Theories of Crime and Deviance

Three short(ish) films dredged-up from The Archive (I’m not exactly sure which Archive but it probably sounds more-authentic than “found on an old neglected hard drive”) that provide a good overview of the major theoretical strands in the history of sociological theorising about crime and deviance.

1. The Social Causes of Crime introduces students to the idea that crime and deviance is not simply an individualistic pursuit – it has clear social causes. With contributions from leading sociologists such as Stan Cohen the film traces these causes from the classical criminology of the 19th century focused on the nature of the crime, to the positivist analyses popularised in the mid-20th century that focused on the nature of the criminal. This was expressed not just in terms of a “defective individuality” (the medicalisation of crime and deviance) but also a “defective environment” – the idea that the social causes of crime and criminality could be found by understanding the social environments that encouraged either conformity or deviance.

2. The Social Construction of Crime: Labelling, Radical Criminology and Left Realism: The second film starts by looking at the development of Interactionist approaches to crime as a social construction. The focus here was less on explaining crime and deviance as either a component of the individual and / or their social environment and more on looking at how individuals and social groups create crime and deviance through their reactions to the behaviour of others. Deviance, in other words, was in the eye of the beholder.

The film also looks at subsequent theoretical developments that incorporated Interactionist ideas about labelling and social reactions into both a radical theoretical perspective (Radical Criminology) and a radical practical perspective on crime and control (Left Realism)

3. Crime and Social Control: The Rise of the New Right: The third and final part of this crime cavalcade looks at how control theories – initially popularised in the 1950’s – have been picked-up, dusted-down and made the backbone of a range of New Right explanations for crime and deviance. The most famous of these, Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows, ushered in a new fatalism about crime as something that had few, if any, social causes and which could never be eradicated. The best we can do, according to these theories, is control crime (see what I did there?) through a range of prevention strategies.

In contrast to notions about controlling crime through policies (such as Zero Tolerance Policing) and technology (such as surveillance), the film end by looking at Braithwaite’s concepts of “Restorative Justice” and “Reintegrative Shaming” – ideas that offer a different, humanistic, perspective on the prospect of crime control.