Weber treats social class as an economic matter and agrees with Marx that ownership of productive property is an important basis for class formation. However, Weber defines class in terms of position in the economic marketplace with regards to a person’s qualifications, income and occupation etc.
Now that the working class have been defined as to who and what they are, it must now be looked at as to why they are more likely to go to prison more than any other class.
Many sociologists have defined crime as:
‘those actions which are deemed so damaging to the interests of the community that the state determines that it must take a direct role in identifying and acting against the criminal.’ (Taylor et al:2000:455).
There have been many theories put forward as to why people commit crimes and these include physiological, psychological but with the main theories being sociological.
Considering theories of physiological characteristics Lombroso was one of the first writers to try to link crime to human biology. He identified a number of genetically determined characteristics, which were often found in criminals, these include: a large jaw, high cheekbones, large ears and sometimes extra toes and fingers.
Other research comes from Sheldon & Glueck who claimed to have found a causal relationship between a person’s physical build and their criminal activity. They argue that stocky and rounded people tend to be more aggressive than other builds.
Overall, none of the research convincingly demonstrates a strong relationship between biology and crime and it also fails to take into account external factors as to why the crime may have been committed.
Psychologists have also looked into why people commit crime and it was found that they hold similar views to the physiological in that people who are seen as different can predispose themselves to crime.
Bowlby believed we become deviant due to our early childhood socialisation in that if we are deprived of ‘motherly love’ during the early years of our lives then a psychopathic personality could develop leading us to a life of crime and deviance. Most sociologists reject this theory due to the amount of priority given to early childhood experiences and also because like the physiological theories it ignores external factors such as social and cultural.
There are many different bands of sociologists who have looked at theories of crime and these include the functionalists, the Marxists and also Weber.
The Functionalists believe crime serves as a good function because if a person commits a crime and becomes imprisoned it then teaches the rest of society that if they commit a crime they will be punished.
Merton’s theory of ‘Social structure and anomie’ in 1969 believes that value consensus can create deviance because even though every society may share the same values the people in these societies are from different classes and so this may cause them to be deviant.
Merton’s other theory ‘Cultural goals and Institutionalised means’ suggests that success is measured in terms of wealth and material possessions. His studies found that great importance is attached to success but it is not important as to how you achieve that success. Therefore, people will strive for success by any means possible even if it means breaking the law. However, there are many critics who disagree with this theory because even though everybody is entitled to achieve success they may not want it.
Albert Cohen’s theory of Delinquent Subcultures is a criticism of Merton’s work as he suggests that each society has it’s own culture with norms and values such as success but these norm’s and values can be rejected by some people which Merton does not take into account and because they may be rejected, a subculture may be formed with it’s own norm’s and values that this small group of people agree with.
From Cohen’s studies he found that lower working class boys suffered from status frustration due to poverty, material and social deprivation and in order to resolve their frustration they rejected the mainstream goals (norms and values) in their society and replaced them with their own. Through this some turned to crime making them a delinquent subculture, which becomes positive for them as they can gain status from being in a gang. The crimes they tended to commit though were non-utilitarian such as vandalism and graffiti not hurting a single person, only society, which is what they had been rejected from.
This theory can be criticised because Cohen fails to see other reasons why gangs of boys commit crimes rather than just rejection from society as a lot of them do it for the fun and thrill of breaking the law.
New Left Realists are another branch of sociologists that have looked at crime statistics and their research showed that crime levels were higher in the inner cities and they believed this to be true because inner city youth tended to prey on weaker working class people than themselves in those areas such as the elderly, single parents and ethnic minorities as these are some of main victims of crime.
Jock Young, another left realist believed that the people who commit crime develop subcultures to cope with their problems and from this each generation of youth born into that area will then continue to create these subcultures and so the crime will continue and also reflect the changing nature of society.
New Right Realists hold the opposite view to the left in that their dominant view follows the Conservative governments thinking that led to a number of beliefs and consequences such as ‘people commit crime because it benefits them’. These ideologies then led to laws and enforcements dominated by certain stereotypes believed to be high in committing crime in order to try and reduce crime levels as they strongly believe that we should make criminals suffer for their behaviour.
Overall, there are many different groups of sociologists who have developed reasons as to why people commit crime. Some reasons can be supported with more evidence than others but all of them have flaws. This group of theorists tend to concentrate on one main reason, and not a wider framework to consider other factors especially external.
These wider framework factors include: families and households, education, mass media, poverty and welfare, work and leisure, health, culture and identity, statistics, policing and many others.
Many of these factors in combination could explain why it seems that people from working class backgrounds commit more crimes than any other class and therefore more likely to go to prison than for committing that crime.
Firstly looking at poverty and wealth because this is how people are categorised into their classes in their first place. It was found the highest crime rates are in the inner city zones, which was found from statistics by the New Left Realists (as mentioned earlier) and also by Shaw and Mckay in 1942. Many people living within the inner cities are working class and steal from those weaker than themselves making them the main victims of crime as well as the ones committing them. The Institute for Public Policy Research 2004’s report found that people living in the UK earning less than £5,000 a year were twice as likely to be burgled compared to those household’s earning £30,000 or more. (The Guardian, Mon. 2nd August 2004. ‘Rich-poor gap ‘has widened under Blair’’.) Again, supporting the idea that they are also the most likely to be victims of crime as well as committing them.
There is believed to be a ‘cycle of poverty’ whereby children are born into poverty and suffer in their early years from poor nutrition and housing and this then leads to poor health meaning that their school attendance is likely to be poor. Which can then lead to few qualifications and skills and onto low paid and often unpleasant and casual work which may lead many into petty theft which gains them a criminal record and sometimes imprisonment and unemployment which then makes them dependent on benefits and often results in teenage pregnancy and so again the cycle restarts with another child being born into poverty.
The government also now has a zero tolerance on benefit fraud meaning that the people committing can face prison if there are found out. This means that they’re targeting poor people and a lot of the time the people committing benefit fraud actually need the money and are desperate, and if they are found out they are then given a criminal record which makes it a lot harder for them to find work and so can lead them into a serious life of crime. This is they’re latest plea to the public:
Every year we estimate that benefit cheats cost around £2 billion in stolen benefits. They are taking public money from people who really need it. The total cost of this fraud is equivalent to £80 a year from each family in Great Britain.
The Department for Work and Pensions is taking positive action to:
Source: Department for work and Pensions.
Yet, they fail to mention how much tax fraud costs us each year…..
In an article written in the Observer in October 1988, it suggested that the government’s treatment of tax and social security offenders shows that there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. Every individual who is caught committing benefit fraud, around 700 are prosecuted for offences and today this amount is probably doubled if not tripled. Where as the Inland Revenue sees prosecution as a last resort and instead prefers to secure ‘a reasonable settlement by agreement’. And it’s also known to be very hard to be found out. ‘You have to be very unlucky, very stupid, and very crooked to be done by the Inland Revenue’.
Next, looking into explanations of crime from families and households, West and Farrington (1973) found that children who come from larger families are more likely to become delinquent. Their study showed that compared with boys who had fewer siblings, boys who had four or more siblings by the age of ten, were twice as likely to offend and this was regardless of their parents economic status. (Risk and Protective factors of Child Delinquency. Child Delinquency Bulletin. April 2003.) Although, research has also shown that working class families tend to be larger than middle class families. Family structure is also thought to be an explanation, even though many single parents are able to raise their children very well, children from single parent families are at a higher risk of behavioural problems. (Pearson et al, 1994). Compared to partnered woman, single mothers report more mental health problems, (Guttentag, Sasin and Belle, 1980) have higher levels of residential mobility, (Brooks-Gunn, 1996) and they also have fewer resources to monitor their children’s activities and whereabouts. Each of these factors can easily contribute to a child having behavioural problems. Children who are born to teenage mothers are also more likely to become involved in criminal activity (Conseur et al, 1997). Other explanations also included domestic violence in both the parents and the children, divorce, parents who have mental health problems, maltreatment and general ‘bad’ parenting, these have all been offered as reasons as to why children develop behavioural problems from a young age which can then lead to a later life of crime. A lot of these are explanations are mainly associated with working class people.
Education is also believed to play a major part into why a child may become delinquent and then a criminal later in life. In British schooling there is a long tradition of ‘ability’ in that they’re taught in accordance to their intelligence. In the 1950s almost all schools in the UK were ‘streamed’. In 1964 Jackson conducted a survey in Junior schools, it was found that 96% taught streamed ability groups and also that there was an over-representation of working-class students in the lower streams and the schools tended to allocate teachers with less experience and qualifications to teach these groups. Later studies by Hargreaves (1967), Lacey (1970) and then Ball (1980) all linked the practice of streaming to underachievement in working class pupils. Today it seems in many schools this is still the case, and a lot of the time the working class know that they are placed in these lower sets because they are working class rather than because their ability is low and because of this it leads to status frustration and can then lead onto peer group pressures and truancy. Many leave school with few qualifications and so may lead into a life of crime possibly due to lack of opportunities for future advancement in mainstream employment
The Mass media also has a lot to do with crime as it helps stereotype people as criminals making the police become more aware of them and so they are more likely to be caught because of this. For example, the 1981 riots in Toxteth were labelled as ‘black’ or ‘race’ riots. Although, black youths were involved there was also a very large number of white youths. Hall et al (1979) also found that when mugging hit the headlines the media focused on black youths and it became known as a ‘black’ crime and this then encouraged the police to adopt stricter styles in large ethnic minority communities such as the ‘stop and search’. In 1981 a police operation was set up known as ‘swamp 81’ where by over a 1000 people were stopped and searched and yet only 100 of these were charged. However, many of these charges were believed to be aggravated due to the heavy police presence. The media though, fed by police reports suggested that mugging was reaching epidemic proportions when in fact it constitutes less than one per cent of crime in London.
Work is another major factor where people are known to commit crimes without even realising it and it is also the place where many people find opportunity to commit crimes. Some of these crimes include: theft of funds or property of their employer, use of company time and equipment, polluting the environment, failure to pay taxes, poor standards of goods. Not many working class people tend to commit crimes that are as major as middle and upper class people do in their workplaces and the main problem is that many of these get away with it simply because the business or company is too embarrassed to admit to it happening as shown later in the essay.
Mental health may also be offered as an explanation because people with a mental illness are often classed as deviant in society. Earlier research from Guttentag et al showed that single mothers are more likely to suffer with a mental illness. Also people from working class backgrounds are sometimes more likely to suffer from mental illness mainly stress and depression due to money problems. (www.statistics.gov.uk)
There is also the issue of income as working class people have low incomes and so lead a lower quality of life and are more likely to become ill and due to this not be able to work or be off sick from work a lot of the time. This could then lead to unemployment which in turn may lead to a life of crime. Research has also shown that there is a higher mortality rate for unemployed males compared to those working or actively seeking work. (Class and Health. Richard G. Wilkinson.)
Having considered the reasons why the working class is likely to commit crime the reasons why they are more likely to be arrested and sent to prison needs to be considered.
Firstly the social exclusion unit report for 2002 showed the characteristics of prisoners across Britain to be the following: a quarter of prisoners had been taken into care as child, 1 in 5 female prisoners were living alone with dependent children at the time of imprisonment, half of all males, and one third of females had been excluded from school, two thirds of prisoners had been unemployed in the four weeks preceding imprisonment, 72% of males and 70% of females were suffering from two or more mental disorders, almost half of all prisoners had a history of debt and one third were not living in permanent accommodation prior to imprisonment. (Crime Scene August 2002. www.kcl.ac.uk)
Each of these characteristics clearly shows the majority of prisoners in Britain to be working class. Because results like this are published in the media it then reinforces stereotypes of the working class to be criminals meaning greater policing in working class communities and so they are more likely to be caught and also stopped and searched. It also does not help when reports and statistics like these are misinterpreted for example in a speech given by politician Michael Howard in October 2004 (Crime against statistics. The Guardian. 14/10/2004.) he claimed “The most reliable crime statistics- those recorded by the police- show that crime in England and Wales has risen by 850,000 in the past five years.” He also referred to increases of 83% in the recording of violent crime nationally over the past five years. Speeches like this to the public make people more worried particularly with rises in violent crime and so create further stereotypes and continue to stigmatise working class people. It would seem from looking at the British crime Survey (BCS) that most major forms of crime have fallen dramatically since 1995. And although Mr. Howard is correct that recorded crime has increased this is due to the new laws as to how crime is now counted and also previously rejected victim reports are now taken into account meaning a high rise in the recording of violent crime which accounts for the 83% increase so it is probable violent crime may not have actually increased at all.
As well as misinterpreting the statistics from the BCS there is also the question as to how valid is it. Statisicans have always been aware that only a small amount of crimes commited are reported to the police and only a small amount of these actually find their way onto police records. This shows that they do not portray a true picture of crime levels in Britain although today more and more people are reporting crimes and so the estimated figures of unrecorded crime are slowly decreasing again. This also shows an increase in recorded crime making people think more crimes are being committed when in fact they are just being reported more.
The term corporate crime was first coined by Sunderland in 1949. He believed it to be a crime committed by a person of high status in his/her occupation although it does not distinguish crimes committed for an organisation or business. This has led sociologists to suggest four different types of ‘middle-class’ crime these include: occupational, professional, corporate and state crime.
Occupational crime which is carried out in work which ranges from minor theft of property from an organisation to large scale fraud (this has already been touched on with regard to working class crime as it tends to be people lower down in the hierarchy). The BBC recently reported that workplace theft has cost the public sector around £96 million in the last three years. Zurich financial services has said that one in twenty had been the victim of theft with nurses and teachers being the most likely victims having their belongings stolen whilst on duty.( . ‘Workplace theft ‘costs millions’. Wednesday 29th September 2004.) Also a report by The Guardian found that more than 60% of people in England and Wales admitted in a survey that they had padded an insurance claim, paid cash to avoid taxation or kept the money when given too much change. (. ‘Meet criminals who cost UK £14bn: the middle class’. Friday 12th September 2003.)
Professional crime is carried out as a lifetime career and varies from petty theft to large-scale operations such as drug running and is often through criminal organisations that are stable ‘employers’.
Corporate crime is carried out by members of organisations to cut costs and increase profits. This ranges from pollution to the selling of harmful products and it appears to be becoming increasingly global as capitalism expands. Two scientists from the University of Keele told the British association science festival that 70% of the British people they had questioned felt that they had been ripped off or had been made victims by businesses, banks and tradesmen. (. ‘Meet criminals who cost UK £14bn: the middle class’. Friday 12th September 2003.) Explanations have been put forward as to why this type of crime occurs. These include The Strain Theory (Passas, 1990) which suggests that members of an organisation under ‘strain’ of pressure to make profits and may be tempted to cut corners. Although this theory has been heavily criticised because it assumes that strain is felt by all organisations who cut corners this may not necessarily be the case. Another suggestion is the social capital theory (Hagan, 1994) whereby those in positions of power in firms have too much social trust (a form of social capital) invested in them, and so it gives them the freedom from social control to commit crimes. However, it assumes all those without social control commit crime, which is not the case.
State crime is carried out by agents of the state in pursuance of ideological reasoning. This includes the denial of human rights to torture whereby resources of the state are used for illegitimate purposes.
Even though it may seem as though the middle class commit as much crime as the working class they are not sent to prison for it a lot of the time. This is mainly due to a lot of the crimes they commit to be non-utilitarian and so people are not aware that a crime has been committed. The middle classes are not targeted by the police and so are less likely to be caught out in that respect. With regards to tax fraud in comparison to benefit fraud tax fraud is very hard to prove and a lot of the time the agents looking into the matter do not have the time or money to look thoroughly where as benefit fraud is easy to spot and they tend to be targeted more and so are more likely to be caught. Also if businesses, particularly banks, do find that a crime has been committed by an employee they tend to sack the employee rather than press criminal charges due the embarrassment it would cause the employers. Therefore the middle class are less likely to be caught and even if they are, they are less likely to go to prison.
Having considered aspects of criminality amongst men from lower socio-economic backgrounds and the higher incidence of their likelihood to be caught and sent to prison, we can see that there are no dominant causal factors. Research appears to have focused on narrow frameworks looking for a single dominant cause. This has not been proven to be the case although this has been exploited from a political stance. It has been shown that middle class crime is less easier to detect and even when detected there is a less likelihood of imprisonment. From this it is possible to conclude that society feels ‘safer’ in being presented with figures that support a view that criminality tends towards a group that can be put into a box that can be managed i.e. men from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
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Articles taken from:
Davis, K. and Moore, W.H ‘Some principles of stratification’. American Sociological Review Vol 10, 1945.
