Discuss the contributions sociologists have made to the understanding of crime and

deviance

Crime is actions which break the law in the country and individual is in or crime refers to those
actives that break the law of the land and are subject to official punishment. (Haralambos and
Holborn 2008). Deviance is closely related to crime but refers more to the cause of such crimes
deviance consists of those acts which do not follow the norms and expectations of a particular
social group (Haralambos and Holborn 2008). This essay will be discussing both crime and
deviance in relations to the causes of this, specially biological theories which suggest that a
criminals is predetermined by the genetics to be criminals and the opposite theory which is its ,
mental or psychological factors which cause crime and deviance, the essay also includes
counter arguments to both these theories. Also being discussed will be crime statics and how
accurate these are and some issues with these statistics and crime and the media will be
discussed and the impact media has on the public perception of crime. Also the sociological
theories of functionalism and Marxism will be discussed in particular, the functionalist
perspective that deviance is essential to society and the Marxist view that deviance is a result of
the economic environment.

Physiological or biological theory's is that some individuals are more likely to be involved in
crime and deviance because of their genetic makeup and that they have inherited these
qualities. Most of these theories were developed in 1800s when some scientific explanations of
crime and deviance were developed, one argument was that perpetrators of crime were more
primitive humans and things such as large jaws and large ears could be indicators of criminals.
Criticisms of these theories are with the development of science there are very limited scientific
evidence of this theory. Another critique is that behaviour that may result from biological causes
does not necessarily lead to criminal acts and their is little link between biological factors and
crime.

Psychological theory is that they define deviants as different and abnormal from the rest of the
population, but also see the deviant as someone who is sick and in need of help rather than
someone who is bad. Psychologist John Bolwby believed that deviance was not inherited but
was the result of early childhood and a lack of maternal bond. Bowlby authored a book on this
subject Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves and said that children needed emotional security during
the first seven years of their lives (Haralambos and Holborn 2008) and that the best way to
achieve this was through consistent contact with their mother, otherwise they were at an
increased risk for crime and deviance and even a psychopathic personality could develop. Many
sociologists have disregarded these theories because of the methods of study and because the
lack of cohesion within the psychological community on the development of personality
characteristics. Another criticism is the issue of the effect that childhood has on an individual for
the rest of their lives, many sociologists believe that an individual is not doomed because of
what happened in their early life, but believe that other factors later in life can also affect an
individual.
The functionalist perspective on deviance is that society as a whole is responsible not just the
individual. Some functionalist even argue that deviance is a necessary part of all society's, and
that it preforms positive functions for social system (Haralambos and Holborn 2008) this is
because functionalist believe that crime kin inevitable and is generated by society itself.
Deviance is only harmful to society when its rate is to high or too low and that deviance can be
a catalyst for social change and this can in turn lead to society's progressing. What the
functionalist theory seems to ignore is the negative affects crime can have on the victim and the
criminal and who the laws which are the outcome of deviance benefit.

Traditional Marxists view on deviance is that deviance is a result of economic factors and the
proletariat's are forced to commit crime to survive and most laws are there to protect the
bourgeoisie's property and that in a communist society there would be no crime. The problem
with this perspective it is a rather simplistic view and there are many factors that influence
crime, not just economic factors and this is ignored by the Marxist's. Another problem with this
perspective is that in a communist society there would be no crime; but history has shown that
this did not work in the USSR,China or Cuba.

Police, courts and other government agency's provide the statistics which is the basis for many
theories of crime. In the UK there is a constant pattern of who commits crime and in what area.
The official statistics report that members of minority's as well as young men are most likely to
be involved in crime. Many sociological accept the statistics as valid data, but there are some
problems with this. Firstly there is a large number of unreported crime that will never make it into
the official statistics, so the official statistics can not be regarded as the complete picture.
Another issue is that some official statistics have been accused of bias, there have been self
report studies by the criminals that suggest they may be a bias against working class criminals ,
where as middle class criminals tend to get lesser sentences and better treatment
The perception of crime has been greatly affected the media, although overall crime has
reduced , the reports of crime in the media has greatly increased. And sociologists have found
the people's fear of crime is directly related to how much time they spend watching TV of
listening to the radio. An example of this is between August 1972 and August 1973, sixty events
were reported as muggings in the national daily papers (Haralambos and Holborn 2008) and
many stories of dramatic muggings were highlighted in the press and it was quoted that there
was a 129 per cent increase in muggings(Haralambos and Holborn 2008) in fact there was no
such crime detailed in the crime statistics, so how could it increased when official there was no
such crime. This shows how the Media can over exaggerate and even fabricate statistics,
causing fear form the public. Another example of media affecting the public view on crime is that
of crime by black offenders, crimes by black offenders were widely reported in the media, but
other factors other than the criminals race were not, factors such as unemployment and social
factors were not reporting leading some members of the public to believe that the problem was
the criminals race and disregard other factors.

There are many misconceptions about crime and deviance, mainly in the factors which cause
these problems. The problem is that common ideas of who commits crime and why and how
often is often misunderstood because of media attention and misleading official statistics.
Another debate is where it is biological or psychological factors which are the cause of crime
and deviance and most sociologists would say neither, as even though in early days of
sociology is was widely believed that is was biology which effected crime and deviance with
advances in science is has now widely been dis proven. And psychologically factors are thought
to be more complex issues rather then it just being a result of early childhood.