Crime and Deviance
Why do people commit crimes?
 19th century  It was believed that
 criminals were born, not made
 criminal tendencies were biologically given, not learned
 Cesare Lombroso (1870s, Italian criminologist)
 Criminal types could be identified by anatomical features
 Studied appearance and physical characteristics of convicted
criminals (shape of skull and forehead, jaw size, arm length)
 Concluded that criminals displayed signs of atavism (they had
traits held over from earlier stages of human evolution).
An illustration from Lombroso’s book Criminal Man
 Lombroso’s theory was discredited through lack of
evidence, yet biological explanations of crime have
continued over the last century.
Somatotype theory
 Somatotype theory distinguished three main types of
human physique, each linked to a type of personality,
claiming that one body type was directly associated
with delinquency.
 Mesomorphs (muscular active types), theory argues,
tend to be more aggressive and physical, and
therefore more likely to become delinquent than
ectomorphs (thin physique) and endomorphs (round
and fleshy physique)!
 There is no evidence that any traits of personality are
inherited in this way, and even if they were, their
connection to criminality would only be a distant
one.
 If biological approach cannot answer the question
“why do people commit crimes?”, what other
approaches could work better?
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Psychology
Sociology
Psychological approaches to criminality
 Psychological approaches concentrate on personality
types.
 Most research carried out in prisons and other
institutions such as asylums, and in these settings
psychiatric ideas were especially influential.
 Emphasis placed on distinctive traits of criminals
(feeble-mindedness, moral degeneracy).
 Eysenck (1964) suggested that abnormal mental
states were inherited, and that these could either
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Predispose an individual to crime, or
Create problems during socialization process
 Psychopaths are withdrawn, emotionless characters
who act impulsively and rarely experience feelings of
guilt.
 Individuals with psychopathic traits do sometimes
commit violent crimes, but there are problems with
the concept of psychopath:
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It is not clear that psychopathic traits inevitably lead to
criminal traits.
Nearly all studies of people that possess these traits have been
of convicted prisoners and their personalities tend to be
presented negatively.
 Psychological theories of criminality can explain
some aspects of crime.
 While some criminals may possess personality
characteristics distinct from the remainder of the
population, it is improbable that majority of
criminals do so.
 There are many different types of crime, from violent
and aggressive murders to calculated and wellplanned fraud, from rape to petty theft ...
 It is not possible to suppose that those who commit
crimes share the same psychological characteristics.
 Both biological and psychological approaches to
criminality presume that deviance is a sign of
something “wrong” with the individual, rather than
with the society.
 Crime is seen as caused by factors outside an
individual’s control, embedded either in the body or
mind.
 Both biological and psychological theories are
positivist in nature (try to identify causes of crime,
treat causes and prevent criminal behavior).
 Any satisfactory account of nature of crime must
consider the social institutions of a society.
 The social and cultural context in which crime and
deviance take place.
 What exactly do we mean by “crime” and “deviance?
Basic Concepts
 Deviance – non-conformity to a given set of norms
accepted by a significant number of people in a
society
 Crime – non-conformist conduct that breaks a law
 Sanction – any reaction from others to individual /
group behaviour aimed at ensuring compliance to
norms
 Criminology tends to focus on crime whilst the
sociology of crime and deviance is broader, taking
in non-criminal forms of social deviance
 Sanctions may be positive (offering rewards for
conformity) or negative (punishing behavior that
does not conform).
 Sanctions can be levied informally (less organized
and more spontaneous reactions to non-conformity)
or formally applied by a specific body of people or an
agency to ensure that norms are followed – courts,
prison, laws).
 The sociological study of deviance directs attention
to the issue of power and the influence of social class.
 Deviance from or conformity to social rules or norms
calls for the question “whose rules are they?”.
 Social norms are strongly influenced by divisions of
power and class.
 Functionalist theories
 Interactionist theories
 Conflict theories
 Control theories
Functionalist theories
 See crime and deviance resulting from structural
tensions and a lack of moral regulation within
society.
 If the aspirations held by individuals and groups do
not coincide with society’s available rewards, the
disparity between desires and their fulfillment will
be seen in the deviant motivations of some of its
members.
Emile Durkheim
 Anomie: lack of clear norms to guide behaviour
leading to disorientation and anxiety.
 In modern societies traditional norms and
standards become undermined without being
replaced by new ones.
 No clear standards to guide behavior in a given
area of social life.
 Characteristic of modern societies with emphasis
on individual choice and freedom
 According to Durkheim, crime and deviance are
social facts; inevitable and necessary elements of
modern societies.
 Two positive functions of deviance:
Adaptive function, it can introduce new ideas and
challenges into society and be an innovative force (bring
about social and cultural change).
 Boundary maintenance, between us (the good people)
and them (the deviants); hence provoke a collective
response that heightens group solidarity and clarify social
norms.
 Durkheim’s ideas were influential in shifting attention from
individual explanations to social forces and relations.
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QUIZ
 In the documentary “16 Tons”, the song ‘16 Tons’ is
played several times to make a point about the living
and working conditions of the miners. One particular
line
“I owe my soul to the company store”
has a particular reference. What is that reference?
Robert K. Merton
 Anomie: The strain put on individuals when widely
accepted cultural values conflict with their lived
social reality.
 Found the sources of crime within the social
structure of American society. What happens when
not everyone can achieve the American Dream?
 Those who do not succeed find themselves
condemned for their inability to make material
progress. Then there’s pressure to try to get ahead
by any means, legitimate or illegitimate.
 Deviance and crime are products of the strain
between values and the unequal distribution of
legitimate opportunities within society.
 Five responses:
Conformists: accept cultural goals and means
 Innovators: accept goals, devise new means (crime)
 Ritualists: reject goals, ritual acceptance of means
 Retreatists: reject both goals and means
 Rebels: aim to replace cultural goals and means
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Critical points
 Merton failed to appreciate the significance of
subcultures in sustaining deviant behavior.
 Reliance on official statistics is problematic.
 Overestimates the amount of lower working class
criminality, implying that everyone in this class
should experience the strain towards crime.
Contemporary significance
 When society as a whole becomes more affluent, why do
crime rates continue to rise?
 In emphasizing the social strain between rising
aspirations and persistent structural equations, Merton
points to the sense of relative deprivation among
working-class as a motivator for deviant behavior.
 Demonstrates that individual choices and motivations
are made within the wider social context, which shapes
those decisions according to place of social groups and
differential opportunities available to them.
Subcultural Accounts
 Following Merton, Cohen saw adaptive responses
resulting from contradictions within society as
occuring collectively through the formation of
subcultures.
 US studies of 1950s and 1960s
 Young men from poor neighbourhoods: no
opportunities to achieve, so replace mainstream values
with the values of gang loyalty, aggression, toughness,
delinquency.
 May be particularly acute where young men initially
accept mainstream values but are constantly frustrated
in their attempts to realise them.
Redefining deviance
 Durkheim thought that society needs deviance
because through defining deviance we become aware
of what is not deviant and learn the standards we
share as members of society.
 It is not necessary to eliminate deviance completely,
the society needs to keep it within acceptable limits.
 Erikson (1966) “Defining deviance down”
 What happens when the amount of deviant behavior
gets too high?
 The society redefines deviance so as to exempt much
conduct previously stigmatized and raising the
“normal” level so that behavior seen as abnormal by
earlier standards is no longer considered to be so.
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Deinstitutionalization of mental health patients
Sexual orientation
Religious activism
Evaluation
 Functionalist theories emphasize connections
between conformity and deviance in different social
contexts.
 Criticized for presuming that
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middle-class values have been accepted throughout the society.
A mismatch of aspirations and opportunities is confined to the
less privileged.
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White-collar crime is ignored
Interactionist theory
 Deviance as a socially constructed phenomenon.
 Reject the idea that there are types of conduct that
are inherently deviant.
 How do behaviors come to be defined as deviant?
 Why certain groups and not others are labelled as
deviant?
Labelling Theory
 Deviance not as a set of characteristics of individuals or
groups but as a process of interaction between deviants and
non-deviants.
 Deviance isn’t a property of the individual or group but the
relationship between ‘deviants’ and those who define them
thus.
 Why some people come to be tagged with a deviant label?
 In what circumstances might the following acts be seen as
deviant or as normal?
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Sitting at a bus shelter
Dancing in the street
Smoking marijuana
Appearing naked in public
 Deviant acts produce deviant individuals only
through the process of labelling.
 People who represent the forces of law and order,
or are able to impose definitions of conventional
morality on others do most of the labelling.
 The labels that create categories of deviance
express the power structure of society.
 The
rules in terms of which deviance is defined are framed by
the wealthy for the poor, by men for women, by older people
for younger people, and by ethnic majorities for minority
groups.
 Once a child is labelled a delinquent, s/he is stigmatized
and likely to be considered untrustworthy.
 Howard Becker: Deviant behavior is behavior that people
so label.
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Critical of criminological approaches that saw a clear distinction between
the “normal” and the “deviant”.
 Deviance is not about behavior but label.
 State-defined “normal” type of sexual intercourse. (AYM)
 Lemert (1972). Labelling does not only affect how
others see an individual, but also influences the
individuals sense of self-identity.
 Deviance is quite commonplace and people usually
get away with it (traffic violations vs small-scale theft
from workplace).
 Primary deviance (initial act of transgression).
 Secondary deviance (individuals accept the label and
see themselves as deviant).
 The Saints and the Roughnecks (Chambliss, 1973)
 The connections between macro-sociological
factors like social class and micro-sociological
phenomena such as how people become labelled as
deviant.
 Paradox of social control (learning to be deviant is
accentuated by the very organizations that are set
up to correct deviant behavior).
 Deviancy amplification: acceptance of a label as
‘deviant’ can create further deviant behavior.
Evaluation
 Begin with the assumption that no act is intrinsically
deviant or criminal.
 Critics argued that certain acts are universally and
consistently prohibited across all societies, such as
murder, rape and robbery.
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Is killing always regarded as murder?
Marital rape?
 Labelling changes over time.
 Focusing heavily on secondary deviance, labelling
theorists neglect the processes that lead people to
commit acts of primary deviance.
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Labelling of certain activities as deviant is not completely arbitrary
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Differences in socialization, attitudes and opportunities influence how
far people are likely to engage in behavior labelled as deviant.
 It is not clear whether labelling actually does have the
effect of increasing deviant conduct.
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Delinquent behavior increases after conviction, but is it result of
labelling? Other factors, such as increased interaction with other
delinquents or learning about new criminal opportunities may also
be involved.
Conflict theories
 Based on elements of Marxist thought, New Criminology
argues that deviance is deliberately chosen and often
political in nature.
 Reject the idea that deviance is determined by factors
such as biology, personality, anomie, social
disorganization or labelling.
 Rather, people actively choose to engage in deviant
behavior in response to the inequalities of the capitalist
system.
 Members of countercultural groups (Black Power, gay
liberation) were engaging in political acts which
challenged the social order.
The New Criminology
New Criminology frames the analysis in terms of the
structure of the society and the protection of the power of
the ruling class.
Marxist inspired analysis:
 Laws and values are created by and in the interests of the
ruling class
 Working-class deviance is a form of resistance against the
power of the ruling class
 The working class is more closely policed than the middle
classes
 Fear of crime and urban unrest distract the public’s
attention from the real problems of capitalism
 White-collar and corporate crime often go undetected and
unpunished
 Stuart Hall (1978) Policing the Crisis
 Mugging as a moral panic encouraged by the state
and the media as a way of deflecting attention away
from rising unemployment, declining wages and
other deep structural flaws in society.
 Muggers overwhelmingly portrayed as black.
 Crime and deviance patterned in such a way that
some social groups, such as young black and south
Asian communities, were more likely to be victims of
crime or seen as a social problem than others.
 Reject the idea that laws are “neutral”, to be applied
evenly across population. Laws are tools used by the
powerful to maintain their own privileged positions.
 As inequalities increase between the ruling class and
the working class, laws become more important
instruments which the powerful use to maintain
order.
 Ferguson, Baltimore
 Criminal justice system – more oppressive towards
working-class offenders (cocaine and crack cocaine).
 Tax legislation disproportionately favors the wealthy.
Law enforcement focuses on less powerful segments
of the society (prostitutes, drug-users, petty thieves)
rather than pursuing white-collar criminals which
are more harmful to the society.
 New internal security law
New criminology widened the debate about crime and deviance
to include issues such as
 Levels of harm
 Social justice
 Power
 Politics
 Crime occurs at all levels of society and should be
understood in the context of inequalities and
competing interests.
New Left / Left Realism
 1980s, a new strand of criminology appeared known as
“New Left” or “Left Realism” based on the ideas of new
criminology.
 Distanced itself from “left idealism”, which they saw as
romanticizing deviance and downplaying the real
problem of crime, particularly among the workingclass.
 Left Realism moved away from the idea that mass
media created unneccesary public disquiet by
exaggerating the figures, or that most crime was a
disguised form of protest against inequality.
 Instead, it emphasizes that crime rates are on the rise,
and the public is right to be worried.
 Left Realists, hence, argued that criminology needs to engage
more with the real issues of crime control and social policy,
rather than debate them abstractly.
 Accepts a class-based analysis of society and power.
 Draws attention to the victims of crime.
 Victim surveys give a fuller picture of crime than official
statistics. They reveal that crime is a serious problem,
particularly in impoverished inner-city areas.
 Poorest and most disadvantaged at greater risk of crime
than other social groups. Crime and victimization
concentrated in marginalized neighborhoods.
 Criminal subcultures develop where groups are
marginalized or socially excluded.
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Not only due to poverty, but due to political marginalization and relative
deprivation (people’s experience of being deprived of things that they and
everyone else is entitled to).
Remember Social Exclusion and the case of Tarlabaşı!! Processes that operate
to deny some social groups full citizenship within society.
 Criminalized youth groups operate at the margins of
respectable society and pit themselves against it.
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Rising crime rates among black youth can be attributed to the failure of racial
integration policies.
 Left realism advances realistic proposals for changes in
policing procedures and argues for community involvement
in policing to build trust.
 Law enforcement needs to become more responsive
to communities, rather than relying on military
policing techniques.
Locally elected police authorities that are accountable to citizens.
 Citizens more involved in setting policing priorities for their area.
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 Left Realism, a more pragmatic and policy-oriented
approach than its predecessors.
Evaluation
 Critics of Left Realism accept the importance of their
stress on victimization, but criticize their focus on
individual victims within narrow confines of the
political and media-driven discussion of the crime
problem.
 Focus on most visible forms of criminality (street
crimes) and neglect offenses carried out by the state
or large corporations.
 Criticized to be too much grounded in mainstream
criminology with a focus on changing policies and
losing the radical edge of new criminology.
Control Theories
 Control theories posit that crime occurs as a result of
imbalance between impulses toward criminal activity
and the social or physical controls that deter it.
 Less interested in individual motivations for carrying
out crimes based on the assumption that given the
opportunity, every rationally acting person would
engage in deviant acts.
 Crimes are result of situational decisions (a person
seeing an opportunity and taking advantage of it).
 Hirschi (1969) argued that humans are fundamentally
selfish beings who make calculated decisions about
whether or not to commit crime by weighing the
potential benefits against risks.
 Four types of social bonds linking individuals to society
and law-abiding behavior
Attachment
 Commitment
 Involvement
 Belief
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 When bonds with society are weak, delinquency and
deviance may result.
 Low levels of self-control are result of inadequate
socialization (at home or in school).
Right Realism
 Social context: election successes of Thatcher and
Reagan, vigorous law-and-order approaches to crime
in both countries (UK and US).
 Deviance seen as a property of an individual
(pathology) who acts selfishly, immorally and with
poor self-control.
 Escalation of crime due to moral degeneracy,
Decline of individual responsibility (dependence on welfare)
 Liberal education
 Collapse of the nuclear family and communities
 Erosion of traditional values
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 Dismissive of other theoretical approaches,
particularly those that link crime to poverty and
class-based inequalities.
 Favours:
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Strong sentencing policies with use of prison as punishment
and deterrence (growth of prison population)
Zero-tolerance and target-hardening policing strategies,
situational crime prevention
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Such techniques do not engage with underlying causes of crime
(poverty, social inequalities, unN) and protect only certain
segments of the population and displace delinquency into other
areas.
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Use of exclusion orders
In response to feeling of insecurity among certain segments of
population, public spaces are transformed into “security bubbles”.
 Young people excluded disproportionately because they are
perceived as greater threat to security.

 Expansion of police forces in response to increasing
crime
Does having more police translate into lower crime rates?
 What is the role of the police in controlling crime?
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Broken windows
 Wilson and Kelling (1982) “Broken Windows”
 Any sign of social disorder in a community will
encourage more serious crimes to flourish.
One unrepaired window is a sign that no one cares
 Minor acts of deviance can lead to a spiral of crime and social
decay.
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 Problem: How will the police identify what
constitutes social disorder?

Wihout a systematic definition, police might see anything as a sign
of disorder and anyone as a potential threat.
 Increasing complaints of police abuse and harrasment,
particularly by young, urban, black men (potential criminal)
 George Zimmerman (neighborhood watch, white)
shot dead Trayvon Martin (16 year-old, black male)
 http://abcnews.go.com/US/treyvon-martin-
neighborhood-watch-shooting-911-tapessend/story?id=15937881
 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/georgezimmerman-verdict-trayvonmartin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Sociological theories of crime
 Emphasize continuities between criminal and
‘normal’ behavior.
 The contexts in which certain acts are seen as
criminal and punishable by law vary widely and are
linked to issues of power and inequality within
society.
 Social context is important in criminal activities.
Social learning and social surroundings are
influential in whether someone engages in criminal
act.
 The way in which crime is understood directly affects
the policies developed to combat it.
If crime is outcome of deprivation or social disorganization,
policies might be aimed at reducing poverty and strengthening
social services.
 If seen as opportunistic and freely chosen by individuals, then
countering attempts rely on changing environments.
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