Crime and Deviance

What do you need to know?

What is crime and deviance?

• Deviance is when you break a social norm and behave in a way that is wrong in the eyes of your friends.

• Crime is when you break a written law.

• Not all crime is deviant, not all deviance is crime.

• The difference is to do with the types of rules you break.

Who makes the rules?

Laws are made by:• Parliament• Judges and lawyers.

Laws are made because people wanted them made. They reflect the

views of the people who made them.

Theories of crime

• Labelling theory says crime exists because people were labelled as criminals by other people.

• If we treat people as criminal, they will behave in a criminal way.

Can you agree with this?

Sub-culture theories

• Sub-cultural theories claim that criminals mix with other criminals.

• They have different values and beliefs from the rest of us.

• They act in a criminal way because they do not feel what they are doing is wrong.

Can you agree with this?

Marxist theories

• Some sociologists say that crime exists because society is very unequal.

• The real criminals are the rich people who exploit the rest of us and make us poor.

• Criminals are just rejecting the society we live in.

Can you agree with this?

Emile Durkheim

• This famous thinker said that we need crime in society.

• It makes the rest of us good, because we don’t feel like that.

• We need criminals to show us where we need laws and what laws are important.

• Criminals are creative people.

Can you agree with this?

What do we know about crime?

• We learn about crime from official statistics.

• The crime we do not know about is the Dark Figure.

• Official figures are not always accurate.• There are problems with

– Reporting crime– Recording crime– Reasons why the crime statistics were

gathered.