Crime Essay

While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (crime)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!

From a sociological perspective, explanations for criminal- ity are found in two levels which are the

subculture and the structural explanations. The sociological explanations emphasize aspects of

societal arrangements that are external to the actor and compelling. A sociological explanation is

concerned with how the structure of a society or its institutional practices or its persisting cultural

themes affect the conduct of its members. Individual differences are denied or ignored, and the

explanation of the overall collective behavoir is sought in the patterning of social arrangements that

is considered to be both "outside" the actor and "prior to him" (Sampson, 1985). That is, the social

patterns of power or of institutions which are held to be determinative of human action are also

seen as having been in existence before any particular actor came on the scene. In lay language,

sociological explanations of crime place the blame on something social that is prior to, external to,

and compelling of any particular person. Sociological explanations do not deny the importance of

human motivation. However, they locate the source of motives outside the individual and in the

cultural climate in which he lives. Political philosophers, sociologists, and athropologists have long

observed that a condition of social life is that not all things are allowed. Standards of behavior are

both a pro- duct of our living together and a requirement if social life is to be orderly. The concept

of a culture refers to the perceived standards of behavior, observable in both words and deeds, that

are learned, transmitted from generation to generation and somewhat durable. To call such behavior

"cultural" does not necessar- ily mean that it is "refined," but rather means that it is "cultured"--

aquired, cultivated, and persistent. Social scientists have invented the notion of a subculture to

describe variations, within a society, upon its cultural themes. In such circumstances, it is assumed

that some cultural prescrip- tions are common to all members of society, but that modifica- tions

and variations are discernible within the society. Again, it is part of the definition of a subculture, as

of a culture, that is relatively enduring. Its norms are termed a "style", rather than a "fashion", on

the grounds that the former has some endurance while the latter is evanescent. The quarrel comes,

of course, when we try to estimate how "real" a cultural pattern is and how persistent. The

standards by which behavior is to be guided vary among men and over time. Its is in this change

and variety that crime is defined. An application of this principle to crimin- ology would find that

the roots of the crime in the fact that groups have developed different standards of appropriate

behavior and that, in "complex cultures", each individual is subject to competing prescriptions for

action. Another subcultural explanation of crime grows readily out of the fact that, as we have seen,

"social classes" experience different rates of arrest and conviction for serious offenses. When

strata within a society are marked off by categories of income, education, and occupational prestige,

differences are discovered among them in the amount and style of crime. Further, differences are

usually found between these "social classes" in their tastes, interests, and morals. Its is easy to

describe these class-linked patterns as cultures. This version of the subcultural explanation of

crime holds that the very fact of learning the lessons of the subculture means that one aquires

interests and preferences that place him in greater or lesser risk of breaking the law. Others argue

that being reared in the lower class means learning a different culture from that which creates the

criminal laws. The lower- class subculture is said to have its own values, many of which run

counter to the majority interests that support the laws against the serious predatory crimes. One

needs to note that the indicators of class are not descriptions of class. Proponents of subcultural

explanations of crime do not define a class culture by any assortment of the objective indicators or

rank, such as annual income or years of schooling. The subcultural theorists is interested in

pattern- ed ways of life which may have evolved with a division of labor and which, then, are called

"class" cultures. The pattern, however, is not described by reference to income alone, or by

reference to years of schooling or occupational skill. The pattern includes these indicators, but it is

not defined by them. The subcultural theorist is more intent upon the variet- ies of human value.

these are preferred ways of living that are acted upon. In the economist's language, they are

"tastes". The thesis that is intimated, but not often explicated, by a subcultural description of

behaviors is that single or multiple signs of social position, such as occupation or educa- tion, will

have a different significance for status, and for cultures, with changes in their distribution. Money

and education do not mean the same things socially as they are more or less equitably distributed.

The change in meaning is not merely a change in the prestige value of these two, but also betokens

changes in the boundries between class cultures. Generally speaking, whether one believes

tendencies to be good or bad, the point of emphasis should be simply that the criteria of "social

class" that have been generally employed- criteria like income and schooling-may change meaning

with changes in the distribution of these advantages in a popula- tion. "Class cultures", like national

cultures, may break down. A more general subcultural explanation of crime, not necessarily in

disagreement with the notion of class cultures, attributes differences in crime rates to differences in

ethnic patterns to be found within a society. Explanations of this sort do not necessarily bear the

title "ethnic," although they are so designated here because they partake of the general assumption

that there are group differences in learned prefer- ences-in what is rewarded and punished-and that

these group differences have a perisistence often called a "tradition." Such explantions are of a

piece whether they are advanced as descriptions of regional cultures, generational differences, or

national characteristics (Hirschi, 1969). Their common theme is the differences in ways of life out

of which differ- ences in crime rates seem to flow. Ethnic explanations are proposed under an

assortment of labels, but they have in common the fact that they do not limit the notion of "sub-

culture" to "class culture" (Hirschi). They seem particularly justified where differences in social

status are not so highly correlated with differences in conduct as are other indicators of cultural

difference. Thus many sociologists in this field argue that in the United States "economic and

status positions in the community cannot be shown to account for differences [in homicide rates]

between whites and Negroes or between Southerners and Northerners" (Freeman, 1983). In

relevance, an "index of Southerness" is found to be highly correlated with homicide rates in the

United States. Therefore, there is a measureable regional culture that promotes murder. The hazard

of accepting a subcultural explanation and, at the same time, wishing to be a doctor to the body

politic is that the remedies may as well spread the disease as cure it. Among the prescriptions is

"social action" to disperse the representatives of the subculture of violence. Quite apart from the

political difficulties of implementing such an en- forced dispersion, the proposal assumes more

knowledge than what is available. We, as a society, do not know what pro- portion of the violent

people would have to be dispersed in order to break up their culture; and, what is more important,

we do not know to what extent the dispersed people would act as "culture-carriers" and

contaminate their hosts. While sociologists acknowledge the plausibility of med- leys of causes

operating to affect crime rates, their atten- tion has been largely diverted to specific kinds of social

arrangements that may affect the damage we do to each other. Among the more prominent

hypotheses stress the impact of social structure upon behavior. These proposals minimize the facts

of subcultural differences and point to the sources of criminal motivation in the patterns of power

and privilege within a society. They shift the "blame" for crime from how people are to where they

are (Sampson). Such explanations may still speak of "subcultures", but when they do, they use the

term in a weaker sense than is intended by the subcultural theorist. A powerful and popular

sociological explanation of crime finds its sources in the "social order". This explanation looks to

the ways in which human wants are generated and satisfied and the ways in which rewards and

punishments are handed out by the "social system". There need be no irreconcilable contradiction

between subcultural and structural hypotheses, but their different em- phases do produce quarrels

about facts as well as about remedies. An essential difference between these two explana- tions is

that the "structuralists" assume that all the members of a society want more of the same things than

the "sub- culturalists" assume they want (Herrnstein, 1985). In this sense, the structural theses tend

to be egalitarian and demo- cratic (Herrnstein). The major applications of structuralism assume that

people everywhere are basically the same and that there are no significant differences in abilities or

desires that might account for lawful and criminal careers. Attention is paid, then, to the

organization of social relations that affects the differential exercise of talents and interests which

are assumed to be roughly equal for all individuals of a society. Modern structural explanations of

criminogenesis derive from the ideas of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Durkheim viewed

the human being as a social animal as well as a physical organism. To say that a man is a social

animal means more than the obvious fact that he lives a long life as a helpless child depending on

others for his survival. It means more, too, than that homo sapiens is a herding animal who tends to

live in colonies. For Durkheim, the significantly social aspect of human nature is that human

physical survival also depends upon moral connections. Moral connections are, of course, social.

They represent a bond with, and hence a bond- age to, others (Christiansen, 1977). Durkheim

states that "it is not true, that human activity can be released from all re- straint" (Christiansen). The

restraint that is required if social life is to ensue is a restraint necessary also for the psychic health

of the human individual. Social conditions may strengthen or weaken the moral ties that Durkheim

saw as a condition of happiness and healthy survival. Rapid changes in one's possibilities, swings

from riches to rags and, just as disturbing, form rags to riches, may constitute an impulse to

volutary death. Excessive hopes and unlimited desires are avenues to misery (Christiansen). Social

conditions that allow a "deregulation" of social life Durkheim called states of "anomie". The word

derives from Greek roots meaning "lacking in rule or law". As used by contemporary sociologists,

the word anomie and its English eq- uivalent, "anomy", are applied ambiguosly, sometimes to the

social conditions of relative normlessness and sometimes to the individuals who experience a lack

of rule and purpose in their lives. It is more appropriate that the term be restricted to societal

conditions of relative rulelessness for our purpose. When the concept of anomie is employed by

structurlists to explain behavoir, attention is directed toward the "strains" produced in the individual

by the conflicting, confusing, or impossible demands of one's social enviroment. Writers have

described anomie in our "schizoid culture", a culture that is said to present conflicting prescriptions

for conduct (Ferr- ington, 1991). They have also perceived anomie in the tension between

recommended goals and available means. It is import- ant to keep the word "anomie" in mind to all

explanations discussed. The American sociologist R.K. Merton has applied Durk- heim's ideas to

the explanation of deviant behavior with part- icular reference to modern Western societies. His

hypothesis is that a state of anomie is produced whenever there is a dis- crepancy between the

goals of human action and the societally structured legitimate means of achieving them. The

hypothesis is simply, that crime breeds in the gaps between aspirations and possibilities. The

emphasis given to this idea by the pattern of social arrangements. Its is "the structure" of a society,

which includes some elements of its culture, that builds desires and assigns opportunities for their

satisfac- tion (Herrnstein). The emphasis given to this idea by the structuralists is that both the

goals and the means are given by the pattern of social arrangements. It is "the structure" of a

society, which includes some elements of its culture, that builds desires and assigns opportunities

for their satisfaction. This structural explanation sees illegal behavior as resulting from goals,

particulary materialistic goals, held to be desirable and possible for all, that motive behavior in a

societal context that provides only limited channels of achievement. It is a thesis that has

appropriately been named "strain theory" (Hirschi). Sociologist R.K. Merton devised another

theory dwelling in delinquency. This type of explanation sees delinquency as ad- aptive, as

instrumental in the achievement of "the same kinds of things" everyone wants. Its sees crime, also,

as partly reactive--generated by a sense of injustice on the part of delinquents at having been

deprived of the goof life they had been led to expect would be theirs. This hypothesis, which may

with accuracy be described as the social worker's favorite, looks to the satisfaction of desires, rather

than the lowering of expectations, as the cure for crime. To be sure, it ap- proaches the satisfaction

of desires not directly but indirectly, through...

1. Blumstein, Alfred. 1979. "An Analysis." Crime and Delinquency 29
(October): 546-60. 2. Christiansen, K.O. 1977. "A Review of Studies of Crimin- ality." In Bases
of Criminal Behavoir, ed. S.A. Mednick and K.O. Christiansen, p. 641, 654-669 New York:
Gardner. 3. Ferrington, David P. 1991. "Explaining the Beginning and Progress." In Advances in
Criminological Theory, ed. Joan McCord, vol. 3, p. 191-199,New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction. 4.
Freeman, Richard B. 1983. "The Relationship Between Criminality and the Disadvantaged." Ch. 6
In Crime and Public Policy, ed. James Q. Wilson, p. 917-991. San Francisco: ICS Press. 5.
Herrnstein, Richard J. 1985. Crime and Human Nature. P. 359-374, New York: Simon and
Schuster. 6. Hirschi, Travis. 1969. Causes of Delinquency. P. 30-31, 89-102, Berkeley: University
of California Press. 7. Sampson, R.J. 1985. "Neighborhood Family Structure and the Risk of
Victimization." In The Social Ecology of Crime, ed. J. Byrne and R. Sampson, 25-46. New York:
Springer-Verlag. You should cite this paper as follows:

MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 25 May, 2012 from
    <http://essaymania.com/65958/crime>

More College Papers

Cover Girl Cosmetics essay
Cover Girl Cosmetics Why Cover Girl is one of the most successful cosmetic organizations since the 1960’s? Cover Girl cosmetics have been the top-seller since 1961 and are still going strong. It is hard, with all the advanced lines of make-up for one product to go as far as Cover girl has, so how

Corporal Punishment essay
Dear Sir, I am writing in reply to the recent publication of an item on the topic of corporal punishment. I do not agree that it is needed to bring discipline back into our schools. It is assumed that a child who has been caned would be less likely to commit another offence , but this was never

Controversy Of Cloning And Dna essay
Members of Congress: I am writing in reference to the possible upcoming technology of cloning humans and altering DNA tissue makeup of the unborn child. This issue will come before Congress for approval or disapproval in the near future. This technology would allow scientists to alter the tissue of