• Most people are upset by deviance, especially crime and assume that society would be better off without it
• He said that deviance (including crime) is functional for society because it contributes to social order

• 3 main functions of crime:
– Clarifies moral boundaries and affirms norms
• Moral boundaries- a group’s idea about how people should think and act
• Deviant acts challenge the boundaries and punishment affirms the groups norms
– Promotes social unity
• Fosters a “we” mentality
• In saying “you cant get away with that” affirms the rightness of the groups own way
– Promotes social change
• Boundary violations that gain enough support become new, acceptable behaviors
– Example: Civil Rights Movement

• Some mainstream values actually generate crime
• Most people have strong desires to reach cultural goals like wealth or high states
• Not everyone has equal access to legitimate means of achieving those goals
– These people experience strain or frustration which may motivate they to take a deviant path

• People who experience strain are likely to feel anomie (a sense of normlessness)
– Mainstream norms s/a working hard and pursuing higher education don’t seem to get them anywhere
– Some may feel wronged by the system

1. Conformity- using socially acceptable means to try and reach cultural goals
– Example: don’t understand calculus, need it for college applications, then get a tutor
2. innovators- people who accept the goals of society but use illegitimate means to reach them
– Example: don’t understand calculus, need it for college, cheat on the test

3. ritualism- people get discouraged and give up on achieving cultural goals yet still cling to conventional rules
– Example: don’t understand calculus, need it for college, give up on ever understanding it, go through the motions and maybe pass with a “D”
4. retreatism- rejects both cultural goals and acceptable means of achieving them
– Example: drop out of school and maybe pursue GED
5. rebellion- Convinced that their society is corrupt and reject society’s goals and means.
– Seek to give society new goals
• Example: Drop out and get a job

• Social classes have distinct styles of crime
• Unequal access to the acceptable means to success can explain this

• Industrialized societies socialize the poor into wanting to own thing
– The poor are bombarded with advertisements and images on TV of middle-class people enjoying luxurious lives
• These images reinforce the myth that all full-fledged
Americans can afford society’s goods and services
• School Systems (acceptable means to success) often fail the poor
– Run by middle class and clashes with their background
– More likely to drop out of school, closing the door to legitimate avenues to financial success

• Other doors open to the poor- illegitimate opportunity structures
– Robbery, drug dealing, prostitution, gambling, etc.
• For many in poor neighborhoods the
“hustler”- or person succeeding through these avenues are role models
– “easy money” bring them closest to the cultural goal of success

• The more privileged social classes are not crime-free
• They find other forms of crime to be functional
– Physicians who cheat Medicare, embezzlement, manipulating stock prices, evading income tax.

• Special form of white-collar crime
• Committed by executives in order to benefit their corporation
• Corporate crime is rarely taken seriously
(more so nowadays with Enron, etc.) and few people end up in jail

• There is a growing number of female offenders
• Reason: women's changed social location
– As more women work in factories, corporations, etc., their opportunities for crime increase