Crime Theories and Sociology
Crime theories and sociological perspective
Crime is an overt omission or action through which a person breaks the law, hence the action is punishable and the person may be convicted in the court of law for the said action. It is the subject of great debate in sociology and criminology that what constitutes crime. Since deviation from law has to be considered as crime, the nature and context of deviation becomes important while investigating crime. The investigation regarding crime assumes much importance since defining crime leads to setting up policing arrangements and budgetary allocations for crime prevention and mitigation. Moral and legal boundaries of a society are established by the definitions of crime. Crime is different from sin; hence this paper investigates the sociological perspective of crime and further presents theories regarding crime with respect to modern day.
The sociological perspective
Crime and criminal behavior is linked with the societal factors and the social behavior. This is the sociological perspective of crime that fully takes into consideration, the behavior of criminal as well as the society around the criminal. Since there has been great influence of finding out the biological and psychological grounds of crime, contemporary perspectives on crime explain the origination of crime out of social contexts (Guarino-Ghezzi and Trevino, 23). Thus, the reliance in understanding upon sociological perspective of crime has led to the emergence of sociological criminology. In this regard, Emile Durkheim, the renowned French sociologist observed that scientific study of society and social behavior could lead us to determine the occurrence of crime as well.
The sociological perspective of crime also hold true that although crime may be an individual action, the motivation for crime is not strictly a result of individual psychology but has its base in social psychology. The sociologists believe that factors such as affiliation with specific social groups, with religion, politics of larger society, and relationship to specific type of occupation may result in a person committing specific type of crime. By and large, the individual is indirectly influenced by the social forces to act in a certain way that amounts to committing of crime. Since change and progress is also related to collective social endeavors, hence sociologists observe that a free society will have crime and criminals as a normal condition. To eliminate crime and criminal behavior, a society has to enforce strict codes of conduct and deviation to any minor or major code of conduct (law) is penalized.
Sociologists also hold criminal and crime as an agent of change. Thus, any society where crime is restricted by enforcing strict laws and curbing the independence of individuals, the chances of progressive change are also minimal. While investigating about crime, sociologists are mainly concerned with two questions, that why the criminals commit crime and why some societies are found committing crime more than others? Thus social factors that lead to individuals' and societies' criminal behavior are investigated. Social structure perspective outlines that behaviors are predictable based on expected structure of society. The sociological perspective holds true that a broken social structure, where societal forces are weak to influence the behavior of an individual, the rate of crime will be high. Thus, social disorganization leads to crime in societies. Societies having more disorganization face more crime. Anomie theory of crime is also part of the sociological perspective whereby Anomie refers to the strain that an individual feels in attaining the success earmarked by the society around him/her and lack of legitimate source of attaining that socially defined success (Guarino-Ghezzi and Trevino, 29).
Thus, scholars such as Robert K. Merton mentioned that societies with concentration of poor people have higher crime rates. Meaning by that in poorer sections of society, people are more constrained by the lack of legitimate opportunities to achieve the socially constructed benchmarks of success and this leads them to commit crimes to achieve success through illegitimate sources. It may be true that poorer sections of society are also more...
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