Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories of crime and deviance, including Durkheim on the functions of crime, Merton's strain theory, and subcultural theories (Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin).

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain and evaluate the functionalist, strain and subcultural theories of crime: why crime exists, what functions it serves, and why it concentrates among certain groups. These theories build on one another, so showing the chain from Durkheim to Merton to the subcultural theorists is a mark of a strong answer.

Durkheim and the functions of crime

Durkheim argues crime is inevitable and normal in every society (no society can enforce total conformity, and the collective conscience is never strong enough to suppress all deviance) and can be functional:

• Boundary maintenance: the public trial and punishment of offenders reaffirms shared values and the collective conscience, uniting the law-abiding.
• Social change: today's deviance can become tomorrow's norm; visionaries and reformers initially treated as deviant allow morality to evolve.
• A safety valve (for example Davis on prostitution releasing male frustration) and an early warning that an institution is malfunctioning (Cohen on the warning function).

But too much crime is dysfunctional and signals anomie (normlessness, a breakdown of shared norms).

Merton's strain theory

When the goal of success is universal but the legitimate means (good jobs, education) are blocked for many, the resulting strain produces five possible responses (Merton's "modes of adaptation"): conformity (accept goals and means), innovation (accept goals but use illegitimate means, for example theft and fraud, the main criminal response), ritualism (give up on the goals but cling to the means), retreatism (reject both, for example dropouts and addicts) and rebellion (replace both with new goals and means). Working-class people, blocked from legitimate routes to success, are most likely to innovate, which explains the concentration of utilitarian crime.

Subcultural theories

Subcultural theories explain group, often non-utilitarian deviance that strain theory struggles with (Merton focused on the lone individual).

• Cohen: working-class boys share society's success goals but suffer status frustration when they fail in a middle-class school measured by a "middle-class measuring rod". They reject mainstream values and form a delinquent subculture that inverts them, gaining status among peers through vandalism, truancy and "non-utilitarian" deviance done for its own sake.
• Cloward and Ohlin: access to illegitimate opportunity structures also varies, producing three subcultures: a criminal subculture (organised adult crime to learn from, in stable areas), a conflict subculture (violence and gang fighting, where neither legitimate nor illegitimate routes are stable), and a retreatist subculture (drug use, for the "double failures" who fail in both the legitimate and illegitimate worlds).

Evaluation

These theories explain why crime persists, why it concentrates among the working class, and why much of it is collective. But critics argue they:

• Ignore power (Marxists: who makes and enforces the law, and the under-policing of corporate crime).
• Ignore labelling (interactionists: crime statistics are socially constructed, so the apparent working-class pattern may be an artefact).
• Neglect female crime (feminists: the theories are about men).
• Assume shared goals and value consensus that may not exist, and over-predict working-class crime.

Subcultural theory is also criticised for being deterministic and for assuming everyone starts by sharing mainstream goals (Matza argues most delinquents "drift" rather than belong to a fixed subculture).