Outline and assess none sociological theories of crime and deviance?

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Outline and assess none sociological theories of crime and deviance?

Deviance is behavior that violates the norms and values of society and induces a negative reaction in a majority of the members of that society. An example of this would be burping in public. Crime is also behavior that violates the norms and values of society, however the behavior is deemed so bad to society that the state has put in place rules and punishments to stop this behavior from happening. An example of this is murder, and the punishment in UK is life imprisonment. Functionalist believe that deviance isn't a bad thing and that every society will generate deviance and have crime rates because the existence of norms and values and individual differences create deviance and rule breaking.

There are many none sociological theories of crime and deviance. They can be split up into two categories biological and psychological theories. First I will look at biological theories and outline and assess their views then I will look a psychological theories.

Biological theories believe there is a physical difference between people who commit crime and deviance. They believe they are different to normal people in some measurable way. One biological theory is the evolutionary theory by Lombroso. He discovered physical characteristics that most prisoners had, these were large jaws and acute eyesight. He found this out by comparing and measuring prisoners in Italian jails. Lombroso referred that criminals were a lesser developed human being and that were more like monkeys and apes. Lombroso went on to say that by finding out these characteristics you could predict who was going to be a criminal. In evaluation of this theory I can see that his finding were quite valid as he did make detailed measurements and compare them with a group of soldiers. However this theory could be seen as very unrepresentative as he only measured criminals in jail, he didn't do anything about all the criminals that don't get caught, for various reasons as the crime is to trivial, or the witness is in fear of reprisals. Finally even if this theory is correct and there is an association between physique and criminal conviction this does not prove causation. This is because prisoners don't have anything really to do in prison, and most of them probably spend their time keeping fit and working out.
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Another biological theory is the klinefelter's syndrome. This theory looked and the fact that an extra Y chromosome makes people more violent and so they commit crimes. This extra chromosome gives a low IQ and also makes the men hairy and taller. The positive of this theory is that the extra y chromosome is very common in the prisoner population. However it doesn't like the last theory take into account all the criminals that didn't get caught. Also this theory cant explain then why theirs non-violent crimes such as insurance fraud and computer hacking i.e. stealing peoples money ...

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