Crime

Crime, in the strictest sense, is the willful commission and/or omission of established codified laws of a society, nation, or culture. A less formalized understanding of crime includes the committing of any commonly recognized prohibited act worthy of punishment as established by the norms, mores, and values of a given population. Crime has been widely studied because it is considered a phenomenon when members of a community knowingly commit offenses either against another citizen or against the community or state. The study of crime is essentially grounded in two different perspectives, which are environmental based and biological based. Biological-based theories are concerned with all potential influencing external forces endemic to the social world.

To better understand crime, one must have some understanding of the fundamental social-based theory regarding the power dynamics behind the creation of law and how laws impact crime. Most people think of laws as a means to create fairness and equality for all members of law; however, law may also reflect the controlling interests of the sovereign (government) or those with influence in that society. For an act to be relegated to the status of a crime, it must generally have the condemnation of the majority or those in authority to mandate it into law. In any society, there are those who have greater personal power, due to their wealth, class, official position, or social affiliations. Such persons have the ability to influence the creation of laws that satisfy a personal need or augment and strengthen their social status. This is to say, laws can favor the powerful and actually serve to keep other members of a society at a disadvantage. An act or specific behavior cannot be a criminal offense and the offender cannot be punished unless the act has formal criminal status.

The creation of laws or governing rules within any population of people must therefore be understood as [Page 595]a social process with potentially complex interrelationship and motivations. Consequently, committing crimes and casting certain members of a society as disobedient offenders can have very serious outcomes. Consider how the Christians were effectively labeled as both social deviants and enemies of the state by the ancient Romans. The wholesale persecution and execution of an entire group of people followed solely due of their spiritual beliefs. Such persons, in the current common parlance of criminology, are referred to as a criminal “subgroup.” Many contemporary studies of deviants as a criminal subgroup have been examined as an outcome of social power with respect to who does the labeling, who generates the label, and how the labeled persons are affected. One of the findings is that a key determinant of the labeling process is how effectively those in power can apply the deviant label so the majority population reacts to and the subgroup in question accepts the label.

Source: © iStockphoto/Liv Friis-Larsen.

Consistent with the influence of social power differences is the effect of social structure. Social structure theories maintain that members of the lower class are involved in more crime than those of the upper or middle class. Social structure theories are divided into three areas:strain theory, cultural deviance theory, and social disorganization theory. Strain theory emphasizes that persons of the lower class are unable to attain higher goals or values and this restriction is due to their economic limitations. Their inability to achieve these goals causes strain, which leads some people to reject the established social standards of behaviors. The inability to cope with strain causes some individuals to proceed through life without norms or values to guide their behavior, leading to eventual criminal transgressions. Social disorganization theory maintains there are geographic areas within urban centers that are far more transitional with respect to establishing a sense of community. Such transitional neighborhoods are characterized by light industry and lower-class worker residences that tend to be in a deteriorating and disorganized condition. The disorganization leads to juvenile delinquency and juvenile gangs and ultimately to increased levels of crime. Cultural deviance theory holds that criminal behavior is simply an act of conformity to lower-class values based upon their differences with the dominant cultural norms and standards. For members to obey the laws and rules of the dominant culture, lower-class members (usually racial and ethnic minorities) are placed in conflict with their class peers.

...