There was a paradigm shift in criminology in the 1960s which can loosely be called labelling theory. Durkheim's work was influential because of his insight that crime depends on societal reaction, and his arguments about the normality of deviance. However, the dominant theoretical tendency in recent labelling theory has been a symbolic interactionist one, stressing the face-to-face encounters of potential deviants and control agents. This is sharply at odds with Durkheim's view that particular societies exert special pressure for higher rates of deviation.
Durkheim also ignores conflicts about morality within a society, which is the stock in trade of the labelling theorist. Equally important, Durkheim, while accepting the relative nature of crime, also seems to think that some acts seem constant, in terms of being defined as criminal, in all societies. That is, he recognises a minimum content of 'natural law'. Finally, Durkheim, while regarding a certain rate of crime as a normal inescapable feature of society, also was aware that particular societies might be in a pathological condition, which generates excessive deviance. This leads into the area of anomie and the work of Robert Merton.
Robert Merton argues that both human goals and constraints on behaviour are socially based (we learn them), and that desires are socially derived, via socialisation, into cultural goals such as occupational status or financial success. These aspirations derive from the cultural values of a particular society. The constraints on the attainment of these socially based goals are influenced by two factors: cultural norms and institutionalised means. Hence, norms instruct people in the actions people may legitimately use in the pursuit of goals, and institutionalised means refers to the actual distribution of opportunities for achieving the cultural goals by legitimate means. Goals and norms refer to cultural factors, while institutionalised means 'brings in aspects of the social structure'. Merton argues that strain occurs as a result of the frustrations and injustices emerging from the interrelationship between cultural goals, cultural norms and the institutionalised opportunities available within the social structure. Not everyone can become rich and successful, the American/British dream is not achievable by all, the opportunities for success are limited, and from this strain, disjunction occurs.
The disjunction leads to a weakening of the commitment to culturally defined goals or norms or both and this is what Merton suggests creates anomie. So when individuals or groups discover, for example, that no matter how hard they work or try, they cannot achieve the levels of satisfaction or material wealth to which they have been taught to aspire, deviant behaviour may be the result.
Merton argue that It is only when a system of cultural values extols, virtually above all else, certain common success goals for the population at large, while the social structure rigorously restricts or completely closes access to approved routes of reaching these goals for a considerable part of the same population, that deviant behaviour ensues on a large scale
Merton then sets out a typology of modes of adaptation in terms of conformity, or non-conformity, to cultural goals and institutionalised means:
1. Innovation - accepting cultural goals but employing illegitimate means, for example, property theft cheats.
2. Ritualism - adherence to means whilst ignoring the goals, for example, bureaucratic adherence to routine - going through the motions.
3. Retreatism - withdrawal, opting out of socially defined desirable behaviour, for example, alcoholics, addicts
4. Rebellion - not only rejection of goals and means, but a positive attempt to replace them with alternative values, for example, political revolutionaries, religious prophets.
Merton's analysis suggests that deviant behaviour is functional. First, for the individuals involved, since it enables them to adapt to the circumstances in which they find themselves. And second, for society as a whole - since modes of individual adaptation help to maintain the boundaries between acceptable and non-acceptable forms of behaviour.
Sutherland introduced his concept of differential association. This states that a person is likely to become a criminal if they receive an 'excess of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violations of law'. By this, Sutherland means that if people are surrounded by others who support law breaking, then they are likely to do so themselves.
Clearly, these approaches are working towards sub-cultural explanations of criminal/deviant activity. Chicago sociology directed attention towards the motivations which deviants have. It put forward the idea that there is nothing 'wrong' with deviants, but that they see the world in a different way. They are guided by a distinct set of values. Though this set of values still included the notion of the societal value placed on material success, it did offer some explanation as to why some people but not others become deviant and why some deviance is collective.
The first explicit use of the concept of sub-culture is found in the work of Albert Cohen, writing in the mid 1950s (Delinquent Boys, The Culture of The Gang). Cohen was puzzled by the fact that most delinquent acts were not motivated by economic ends, for example, vandalism. His answer was that most delinquents are motivated by status frustration whereby they feel they are looked down upon by the rest of society and denied any status. They therefore develop a distinct set of values or a subculture, which provides them with an alternative means of gaining status, and this possibly leads them into delinquency.
According to Cohen, those most likely to commit deviant acts are generally found in the lower streams of schools, living in deprived areas and having the worst chances in the job market. Cohen argues that for adolescents the primary reward and punishment agency is the school. Aware of being branded failures by the school, the lower streams develop their own subculture, based on a reversal of school values. The subculture becomes a collective response to status denial. For lower stream boys the subculture has two uses: It creates an alternative set of values so they can compete for status among their peers.
It provides a means of hitting back at society. Petty theft or vandalism, for example, may have a measure of malice or revenge within them. Cohen therefore argues that delinquents are no different from other adolescents in seeking status. Cohen thus addresses the second and third of the problems left unresolved by Merton.
Cloward and Ohlin. In an attempt to link Merton's concept of anomie, which argued that people turn to crime if they had few legal opportunities, these writers believed that Merton had ignored the existence of an illegitimate opportunity structure. This opportunity structure had three levels:
Criminal subculture: Providing the opportunity for a career in crime. There needed to be a stable, cohesive working class community with contacts in the mainstream and illegal communities, successful role models for the young, and a career structure for aspiring criminals.
Conflict subculture: Existing if the criminal subculture is absent. If no criminal career is available to young males they may turn their frustration at failure in both the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures into violence.
Retreatist subculture: Being the one that takes the double failures, those who don't make it in crime or violence. The failures retreat into drugs and petty theft.
The approach has been criticised for making the same assumptions as Merton, that everyone seeks the same goal of financial success. A further problem is that there is no evidence to support the idea of subculture as described by Cloward and Ohlin. Both Cohen and Cloward and Ohlin suggest that crime results from a distinctive youth sub-culture, which provides alternative guidelines to the mainstream culture.
The idea of young working class males committing more crime can be supported by David Matza's study on juvenile delinquency. He suggested that people tend to stick to their own norms and values in the society which will lead to a subculture. Young boys do not receive monetary reward for the crimes they commit such as joyriding, they may commit these crimes because of their failure in the educational system, or the dysfunction of the family after they have done a cost benefit analysis to their actions.
David Matza, Delinquency and Drift, rejects the idea of a distinct subculture and that this subculture determines behaviour. He claims that delinquents are similar to everyone else in their values and indeed display similar feelings of outrage about crime as the majority of the population. Matza argues that we all hold two levels of values. The values that guide us most of the time are respectable and conventional. But at times, underlying values of sexuality, greed and aggressiveness emerge. These values are generally held under control - all of us hold them back - but occasionally, all of us get taken over by them. He argues that delinquents are simply more likely to behave according to subterranean values in 'inappropriate' situations. Matza suggests that delinquents use a number of techniques of neutralisation to explain why their delinquent act is an exception. Yes. What I did was wrong but... something made me do it (denial of responsibility); they deserved it (denial of victim); there is no harm done (denial of injury); doesn't everybody (condemn the condemners); I had to do it (appeal to a higher loyalty).
Matza uses the concept of drift to explain why only some young people commit crime. He suggests that youth is a period of limbo. Youths feel they lack control over their lives and they want to gain some control over their destiny. Matza argues that during this period of drift, the constraining bonds of society are loosened, and so adolescents become more susceptible to suggestions of deviant acts by the peer group. Committing a delinquent act may then represent an attempt to demonstrate control over their lives, to exercise choice.
However, there is no suggestion of a deviant career, the youths are not committed to a life of crime, and they can drift in, and perhaps out when they get a job. However, Matza provides no wider framework of structural and economic circumstances that might explain why it is working class males who seem driven to higher levels of delinquency than anyone else.
Miller, Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency, suggests a different approach. He argues that there are six focal concerns of working class culture, which can lead working class males into crime. He is suggesting that crime is simply an extension of normal working class values, not a distinctive set of alternative values. Unlike previous theorists, there is no assumption made that all people within a society share a consensus as to what their life goals should be, that is there is a rejection of the functionalist view that society is founded on consensus.
According to interactionist theories of deviance, they make radical conception of deviance in terms of there being no such as deviant act. They place firm emphasis on reaction. They put forward useful concepts such as labelling, self-fulfilling prophecy, and mortification and primary/secondary deviance. They are critical of the functionalist and subculture theories of deviance. Interactionists argue that human action is creative. We create our roles in relation to and adaptation to others. Normality is negotiated.
Edwin Lemert argues that societal reaction is a 'cause' of deviance. Lemert begins by distinguishing between 'primary' and 'secondary' deviance. Primary deviance is deviance before it is publicly labelled; it has a number of possible causes and is not worth investigating since samples are biased and it has no impact on the individual, it does not influence status or activities. The common factor among deviants, claims Lemert, is the process of labelling - the public reaction to the deviant leads to secondary deviance, the response of the deviant to public labelling. Lemert argues that secondary deviance should be the focus of study because of its effect on the individual. The central idea is that societal reaction can actually cause deviant behaviour.
Labelling theorists further argues that in some situations people cannot negotiate a label, but are forced to accept the label that others give them. Becker, however, argues that 'Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied, deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.'
The degree to which other people will respond to a given act as deviant varies greatly. Several kinds of variation seem worth mentioning. First of all, there are variations over time. A person believed to have committed a given deviant act may at one time have responded too much or more leniently than he would be at some other time. The occurrence of drives against various kinds of deviance illustrates this clearly. At various times enforcement officials may decide to make an all out attack on some particular kind of deviance such as gambling, drug addiction, or homosexuality. It is obviously much more dangerous to engage in one of these activities when a drive is on than at any other time.
The degree to which an act will be treated as deviant depends also on who commits the act and who feels he has been harmed by it. Rules tend to be applied to some persons more than to others. Studies of juvenile delinquency make the point clearly. Boys from middle class areas do not get as far in the legal process when they are apprehended, as do boys from slum areas. The middle class boy is less likely, when picked up by the police, to be taken to the station, less likely when taken to the station to be booked; and it is extremely unlikely that he will be convicted and sentenced. This variation occurs even though the original infraction of the rule is the same in the two cases.
Institutions (prisons, asylums, boarding schools) are particularly important in the stigmatising process. Institutions are part of the labelling process and operate both to assign a label and have that label accepted by the deviant Goffman ('Asylums') argues that the stated aims of institutions is of cure and rehabilitation, but that in practice, the institution strives to get the deviant to accept their deviant identity. Through a series of interactions, pressure is put on the deviant to accept a label. This involves a ‘mortification’ process, especially on entry to the institution, a series of humiliations that tend to remove all individuality - stripped; deloused; possessions removed; uniform issues; number given. The post-institutional experience of many people is stigmatisation and social rejection, particularly in the case of prisons, but also asylums. The deviant is ascribed a negative identity which in many cases is irreversible.
The Marxist approach has been one of the most important approaches in explaining deviant behaviour. They mainly base their ideas and theories on how the powerful people control the society which influences how the society works today. Marxists seems to believe that young working class males commit most crime mainly due to the media which reinforces ideas of materialism into people. This will lead to a materialistic capitalist system that may force working people to commit crime as they have a lower income and may not be able to afford to buy things like the rest of the society.
Marxists helped to explain the different types of crimes besides the most obvious ones. Steven Box suggested another type which is known as Corporate Crime. This is when people commit crime from where they work for their own benefit such as stealing pens, petrol etc. This may not seem as a deviant behaviour to some people as they do not realise that it is still illegal and it is morally wrong just like murder. People who commit these crimes may not get prosecuted for it may be due to the people who commit these crimes are professionals with a high status, so they know how to prevent themselves from getting caught. Along with Box's mystification of crime, it can be seen that laws are bias as it seems to advantage the bourgeoisie. Functionalists contradicts Marxists' ideas as functionalists, suggested that law is a reflection of the will of people while Marxists disagree and suggest that law is a reflection of the will of the powerful. Marxists suggested that the law is controlled by the powerful, this was supported by their idea of the manipulation of values, where the mainstream of the society, the court, the police etc. are predominantly middle class and would be bias towards the ruling class people. Law creation is another one as Marxists suggested that most laws are passed by members of the parliament whom are mainly from the bourgeoisie. They have the ability to manipulate themselves to the laws. Law creation and law enforcement happens in consistently to show why people in control tends to be bias.
Marxists mainly concentrate on the class distribution and stress that they the ruling class control the norms and values of the society. It will not be classed as deviant unless the bourgeoisie say so and they will not say so unless it is committed by a working class person.
An example of this approach employed in research is provided by Phil Cohen (1972). He studied the youth of East London in the early 1970s. He examined: The immediate context and the wider context. He analysed the way that two different youth subcultures reacted to the changes occurring in their community. Cohen argued that the youth cultures developed to cope with the loss of community in East London, but also they reflected the divisions within society. He suggests that the mode of reaction was to the new ideology of affluence; they wanted to show they had money and knew
how to spend it. In contrast skinheads looked back to the more traditional working class community.
In conclusion, sociological theories of deviance vary depending on the various approaches. For an act to be considered deviance varies from place to place and the time.
