The poor and minorities are more likely because of their poverty and race to be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. People with power pass laws and otherwise use the legal system to secure their position at the top of society and to keep the powerless on the bottom. These bonds include attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. Travis Hirschi wrote that delinquency results from weak bonds to conventional social institutions such as families and schools. Marvin Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti argued that a subculture of violence in inner-city areas promotes a violent response to insults and other problems. Walter Miller wrote that delinquency stems from focal concerns, a taste for trouble, toughness, cleverness, and excitement. Albert Cohen wrote that lack of success in school leads lower-class boys to join gangs whose value system promotes and rewards delinquency. Poverty and other community conditions give rise to certain subcultures through which adolescents acquire values that promote deviant behavior. According to Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin, differential access to illegitimate means affects the type of deviance in which individuals experiencing strain engage. These characteristics include poverty, dilapidation, population density, and population turnover.Īccording to Robert Merton, deviance among the poor results from a gap between the cultural emphasis on economic success and the inability to achieve such success through the legitimate means of working. Table 7.1 Theory Snapshot: Summary of Sociological Explanations of Deviance and Crimeĭeviance has several functions: (a) it clarifies norms and increases conformity, (b) it strengthens social bonds among the people reacting to the deviant, and (c) it can help lead to positive social change.Ĭertain social and physical characteristics of urban neighborhoods contribute to high crime rates. A summary of these explanations appears in Table 7.1 “Theory Snapshot: Summary of Sociological Explanations of Deviance and Crime”. We now turn to the major sociological explanations of crime and deviance. Consistent with this book’s public sociology theme, a discussion of several such crime-reduction strategies concludes this chapter. As such, they have important implications for how to reduce these behaviors. As a whole, sociological explanations highlight the importance of the social environment and of social interaction for deviance and the commision of crime. Together they help answer the questions posed earlier: why rates of deviance differ within social categories and across locations, why some behaviors are more likely than others to be considered deviant, and why some kinds of people are more likely than others to be considered deviant and to be punished for deviant behavior. Many sociological theories of deviance exist, and together they offer a more complete understanding of deviance than any one theory offers by itself. If we want to reduce violent crime and other serious deviance, we must first understand why it occurs. State the major arguments and assumptions of the various sociological explanations of deviance.
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