Merton outlined five possible ways in which members of American society could respond to success goals. The most common response is conformity where members of society respond to both goals and means and accept the ideas. Innovation occurs when the normative means of achieving success are rejected, but the goals are still existent, so the individual turns to alternative methods of achieving the goals, in other words deviance. Merton argues that members of the lower class are more likely to turn to this method because they are least likely to succeed via conventional methods. Ritualist is the next idea Merton writes about, this is when the goals are rejected but the means accepted. This often occurs in the middle class where it is forgotten what they are working for, instead they just do what is expected of them. This happens when people are so well socialised they cannot turn to crime because they are so tied to the system. The next, and least common, response is the retreatism, this is the rejection of both goals and means, in order to cope these individuals ‘drop out’ of society and turn to drugs, alcohol or become homeless. Finally, the fifth response is rebellion when the common goals and means of society are rejected and replaced with alternative ones. These people often turn to the likes of terrorism and try to achieve something for society, but not financial success.
However, Merton’s theory has been criticised because it fails to explain why some people who experience the effects of anomie do not turn to crime. Other critics believe that Merton’s theory over predicts and exaggerates working class crime and under-predicts middle class, white-collar crime, as well as not explaining politically motivated crime such as freedom fighters. As well as this it has been questioned how can conformity turn to crime in Merton’s responses to crime, also it is hard to categorize all crime as Merton does. Other criticism includes the fact that the study is sexist. Statistics says that women commit less crime than men, which functionalist will accepted, however in 1930s America, when the study took place, women were very limited and unable to achieve the goals, therefore were innovated because they did not have the means. On the other hand the strain theory can be seen in Britain, it could be argued that the influence of Thatcherism and New Right thinking after 1979 encouraged influence on individual success and therefore lead to a rise in crime. This theory can be applied the large increase of crime in to post- communist countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Russia, when these countries became free market economies there was more emphasis on individual success.
A different approach to the existence of crime comes from sub cultural theories of deviance in terms of the subculture of a social group. A subculture is the existence of a distinctive set of values within the main culture of society. Certain groups develop different norms and values, which to some extent are different to those of society as a whole. A. Cohen gives an alternative view to Merton’s theory. His two main criticisms of Merton’s theory was that Cohen saw crime as a collective rather than individual response and that Merton failed to account for non-utilitarian crime such as vandalism, this sort of crime holds no financial rewards and accounts for eighteen per cent of current crime. Cohen instead believes that many of the lower working class boys that turn to crime do so due to the fact they do not hold the some success values of mainstream culture, similar to Merton’s theory. Cohen goes on to develop this saying that these boys develop their own values that allow the development of status among their peers and requires striking back at society. In other words the working class boys turn to delinquent subcultures where they are able to achieve prestige and status. These subcultures place values on activities such as stealing, vandalism and truancy, not only rejecting mainstream culture, but also reversing it. Cohen argues that in this way lower-working class boys solve the problem of status frustration. However, this theory is class and gender biased as it only looks at lower working class boys. Cohen goes so far in looking at crime that the eighteen per cent of crime that achieves nothing, that he does not look at crime that achieves something.
Cloward and Ohlin also use subcultural perspectives to look at the existence of crime and largely accept Merton’s theory of crime. Cloward and Ohlin look at the existence of the illegitimate opportunity structure, this is the existence of opportunities to be successful not just by legitimate means, but also illegitimate means. Cloward and Ohlin highlight three key responses to this situation; firstly there are Criminal subcultures, which occur in areas where there is organized adult crime that provide the young with the opportunities to learn criminal skills and deviant values. This gives individuals an opportunity to become successful illegitimately. Secondly, there are Conflict subcultures, which occur in areas where there are little opportunities neither for subcultures to develop nor for anyone to crime the illegitimate ladder. The response to this is gang violence as a release to anger and frustration. The final response is retreatist subcultures. These are organized around illegal drug use because the working class adolescents have failed both legitimately and illegitimately, in fact they are double failures.
It has been argued that Cloward and Ohlin, Merton and Cohen all share one major fault in that they assume that everyone in America starts off being committed to success goals. None of the sociologists account for those who do not take a promotion, for example, because it takes them away from a position they enjoy or reduces their leisure time. They assume that an individual is only happy if they are successful financially and do not look at those who commit crime for a cause such as in South Africa where people fought the oppressive apartheid system.
Miller, with Parker agreeing with his work, believes that deviance is an extension of working class values; he claims that their values and ways of life actively encourage lower-class men to break the law. Miller outlines several main focal concerns that are related to working-class values, these are ‘toughness’, ‘excitement’ and ‘smartness’. Toughness involves a concern for masculinity and courage in the face of physical threat, which can lead to assault. Excitement is the search for thrills, which can lead to gambling, alcohol and sex. Finally smartness involves being able to outwit or con another and is expressed through the pimp, pickpocket, petty thief etc, other focal concerns include fate, trouble and autonomy. In order for an individual to be successful amongst his peer group he has to develop a reputation for these traits in the eye of his friends. In criticism of Miller’s work it has been said that the working class values Miller speaks of seem to be so deep and exclusive that even middle class dominated institutes such as schools fail to break into them. Also Miller does not consider if these values are not actually distributed through society and not just dominated by the lower classes.
Overall these studies of subcultures in relation to crime have been heavily criticised, these is the fact that not everyone holds the values of success, as well as questioning whether subcultures themselves exists and what evidence is there for them? As well as this is the major criticism that all these studies are male biased and so it has to be questioned whether such values affect girls too? Matza is a critic of both structural and sub cultural theories of deviance. He argues that both arguments make deviants appear to be more distinctive than they really are and make the causes of deviance too deterministic. Matza’s theory is that individuals hold two levels of values, respectable, conventional ones and ‘subterranean’ ones of sexuality, greed and aggressiveness. These subterranean values are usually controlled and deviants are those who behave according to subterranean values in ‘inappropriate’ situations. Deviants ‘neutralise’ the respectable values when it suits them. Matza regards adolescents as a period of ‘drift’ when the individual is less constrained by society, therefore the adolescent is more susceptible to suggestions of deviant acts by the peer group. Matza provides a useful alternative view of the causes of deviance from the functionalist’s views of class structure and sub cultures. Matza stresses the choice available to an individual and is useful in challenging assumptions on which earlier theories were based.
In conclusion, functionalists have provided an alternative view of why crime exists from the idea that an individual is ‘sick’ due to psychological and physiological explanations, which became widely accepted. However, functionalists do tend to take a very narrow look at crime and accept all statistics, which are often unreliable as not all crime is reported. The basic functionalist idea is very positive seeing it as functional, not looking at the extremely dysfunctional effects deviance can have. However, in general functionalists’ explanations for deviance give a good insight into crime and society.
