amazon.co.ukFunctionalist, strain, subcultural, interactionist, realist and Marxist theories of crime, the social distribution of offending, globalisation, green and state crime, control and punishment — for AQA 4.3.1 and WJEC/Eduqas Component 3.
AQA 4.3.1.1 expects the consensus tradition and its critics. Durkheim argued crime is inevitable and universal — not everyone is socialised effectively, and modern societies of organic solidarity leave room for deviance. Crime is also functional: boundary maintenance — punishment publicly reaffirms shared values (as in trials); adaptation and change — deviance allows society to evolve (Durkheim praised Socrates); and a safety valve for strain (Davis argued prostitution protects the family; Polsky agreed pornography channels frustration). But too much crime produces anomie — the breakdown of regulation.
Merton's strain theory (1938): deviance arises from the gap between culturally approved goals (the American Dream of wealth) and the legitimate means of achieving them. Five adaptations: conformity (accept both), innovation (goals yes, means no — property crime), ritualism (means yes, goals abandoned), retreatism (reject both — alcoholics, vagrants) and rebellion (replace both). Evaluation: explains working-class property crime but not all crime — it assumes everyone shares the same goals, ignores white-collar and female crime, and takes statistics at face value.
Subcultural theories: Cohen (1955) argued working-class boys facing school failure suffer status frustration and form delinquent subcultures with inverted success values — spite, malice, vandalism earn the status blocked by the middle-class measuring rod. Cloward and Ohlin (1960) added illegitimate opportunity structure: criminal subcultures (stable networks — professional crime), conflict subcultures (gang violence where no networks exist) and retreatist subcultures (double failures turn to drink and drugs). Miller (1958) dissented: working-class focal concerns — toughness, smartness, excitement, fatalism, autonomy — originate in working-class culture itself, not in reaction to middle-class goals. Matza (1964) argued most delinquents drift in and out of crime, using techniques of neutralisation (Sykes and Matza 1957) — denial of responsibility or injury — to excuse it. AO3: feminist critics note the neglect of female deviance (Heidensohn); interactionists note these theories take official statistics at face value.
AQA 4.3.1.2: Becker (1963) argued deviance is not a quality of the act but the consequence of social reaction — 'deviant behaviour is behaviour people so label'. Moral entrepreneurs (police, media, politicians) apply labels; once labelled, the person is viewed through the label. Lemert (1951) distinguished primary deviance (acts not publicly labelled — trivial, widespread) from secondary deviance (deviance caused by being caught and labelled, which becomes a master status — 'thief' — and a self-fulfilling identity). Cicourel (1968) showed juvenile justice is negotiable: officers' typifications of the 'delinquent' (working-class, black) meant middle-class youths were less likely to be arrested, and their parents' intervention deflected prosecution — so statistics reflect labelling, not behaviour.
Young (1971) studied hippies and marijuana: police labelling of drug users created the deviant subculture the police had imagined. Braithwaite (1992) distinguished reintegrative shaming (punish the act, not the person — Japan's low crime) from disintegrative shaming (stigmatise the person — pushing them into deviant subcultures). Goffman (1961) showed asylums strip inmates of identity through mortification.
Official statistics and the dark figure: police-recorded crime omits unreported and unrecorded offences. Victim surveys — the Crime Survey for England and Wales (Mayhew and colleagues' design) — measure the dark figure: victims report large volumes of crime the police never record. Farrington and Dowds (1986) showed recorded crime rose in one Lancashire area partly because of changed police recording practices. AO3: labelling theory is criticised as deterministic — many people resist labels (Fuller 1984; Braithwaite); it ignores the origins of primary deviance; Marxists argue labels reflect wider class power, not individual bias; realists argue some differences are real, not labelling artefacts.
AQA 4.3.1.4 expects patterns by social group and the debates about them. Class: official statistics over-represent the working class — but Marxism points to white-collar crime (Sutherland 1949) and corporate crime (Tombs and Whyte 2003; Snider 1993) committed by the powerful, largely invisible in statistics; Pearce (1976) called this 'crimes of the powerful'. Murray's underclass thesis (1994) blames welfare dependency — disputed by left realists who see poverty and relative deprivation as structural causes.
Gender: men are over-represented in statistics as offenders and victims. The chivalry thesis (Pollak 1950) claims female crime is under-recorded because male agents of control treat women leniently — supported by self-report studies (Graham and Bowling 1995: almost identical rates of admitted offending among young white and black men; Sharp and Budd 2005). The liberation thesis (Adler 1975) claims women's crime rises as patriarchy weakens. Heidensohn (1985) used control theory: women are controlled at home, work and in public, so they have fewer opportunities for crime. Carlen (1988) interviewed 39 working-class women offenders: crime results from the failure of class and gender deals — poverty plus the collapse of the rewards of domesticity. AO3: Heidensohn and Carlen explain female crime through control and class, not liberation; recent statistics show most female crime remains low-level (theft, shoplifting).
Ethnicity: black people are over-represented in stop-and-search and prison statistics. Hall et al (1978) argued the 1970s 'mugging' moral panic was a myth constructed to legitimate a policing crisis — capitalism in crisis needed a scapegoat. Hood (1992) found black men up to five times more likely to be jailed for the same offence — sentencing bias. Bowling and Phillips (2002) document over-policing and under-protection of ethnic minorities. Self-report studies show smaller differences than official statistics (Sharp and Budd 2005). Mac an Ghaill (1994) examined young black and Asian men's responses to racism. AO3: realists argue some patterns reflect real differences in offending; interactionists argue the statistics are socially constructed; the statistics also under-record white-collar crime committed mostly by the white majority.
Age and locality: young men aged roughly 15-24 are most likely to offend and to be victims; crime is concentrated in deprived urban areas and declines with age — biological ageing, life-course changes and peer group effects. AO3: the distribution debates mirror the labelling vs realist divide across all groups.
AQA 4.3.1.5 — globalisation and crime: Taylor (1997) argued globalisation creates crime at every level: transnational corporations evade regulation, and global insecurity produces crime in poorer regions. Hobbs and Dunningham (1998) found organised crime now works through glocal networks — locally based but globally connected, organised around a core individual. Castells (1998) described a global criminal economy — drugs, trafficking, cybercrime, money laundering. Beck (1992) framed the global risk society: manufactured risks (pollution, nuclear, climate) cross borders and cannot be contained by nation states.
Green crime (South 1998; White 2008): primary green crime is direct harm to the environment (illegal dumping, emissions); secondary green crime is state or corporate rule-breaking that produces harm (unsafe transport, breaches of regulation). Green criminology defines crime through harm, not law — eco-centric rather than anthropocentric. AO3: transgressive definitions of crime lack legal backing; Beck's risk society is more theory than measurement.
State crime: Green and Ward (2004) define state crime through human rights — genocide, torture, detention without trial; McLaughlin (2001) and Ruggiero analyse state-organised crime; the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib are stock examples. States define what counts as crime, so they can conceal their own — hence the human rights definition. AO3: human rights are contested — whose rights, defined by whom?
The media and crime: Cohen (1972) documented the moral panic through the mods and rockers: media exaggeration created folk devils, amplified deviance and produced a self-fulfilling spiral. Hall et al (1978) analysed the mugging panic as political legitimation. McRobbie and Thornton (1995) argue moral panics have changed in a media-saturated age — groups now court them. Media representations distort crime: fictional and news media over-represent violent and sexual crime and under-represent property crime (Soothill and Walby 1991 on rape reporting; Greer 2003 on crime news). AO3: the media's role as cause of crime (imitation, moral panics) is contested by pluralists who note audiences interpret actively.
AQA 4.3.1.6 — control, prevention and punishment: Right realism: Wilson and Kelling (1982) argued broken windows — visible disorder invites crime, so zero-tolerance policing restores order; Murray (1994) blamed the underclass. Situational crime prevention (Clarke 1997) reduces opportunity through target hardening — locks, CCTV, alarms. Left realism: Lea and Young (1984) argued crime has real victims and real causes — relative deprivation, marginalisation and subculture; prevention must tackle root causes through community policing and the 'square of crime' (state, public, offender, victim). Punishment: Foucault (1977) traced the shift from sovereign power (public execution) to disciplinary power — the panopticon, where constant potential surveillance makes inmates discipline themselves; surveillance has spread through society. Garland (2001) described the 'culture of control' — late-modern crime control combines punitive populism with managerial risk assessment. Restorative justice (Braithwaite 1992) repairs harm and reintegrates offenders. Victims: Christie (1986) argued the 'ideal victim' — weak, respectable, blameless — is a social construction shaping who receives sympathy and support; victims of corporate and state crime (Tombs and Whyte) are largely invisible. The criminal justice system — police, courts, prisons — coordinates control; recidivism (reoffending) rates question prison's effectiveness.
Situational prevention works locally but displaces crime (it moves rather than reduces it) and ignores root causes; broken windows policing produced zero-tolerance controversies in New York and remains contested; Foucault's surveillance thesis explains self-discipline but underplays resistance (Haggerty and Ericson); Garland's culture of control captures late-modern punitiveness but cannot explain why some societies remain lenient. Left realists (Lea and Young 1984) argue prevention must combine opportunity reduction with tackling relative deprivation — the most complete answer weighs both realisms.
AQA Paper 3: 4- and 6-mark items, a 10-mark 'outline and analyse two...', the 20-mark Methods in Context question (Q6), and a 30-mark 'outline and evaluate...' theory essay. 30-mark skeleton: (1) define the perspective and its logic; (2) three or four developed points, each with a named study and date; (3) three or four evaluations with counter-theorists; (4) a weighed conclusion answering the exact question. Pitfalls: describing theories without studies; confusing Durkheim's functionalism with Merton's strain; citing statistics without discussing their construction (dark figure, labelling); neglecting globalisation, green and state crime (4.3.1.5) in synoptic answers; ending without a judgement.