the government aren't aware of and suggest a suitable solution based on their research. They can also follow the consequences of establishing a social policy with the use of surveys and then let the government know how it's going. Giddens argues that sociologists can use the results of their research to catalyse social reform and change existing policies when their observation of society reveals flaws in the the system.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Everyone in this post.

Criticisms: Government gets in the way; see Mills' "criticisms"

Page: AQA 397

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  Name: Middleton et al.

Year: 2005

Perspective:

Topic of research: Social Policies and sociology

Method: Monitoring and comparing official statistics

Research: Middleton et al. had their research into pilot schemes designed to increase participation in A Level education funded by the Economic and Educational Research Council. The most successful scheme was the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) which increased participation by 6% during its pilot run. It became a national policy in 2004 but was scrapped in England in 2010 due to government spending cuts. It was replaced by a Bursary scheme for teens from families with a low income. While it had no perceptable impact on achievement levels, it increased participation by 3.8% over the years with a stronger impact on male students than female students.

The fact that it was scrapped by the government in England even though it was working shows that the creation and continuation of policies relies very heavily on the government’s budget and willingness to establish a policy.

Relevant sociologists/ research: The other sociologists in this post

Criticisms of the method:Using statistics is risky because they might not reflect the truth but a social construct.

Page: AQA 397

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Name: Gregg et al.

Year: 2007

Perspective:

Topic of research: Social Policies and sociology

Method: Observation of some kind obviously, probably some comparative statistic analysis too.

Research: Research into the impact of family incomes on children's early development up to the age of seven. The researchers observed the behaviour and academic achievemetns of 6,000 children (large sample = more reliable results) in order to determine how both low and high incomes affected mental and physical growth. They found that by the age of seven there was a distinct difference between the academic and social abilities of children from affluent familes and those from poorer backgrounds; children from wealthier backgrounds consistenly did better at school and had better self esteem. The ownership of more than one car discouraged physical fitness yet poorer children were more likely to be obese. Children from affluent families who spent time in daycares became more problematic than children from working class background also in daycare.

Based on these results, Gregg et al. argued that income affects families and their children in different ways so a multifacted approach is needed when planning and realising social policies. Simply put: Everyone is affected differently by social problems so a generalised social policy won't fix everything.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Surprisingly enough, everyone else mentioned in this post.

Criticisms:

Page: AQA 398

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Durkheim's Study of Suicide

Durkheim was extremely interested in studying suicide rates in Europe and managed to write an entire book on the subject called "Le Suicide" in 1897 from a positivist sociological perspective. And now, 115 years down the line, we get to study his ideas in A2 Sociology. Lucky us.

Name: Emile Durkheim

Perspective: Functionalist

Year: 1897

Topic of research: Suicide

Method: Comparative

Research: Durkheim used his study of suicide to try and prove that sociology can be studied like a natural science by accepting statistics as social facts and not as social constructs. With this logic in mind, he compared the suicide statistics from a number countries in Europe from the years 1840-1870 in order to determine what the causes of suicide might be. The strengths of this method of research were that comparing numerous sources of data improved the reliability of the information and the long time period could reliably show trends in suicide rates. The downside was that it was still the 19th century and coroners didn't have the same knowledge and training as modern-day coroners, making the validity of the statistics questionable. The judgement of a coroner 150 years ago would have been influenced by very different things than one today would be, specifically by religion. Suicide is a sin, and smaller religious communities may have wanted to hide the fact that one of their members had killed themselves out of a sense of shame, or the deceased may even have made their death look accidental in order to save their family from that shame. I also highly doubt that every death was assessed by a coroner back in those days, so there definitely would have been a dark figure of un-investigated suspicious deaths. 

Durkheim's biggest flaw was accepting these statistics as social facts and not social constructs (which they almost certainly were).

So now that we've established that any conclusions he drew from the suicide rates are in great danger of being founded on false information, let's continue on to his findings.

Based on the trends found in the suicide rates, Durkheim determined that the factors influencing a suicide were directly linked to social integration and social control rather than the state of mind of the deceased. For example, he noticed that Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics as the Catholic church worked harder to integrate its members into the community. Catholicism also had a greater degree of control over its members because of this, so people were less likely to fall to drink and drugs, as well as a reduced chance of feeling isolated.

Durkheim's Four Types of Suicide:

Egoistic - Results from too little intergration

Altruistic - Results from too much intergration; think suicide bombers.

Anomic - Results from too little social control and lots of social/personal life changes.

Fatalistic - A result of too much social control; think back to the days of yore when slavery was a thing.

Relevant sociologists/ research: J.D. Douglas; J. Baechler; J. Maxwell Atkinson; Steve Taylor.

Criticisms: Quick summary: The official statistics he used probably weren't a true reflection of the suicide rates at the time; Durkheim doesn't acknowledge that mental health/illness is a significant cause of suicide.

Page: AQA 291-293

[lajongleuse]

Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character. So, melancholy is morbid only when it occupies too much place in life; but it is equally morbid for it to be wholly excluded from life. L’homme ne pourrait pas vivre s’il était entièrement réfractaire à la tristesse. II y a bien des douleurs auxquelles on ne peut s’adapter qu’en les aimant, et le plaisir qu’on y trouve a nécessairement quelque chose de mélancolique. La mélancolie n’est donc morbide que quand elle tient trop de place dans la vie; mais il n’est pas moins morbide qu’elle en soit totalement exclue

emile durkheim  Division du travail social, p. 266.  (via la-jongleuse)

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The difference between a Social Construct and a Social Fact.

A social fact is a truth which can be applied to the whole of society. For example, to say that everyone in England uses a toilet rather than a hole in their garden or that men are expected to wear trousers not skirts are both social facts.

A social construct is usually reflected in official statistics and the result of how an institution or group percieves the world to be. A good example of this would be the dark figure of unreported criminal activity in the official crime statistics. The OCS aren't a true representation of the levels of crime happening in the country because there's a lot which goes unreported, making them a socially constructed figure. Another example which you could use would be the official suicide rates Durkheim used in his study of suicide; the statistics are unlikely to have contained every suicide which happened in the various countries, and a lot of suicides will have gone unreported because of the religious attitudes prominent in the 1800s.

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Messner and Rosenheld

Name: Messner and Rosenheld

Year: 1994

Perspective: Marxism? They sound a bit Marxist.

Topic of research: Cause of high crime rates in America

Method:

Research: Messner and Rosenheld argue that the high crime rates in America are due to capitalist values imposed on and held by society. If other values such as civic responsibility were encouraged then the crime rates would be lower. Evidence of this is in Japan where children are taught to respect their schools and to take responsibility for some duties such as cleaning classrooms and serving lunches to each other. Perhaps partly because of this, Japan has a lower crime rate than a lot of other countries.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Merton

Criticisms: They don’t explain why crime still happens in societies where capitalist values aren't prominent.

Page: AQA 245

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Auguste Comte

Comte coined the term "Positivism" and "social class" in the 19th century.

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Robert Merton

Name: R.K. Merton

Perspective: Functionalist

Year: 1949

Topic of research: Cause of crimes in general - Strain theory

Method:

Research: The drastic difference between the realism of poverty and the American dream of wealth will drive some people to gain material wealth by criminal means. Merton proposed that people can react to the ideal of the American dream in five possible ways:

1. Conforming to society’s rules and expectations; going to school and working your way up the career ladder. (This is kind of the only non-deviant option on the list.)

2. Innovating, which usually means thinking up illegal ways of becoming rich.

3. Deviating from the norm by giving up the American dream and settling for less. Merton called this response “ritualism”.

4. Retreating into a life of alcoholism and drugs in order to forget that you can’t achieve the American dream.

5. The last is rebelling against the American dream. The example the textbook gives for rebellion is terrorism, but you might want to go with something less extreme like youth subcultures. Think mods and rockers.

Relevant sociologists/ research: Messner and Rosenheld

Criticisms: Strain theory only explains crimes committed for material gain without explaining violent crime or vandalism

Despite there being so many ways for a person to become deviant or criminal in the face of not achieving the American dream, the majority don’t and Merton fails to acknowledge this or explain why.

Page: AQA 244

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Emile Durkheim

"The first and fundamental rule [of sociology] is to consider social facts as things...a social fact is every way of acting which is capable of exercising an external constraint upon the individual"  (The Rules of Sociological Method, 1895)

Émile Durkheim ( April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French sociologist and the founder of Functionalism. Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional social and religious ties are no longer assumed, and in which new social institutions have come into being.

~ Taken from the Wiki page on Durkheim

Put simply, Durkheim believed that everything in society had an order which kept society from descending in anomie. Because of secularisation limiting the Church's influence on society and it's value consensus, Durkheim looked to other social institutions such as schools and workplaces as sources of social control which kept society in working order. He also conducted research into suicide rates (a large topic within Crime and Deviance) in a purely positivist way in order to prove Sociology as a scientific study. He argued that sociology is the study of social facts (or rules, if you like) which are true for the whole of society, for example, the causes of suicide.

Here's my summary of his relevance to the unit:

Name: Emile Durkheim

Perspective: Functionalist

Year: 1930s

Topic of research: Crime in general; Suicide

Method of Research: Quantitative.

Research: Durkheim argued that crime is 1. inevitable, 2. universal, 3. Relative (crime’s a social construct, so different societies/groups will have different opinions on what constitutes criminal behaviour and how severely it should be punished), and 4. functional. He believed that crime in moderate amounts is a necessary and functional part of modern society because having criminals to punish as an example to the rest of society reminds people of the boundaries set by the law and social expectations. Without crime and deviant behaviour there would also never be social change for the betterment of society, for example, homosexuality becoming legal and socially acceptable, or women’s rights becoming a thing.

Relevant sociologists/ research:

Criticisms: He doesn't explain the causes of crime.

His research was conducted over a hundred years ago, so it might not be relevant to modern-day society.

Page: AQA, 244

  Rather than lengthen this post with Durkheim's study of suicide, I'll make a separate post on that as I feel it deserves special attention.