sociological criminological school of thought

The sociological school of thought emanates from the term “sociology” as a concept. The oxford English Dictionary defines Sociology as “the study of social organization and institutions and of collective behaviour and interaction, including the individual’s relationship to the group”. The approach looks at the consideration of group antagonisms and criminality i.e. the approach examines the ways  in  which society is structured and the demand it makes on its members. The Sutherland’s theory of Differential Association suggests that crime is learned in everyday situations through a process of cultural transmission. The Anomie theory suggests that crime is bound up with tension, stress, and strains within societies. Most commonly when there is a breakdown of the smooth working of society etc. The approach is divided into five images. They are not mutually exclusive-indeed, they benefit from each other, as they each have somewhat different emphases.

Sociological Approach to Crimes

Sociological theories emphasise the influence of social environment in which individuals find themselves. When individuals engage in criminal behaviour, they do so within the context of the particular society in which they live. Sociological explanations focus on ways in which such factors may prompt or encourage some individuals to engage in abnormal behaviour.  The nature of the explanation that  one finds most useful for a particular form of criminal behaviour will considerably affect one’s approach to solutions. Therefore, it would be necessary to sub-divide the sociological explanations of crime into various sub-headings, namely:

1)                 Differential Association theory

2)                 Anomie and Structural Strains theory

3)                 Family Factors theory

4)                 Theories of the Sub-cultural Nature of Crime

5)                 Cultural Transmission theory

(1)              Differential Association Theory

Edwin H. Sutherland (1883 – 1950) is one of the classical  Chicago  schools.  Others are Frederick M. Thrasher (1892 – 1962), Edward F. Frazier (1894 - 1962), Clifford Shaw (1895 – 1957) and Henry D. McKay (1899 – 1980). The theoretical impact of the Chicago school was a paradigm shift from the notion that criminal behaviour entailed the study of the individual, (i.e psychology) to a richer understanding that criminal behaviour are found in the study of the social structure (i.e sociology) that shape and influence people’s lives. Sutherland in his book, “Principles of Criminology” published in 1939 made a key contribution to criminology in his ‘Differential Association theory”. Sutherland argued that all criminal behaviour is a normal learning process. We learn crime  in  much  the  same way as we learn everything else. How we act therefore depends  on  how  those around us desire us to act. How much we deviate from or conform to the norms depends on the differences in who we associate with others. Learning any social patterns, be it conventional or deviant acts, occur as a result of association. That is, boys become deviants (delinquent) due to their attachments to others who engage in and approved criminal acts. In this view, the causes of deviance do not  lie on individuality rather in the normal process of social influence. Edwin H. Sutherland formulated the principles of Differential learning theory in nine propositions in 1947 before he dies in 1950. The propositions are:

Criminal behaviour is learned.  Far from being genetic or biological. Criminal behaviour is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication.

The principal part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate personal groups.

When criminal behaviour is learned, the learning include (a) techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple; and (b) the specific direction of motives, drives rationalization and attitudes.

The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of legal codes as favourable and unfavourable.

A person becomes delinquent because of an excess  of  definitions  favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violation of law.

Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity.

The process of learning criminal behaviour by  association  with  criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.

Though criminal behaviour is an expression of general needs and values, it  is not explained by those general needs and values (Carrabine, 2004).

 

(2)              Anomie and Structural Strains

The concept of Anomie as a form of sociological interpretations of criminal behaviour is linked to the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) who awarded three different meanings to anomie or normlessness.

(a)         A failure to internalize the norms of the society (e.g. the secret societies);

(b)    An inability to adjust to changing norms and even; (3) the tension resulting from conflict within the norm themselves.

Robert K.Merton (1910 – 2003), the Harvard sociologist, went one step further to popularize the concept. In one of the most cited discussions of the twentieth century, Social Structure and Anomie (1938), Merton explains crime  on the basis of structural strain or frustration as a result of a person’s position in the social structure, especially the stratification system. He noted that the American society places enormous emphasized on the pursuit of materials success. He observed that the humans have a natural tendency to observe norms which are reflected by the personalities called conscience. Yet, some people often  act  against  their conscience because of the terrible strain upon them. Distinguishing between  a social structure (which provided economic roots to success) and a culture (which provided norms, value and goals, Merton argued that criminal behaviour occurred where there was distortion between them [means and goals].  Strain  theory  portrays a deviant as a person torn between  guilt and desire, with desire gaining  the upper hand (stark, 1987). The index of success in the society is material possession. In stable societies, Merton noted that the conventional success was achieved through talent and hard work. But in unstable societies, what was important is not the prescribed legitimate means but the goals. In the latter society, there is proclamation of equal opportunity for everybody but in reality the opportunity was a mirage.

Table I: Merton’s Mode of Individual Adaptation to Anomie

	Culture Goals	Institutionalised Means
Conformity	+	+
Innovation	+	_
Ritualism	-	+
Retreatism	-	_
Rebellion	+ -	+ -

Key:
	+	=	acceptance
	- +	= =	rejection reject old and substitute new (Carrabine 2004).

          [1]       Conformity

Conformity is living a conventional life involving acceptance of both culture goals and culture means, i.e. the true story of “success” to gain wealth and prestige are through talent and hard work.

        [2]      Innovation

As a result, Offenders may seek wealth through one or other kind of crimes – say, by dealing in cocaine. Merton called this type of behaviour innovation – the  attempt to achieve a culturally approved goal (wealth) by unconventional means (crime). See the Table above. Innovation accepts the goal of  success  while rejecting the conventional means of becoming rich. They believed that hard work, honesty saving, investment and education cannot give them the ultimate goals, rather through cheats.

They make money illegally. The Deviant behaviours exists in form of burglaries, robberies, drug trafficking, prostitution, and other types of crime.

    [3]   Ritualism

In the Merton’s scheme of things, it is the means-goal gap. Seeing that the goal of material success was very hard people abandon it. They resolve the  strain  of limited success by abandoning cultural goals in favour of almost  compulsive  efforts to live respectably. In essence, they embrace the rules to the point that they lose sight of their larger goals. They believed that “a good name is greater than silver and gold”. They are honest in character.

           [4]      Retreatism

Retreatism was the rejection of both the cultural goal of material  success  and access to the approved means. They may adopt an alternative  lifestyle  as  a vagrant, pursue altered states of consciousness. Retreatism entails  removing  oneself from a reality that just does not seem workable. In effect, they are “dropouts”. They include the alcoholics, drug-addicts and ‘Area-boys’.

They don’t believe in hard work, honesty, investment and education, even in seeking wealth.

         [5]         Rebellion

In contrast to Retreatism, Merton termed Rebellion as involving the rejection of both the cultural definition of success and the normative means of achieving it. People therefore invented a new cultural goal and new means of achieving the desires. That is, they advocated radical alternatives to the existing social order. These are people who dedicate their lives to revolutionary organizations or transformative social  movements; substituting new cultural goals and new means  of adaptation.

3)              Family Factors

The sociological explanation of crime has been associated with family influence. No more potent factor exists than the influence of criminal behaviour as a causal relationship of the experience of the child in the family. These influences could be as a factor of broken homes, family tensions, and criminality in the family, etc.

It is often suggested that the broken home- broken by the death of one or both the parents, by divorce or separation of the spouses or desertion, is a major cause of crime. Glueck S. and Glueck E. T. in their 1950 study, “unraveling Juvenile Delinquency” estimated that about 40 percent of delinquents in  America  came from broken homes.

 A distinguished American psychiatrist, David Abrahamsen, has stressed the  striking relationship of tension to delinquency. In his article – “Family Tension: Basic cause of Criminal Behaviour (1949)” Abrahamsen found out “that those families which produced criminals showed a greater prevalence of unhealthy emotional conditions among the family members – that is,  family tension – than  did the families of the non-delinquent group .The family tensions, manifested through hostility, hatred, resentment, nagging, psychosomatic  disorders, engendered and sustained emotional disturbances in both children and parents  alike” (Williams Hall, 1984).

The influences of other members of the family who have already experienced criminal behaviour include not only the siblings, but other relatives who had been found to be correlated to a family pathology with crime. The  Glueck  in  their earlier studies of juvenile Delinquency (1950) observed that 80  percent  of offenders had been reared in homes where there were other criminal members.  They looked also that about 90 percent of the delinquent boys came from homes where drunkenness, crime or immorality had occurred. The effect of having a criminal brother was found to be almost as great as that  of having  a  criminal father.

(4)              Theories of the Sub-Culture

Sociological theories sought to explain crime in terms of cultural or sub-cultural differences .They perceived the different areas of the city where crime was concentrated as areas of social disorganization, where a different set of values or subculture prevailed which powerfully influenced behaviour in the direction of deviant behaviour, so that the area became a high crime area i.e. a delinquent area.

 Clifford Shaw and Henry D. McKay and Frederik Thrasher, Bernard Lander and others studies “delinquency area” and criminal sub-cultures. It can be said that the studies of sub-cultures of a criminal nature on gang delinquencies general nature and theory of culture conflict have influenced and permeated many modern developments in sociological criminology.

Thus, Albert K. Cohen studies delinquent boys and delinquent sub-cultures .He disagreed that delinquent behaviour is directly caused by the desire for material goals. He explained that individuals brought  up  in a working-class  environment are likely to desire the general goals of the environment and have less opportunity  to achieve them due to educational failure. Consequently, working-class boys  suffer from “status frustration”, which causes them to reject the school system, and form a delinquent sub-culture. According to Walter Miller (1958), delinquent subculture are based on a number of “focal concerns” that reflect the values and traditions of “lower-class” life .These focal concerns include “toughness”, excitement” and “smartness”. The sub-cultural approach stresses the collective response as crucial, rather than seeing criminal behaviour  as  an  individual response to failure, as Merton argued.

Richard A. Cloward Richard and Lloyd E. Ohlin “Delinquency and opportunity” (1960) argued that there is greater pressure towards criminality on the working- classes because they have less opportunity to “succeed” by legitimate means. Cloward and Ohlin identified the following sub-cultures:

A criminal sub-culture, where criminal youths [delinquents] are closely connected with adult criminals, the criminal youths occupy the top hierarchy, where there is a development in alternative means to financial success.

A conflict sub-culture, a very unstable area, where the offenders seek to resolve their frustrations and problems through violence. A retreats or escapist sub-culture is neither a criminal sub-culture nor a conflict sub-culture. They are retreatists who turn to drink, drugs, sex and other forms of withdrawal from the wider social order. Sub-cultural theories have suggested that crime and delinquency can, ironically, represent conformity. In modern society there are a range of sub-groups with their own sub cultures that include norms, values and attitudes that differ from and conflict with those of the rest of the society. Conformity within such sub-groups will involve some form of deviance from and conflict with the wider society.

(5)              Cultural Transmission Theory

Cultural transmission theory is closely tied to a school of sociological  thought.  This explanation is supported in the works of Robert Park, of the Chicago School  of Sociology. Park borrowed the ideas from the field of ecology, a branch of biology in which animals and plants are studied in relation to one another and to their natural habitat.   Park reasoned that there is also ecology of the organization   of human communities. He used the concepts such as “symbiosis” which refers to how organisms of different species can live together to their mutual  benefit,  applied it to humans and formulated a theory of human ecology.

Cultural transmission theory postulates that deviance is sociologically transmitted from one generation to the next when communities or neighbourhoods develop cultural traditions and values that tolerate or encourage deviant conduct and rule breaking. This theory offers explanations of why some communities persist in having high rates of deviance, such as crime and delinquency.

The central tenet of cultural transmission theory is that deviance can be passed down from generation to generation because community traditions and values are either permissive toward or supportive of violating conventional rules of conduct, including criminal laws.

The rationale of cultural transmission theory is best stated by Shaw and McKay, who studied the variations in crime and delinquency rates over a fifty-year period  in Chicago. Shaw and McKay observed that delinquency rates vary widely by neighbourhoods. The highest rates tend to be nearest the central business and industrial districts, decreasing as one moves from the city centre to the edge of the city. Some countries are more likely to develop a  sub-cultural  tradition  than others, especially when inner-city districts, which are often the transition areas for ethnic groups and immigrants, tolerate deviance and law breaking. Rapid changes  in residential composition can lead to community difficulties in adjusting to the diversity of cultural backgrounds. At the same time, an influx of new businesses  and industry can also introduce disruptive elements by bringing in new workers   and by radically altering the social and physical environment of the community. These changes usually create value conflict which weaken the informal, as well as the formal social control and may result in social control break down. This process is referred to as social disorganization; and Shaw and McKay interpreted these phenomena as symptoms of social disorganisation (Magill, 1995); the community residents became more susceptible to deviant behaviour  patterns;  The “delinquency areas” tend to be characterized by physical deterioration, economic insecurity, family disintegration, conflicting cultural standards, and little concerted action by the community residents to solve the common problems. Shaw and McKay also observed that when communities or neighbourhoods went into decline, more prosperous families would relocate as soon as it is possible to other neighbourhoods or suburban areas.

REFERENCES

Carrabine, Eamonn, et al (2004). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction.

London: Routledge.

Ferdinand, Theodore N. (1966). Typologies of Delinquency: A Critical Analysis.

New York: Random House.

McGuire, Mike, et al, eds. (2002). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Neubeck, Kenneth J. and Davita S. Glasberg (2005). Sociology: Diversity,  Conflict, and Change. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Williams, Hall J. E. (1984). Criminology and Criminal Justice. London: Butterworths.

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