Crime and Deviance Model Answers (actual candidate)

June 2002 Paper

 a)     Identify and briefly describe two ways in which deviance and/or crime may be related to one or more of the following areas: education; wealth; poverty and welfare; work and leisure.

 Answer

1.     Deviance can be related to poverty and welfare, as there is numerous evidence linking the working class, poverty and crime.  The working class are considered to be materially deprived; they suffer from material deprivation.  They lack important resources due to their financial status, such as equipment for education needs and other practical resources that may be required for schooling.  Thus education also links with poverty and crime.  Such resources are essential in high educational attainment, however, where the child is materially deprived he will miss out on key educational tools and as a result miss out on education as a whole.  Due to which, roads to success are blocked for working class individuals, leaving an open door to the easy benefits of crime.

2.     Crime can be related to work and leisure.  Much of white collar crime and corporate crime is committed at an occupational level by the middle class, who are able to cover up their criminal behaviour due to their position in the social hierarchy.  This can be related to Marxism, because they state rules and regulations are made in the favour of the middle classes.

This answer received 8 out of 8 from the examiner.

   b)    With reference to Item A, examine some of the problems involved in using statistics to measure crime in different areas.  

Answer  

          Crime statistics are notoriously difficult to rely upon in any type of analysis.  They are prone to be misleading, but before going any further it is necessary to know where they derive from.   They are published by the government once a year and provide the police, courts, criminologists and anyone else who is interested information on two specific types of data.  Firstly, information on crimes known to the police and secondly, they provide social characteristics  on those who have committed the crimes, such as age, gender, race, etc.

In using statistics to measure crime in different areas, many crimes may go unrecorded, depending on the area.  In some areas a crime may be covered up in order to maintain the reputation of the area, which can explain why rural area statistics are comparatively lower.  Some crimes are unrecorded due to the 3 stage process, where a crime must be identified by someone who observes it, it must then be reported to an authority who will then decide whether it is serious enough to be recorded or not.  The final stage is where the courts become involved and there is a conviction; it is only at this stage that the crime is ‘recorded’.

During this lengthy process a crime can easily be lost and this can consequently distort figures.

The statistics in the table seem to have derived from victimisation studies that are used by the British Crime Survey, in which victims are asked if they had been a victim of crime in the previous year.  Although a lot more reliable than official statistics, they are also prone to disadvantages.  Jock Young stated that not all people asked to participate actually take part, around 20 to 25%, which in statistical terms can disorientate figures quite drastically.  Also, not all types of crime are uncovered by participants, such as embarrassing crimes, (sexual abuse and domestic violence), which have noticeably not been included in the table.  Finally, public perceptions on crime are constantly changing; in an inner city area, for example, some will regard vandalism as a normal aspect of society and will therefore not regard it as a crime.

The statistics are a Positivist approach; scientific method, which has been highly criticised for not providing enough information.  Numbers and statistics can only provide a limited insight in to crime and deviance.  Chambliss carried out a study on the Saints and the Roughnecks, finding that both groups were stereotyped according to their class.  This can be applied to the present statistics in the table, to explain the low crime rate in rural areas.  Police bias against working class deviants means they are more likely to be arrested for crimes than middle class criminals in rural areas.

 This answer received 7 out of 12 from the examiner.  Only some awareness of other research methods is shown.  No mention is made of the difficulties of measuring crime in different areas e.g. middle class and working class areas.

  c)     Assess the usefulness of subcultural theories in understanding crime and deviance.

Answer

          Subcultural theories stem from a functionalist viewpoint,  namely to do with norms and values within society.  Such theories state that subcultures are groups within society that have different norms and values to that of normal society.  A01  Thus, deviance is generated through the conformity of the norms and values by the members of the subculture.

Cohen A01 provided a modification of Merton’s work that was based on a functionalist view of norms and values and anomie.  He criticised Merton’s work A02 for stating that deviance was individualistic, Cohen believed it was a group response A01 in the form of a subculture.  He believed that the origins of deviance lies in lower working class education A01, which leads to poor qualifications and dead end jobs.  For example, Paul Willis studied the ‘Lads and the Lobes’ and discovered how the school boys developed their own counter school culture, which leads them to be educationally lacking.  Such a culture derives from cultural deprivation A01, which occurs when a low income subculture group is deprived.  The cultural deprivation theory places the blame on parents, neighbourhood and generally the subculture, which deprives children of the necessary skills, knowledge and attitude required for educational achievement.  As a result of this, lower class boys suffer status frustration A01, which makes them unhappy with their position in society, due to which they reject mainstream values and replace them with alternatives.  The members of the delinquent subculture place a high value on activities such as vandalism, theft and joyriding A01, and attached to this is the reward of being recognised within the group by peers.  Thus, explaining why some commit crimes that are non-utilitarian (do not provide monetary reward).

Cohen has therefore provided a link between social structure, subculture and crime in one go.  However, he has been criticised for placing too much emphasis on class A02, particularly lower class and ignoring the effects of middle class crime and whether they produce subculture or not.  For example A02, the Teds were a middle class group that had a delinquent subculture revolving around racial aggression A02.