Deviance and Criminology Theories: Article Review

Howard S. Becker- Labeling theory

In this theory, I can understand better about the deviance and criminal behavior.Deviance refer to rule breaking behavior which is the recognized violation of cultural norms. However crime is is a wrong against society proclaimed by the laws and if commited under certain circumstances, punishable by society which is the violation of a society’s formally enacted criminal law. Therefore deviance is a process of interaction between deviant and non-deviant and the context in which criminality is being interupted.

The more powerful and dominat group in societyis create and apply deviant label to subordinate group. The causes of crimes can be related to social stratification.

However, I also have disagree about this theory. This is because of the theory is neglect the important of collecting the response of social control.Besides that this theory also cannot explain well that why people likes to break the law.Becker has used the Hughes’ distinction between the master and status trait (Becker, 1963, P.

Get quality help now
KarrieWrites
KarrieWrites
checked Verified writer

Proficient in: Criminology Theories

star star star star 5 (339)

“ KarrieWrites did such a phenomenal job on this assignment! He completed it prior to its deadline and was thorough and informative. ”

avatar avatar avatar
+84 relevant experts are online
Hire writer

9) to analyse the deviant identity. For example, doctor has a certificate that fulling certain requirement and is liscened to give medicine to patient compare to those who does not have this status. I was very agree with what Hughes has stated.

In a nutshell,labeling someone as criminal can cause other to treat them more negativity.The person may act more negativity if they are being treated negativity.For example, if we label our child with crime and one days they totally will involves themselves in criminal activities and become more serious and serious.

Get to Know The Price Estimate For Your Paper
Topic
Number of pages
Email Invalid email

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy. We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

"You must agree to out terms of services and privacy policy"
Write my paper

You won’t be charged yet!

This may because of psychological pressure and sociological pressure on the person that we are labelling them as crime.

Stuart Henry – The Social Construction of Crime

According to social constructionists, what counts as crime and deviance varies depending on who is defining it. “There are no purely objective definition; all definitions are value laden and biased to some degree” and what is defined as crime by law “is somewhat arbitrary, and represents a highly selective process” (Barak, 1998, p.21).Based on this article, they believe that there is reality exists and that why social construction is created. We all know that humans has the power to creates reality and shape the world. So, the crime is a social reality. The norms and value of society is represent the whole society.

After reading this article, I know that there is three deviance and crime constructionalism in society which is radical, contextual and postmodern.In radical contructionists, Woolgar reject the existence of independent objective reality, because they view everything is social constructed. As we all know that people observe the world is from different perspectives and make it aas a individual view.However,in contextual constructionist, it is opposite of radical constructionists. They state that not everything is a social constructed as human have difference culture and also perform different from one individual to another individual in society.So, the exist cannot define a person or a things. It allow us to use emprical evidence to gives support in our idea work.In the same time, we can said that contextual constructionist is a claims making process. The last one is postmodern. It is a process of claims the truth of others peoples. It pay more attention on the things that we cannot predict rather than the things that we can predict.For an example, they may emphasizes on what is the news types of crime or deviant behavior will happen in our society in future.

In generally, the social construction of crime had been critic by pro-realistic and anti-realistic. Pro-realistic critic that social construction of crime is not scientific whereas anti-realistic is using the scientific ideology to claim legitimacy. Best pointed that they only focus on theory and this may give harm to social construction of crime and ask them don’t to give any new ideology in order to maintain th estability of social construction of crime. Besides in this article conclusion, I have gain the idea that if the deviance, social problem and crime is situated in deconstructionist analysis, they have to change it to make the production slow and make it less harmful to constitute.

Emile Durkheim – The Normal and Pathological

Most of the people may think that crimes is a society problem. In my opinion I also agree that crime is a society problem because human created the society and when they fails to obey the rules it is considered as a crime. After I have reading ths article, I noticed that Durkheim is argued that crime should be seen as something which is functional and is necssary for society rather than something pathological which is a symptom of a society diseased. He points out that crime is present across all the time and space. We knows that all society have already experiences the crime. Therefore, crime has to be seen as a normality in our life. For example like robbery, gambling and drug or alcohol addiction is happening arround the world and it is easy to see this on newspaper or people surrounding us in this modern era.

Besides that, Durkheim also argue that crime is a functional. When a crime is being punish, the society must have their own rules.If the crime is not commited then the values of society will become blurred. If there is no punishment, then there will be no way of reesablishing the values that crime offends. Durkheim define that culturally relative is constitutes to crime rather than is universal. A crime is a crime because it offends the value and is not because of there is fundamental wrong.

In conclusion, we can see that Durkhiem use the two social facts in a research which is normal fact and pathological social fact. For example, kiss a men in public in our society will be view as gay, but in other country it may view as a normal situation. So, a normal fact in one society may become pathological in one society.

Alexander B. Smith and Harriet Pollack – The Reach of the Law: Sin, Crime and Poor Taste

Based on this article,a deviant person is one who does something we would not to do.Thus, deviant is consider as a subjective, but not all is cultural relative.Examples like rape, murder and assault is consider as crime. When social change occur, the old practices had became an acceptable and the new practices become objectionable. The one not acceptable will be label as deviant. In the middle America, they don’t care about racial, sexual discrimination and they aslo state that contraception and absorting doesn’t seem wrong in their societies because it can limit the growth in welfare (Smith and Pollack, 1973, p.3). In my opinion, I was totally disagree about this point because absorting can bring sides effect to the women and it is already consider as crime.In the same times some of the anthropology proffesor will said that murder and rape is a deviant. I also disagree because rape and muder is consider as crime not deviant.

Deviant can be divided into three categories which is sin, crime and poor taste.Crime is a acts which is objective, measurably harmful to community and it is totally unacceptable by any society that wishes to have a stable organism. Sin is refered to the actions are originally prohibited by dominant religion and religion community which has involves into secular laws. For eaxmple, prostitution and obesity is no measurable damage to unwilling victim, and if it is conduct as break the rule, it is already refer to as victimless crime. Besides that, the development of economic, scientific discoveries, communication and mass media can reduce the social and cultural isolation. This is due to we can use advances technology such as smartphones to communicates the people which are very far from us. Another one of deviant is poor taste. The human behavior is consider as a matter of taste. In this point, I was very agree to what author has stated “the man who wear skirt in public is consider as sexual deviant”. Besides that, they also has symbolic conduct which is a rational objectives. We need to recognise that if symbolism is exist and if it is truly is a disadvantages then action will be taken to regulate the society. As an example, boys use cosmetic product may be seem as no problem in today.

Pollack pointed out that the rates of female crime is almost the same as the rate of male crime, but it occur lower due to there is given more tolerant while carrying on a criminal charge in a court.

In a nutshell, the deviant conduct is present everywhere in our society. However, to solve this deviant issue is a big problem because it is affected by individual psychology, scoiology and also they has the bigger feeling inside they heart that they want to do an abnormal behavior.

Jeff Ferrell - Culture, Crime, and Cultural Criminology

Culture criminology focus on how the cultural practice mix with crime and crime control in a modern set up. It use the meaning, symbolism and power relations in explain the causes and effect of crime and deviance. I believe that all of us know the culture cannot be seen because of it social factor like ethnicity and class and these contribute in major way and they are not the only things that affect it. (Ferrell, Hayward and Young, 2008, p.2 ).Besides that, cultural criminologist can observe why norms are created, and how they action threaten them and why laws are created and broken. The concepts of culture helps us to better understand about relationship between order and disorder. Thus, to understand the action of criminals and laws enforcement and the laws maker, they are seeing into conflict between legal authorities and deviant subcultures in modern society ( Ibid P.4).

Next, crime is define as culture. Criminal subcultures is shaped by class, gender, age and inequalities.Ferrell points that, to understand the raelity of crime and criminalization, a cultural criminology should take place in dynamic of criminal subcultures and dynamic of mass media. (Ferrell, 1995, P.3). They should understand media, languages, symbolism and styles. Thus, making sense of crime meanig that paying more attention on culture.As an examples, over the past 50 years popular music has shown us the meaning of crimilization of culture for instance punk in 1970s.Another one example is Sex Pistols. It has a violent image and lead the media to represent punk subculture as a threat of society. This phenomena continues growing up with gangster rap and artwork. (Ferrell, 1995, P.4). In the other hand, they also define the rap musicians most come from poverty and ethnic discrimination. In my opinion, I am not agree with this author’s view.This is because if there is a discrimination happen they will be stop to create album and not continue singing any more.

Morever, I was very agree with what author has say “first we must investigate youth culture as primary setting for production of alternative style and second, we critically explore youth as category of social, cultural, criminal starctification with class, gender and ethnicity.Especially the minority of young people, they find themselves is in the intersection points between crime and culture (Ferrell, 1995, p.9).

Through this article we understand better about cultural criminology.Cultural criminolgy also paying more attention on everydays crime and individual or group that cause it over emphasizes on large scale industrial or political crimes (Ferrell, Hayward and Young, 2008, P.15).Lastly,the most things I would like to highlight at here is the relationship between the culture and crime is also refer to the relationship between criminology and contemporary social social and cultural life as it can be seen in cultural criminology.

References

  1. Banks, C. (2017). Criminal Justice Ethics: Theory and Practice. United States: SAGE Publications, Inc
  2. Barak, G. (1998). Integrating criminologies. Boston : Allyn & Bacon.
  3. Downes, D. & Rock, P. (2007). Understanding Deviance. United States:Oxford University Press
  4. Durkhiem,E. (1893). The Rules of Sociological Method,(pp. 65-73). New York:The Free Press
  5. Ferrell, J. (1995). Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3(2), 25-42.
  6. Guba, E. (Ed.). (1990). The paradigm Dialog. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
  7. Howard S. Becker, (1963). Outsider: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, (pp. 78-81).New York: Free Press
  8. Hengry, S. (2009) Social construction of Crime.In J.Miller (Ed.), 21st Century Criminology: A reference handbook. (pp. 296-305).Thousand Oaks : SAGE Publications, Inc.doi: 10.4135/9781412971997.n34
  9. THE REACH OF THE LAW: SIN, CRIME AND POOR TASTE ALEXANDER B. SMITH HARRIET POLLACK
  10. McBurney,D. & White, T. (2003). Research Methods. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
  11. Thio, A. & Taylor, J. D. & Schwartz, M. D. (2013). Deviant Behaviour.United States: Pearson Education Ibid
Updated: Jan 24, 2024
Cite this page

Deviance and Criminology Theories: Article Review. (2024, Jan 24). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/deviance-and-criminology-theories-article-review-essay

Live chat  with support 24/7

👋 Hi! I’m your smart assistant Amy!

Don’t know where to start? Type your requirements and I’ll connect you to an academic expert within 3 minutes.

get help with your assignment