Crime is a social construct. Discuss how this benefits or targets certain groups in society. PDF

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Section C exam question Crime is a social construct. Discuss how this benefits or targets specific groups within society. The term social construct is defined as a phenomenon that exists within society, as society makes it exist. The idea that crime is a social construct is the epicentre of theories such as labelling theory, moral panic theory and within the media. The aforementioned theories as controlled by the powerful in society are seen to generally target the working class in particular. Becker argues that no act is inherently deviant or criminal in itself- it however becomes so when labelled as such. In laymen’s terms the concept of criminality only exists when society believes an act to be out of the social norms. For example, within most western society’s homosexuality is now widely accepted and is not seen as deviant, however in many eastern cultures this is still considered criminal. As a result, the social construction of deviance is culturally relative and therefore changes between societies. Becker sums this up neatly through his quote that ‘deviance is in the eye of the beholder’. Therefore, what is defined as a crime or violence is an ideological construct, for example the government can define killing perpetrated by a member of society as a problem and criminal, however this would not be the same attitude if a soldier had killed someone. This is ideological relativity, as the government can decide who is defined as terrorists and freedom fighters and thus what counts as a war crime, for example, the Holocaust was a devastating war crime, yet bombing Syria was seen as necessary. Sociologist Cicourel theorised that police use stereotypes of a ‘typical delinquent’, and that those who fit this profile are more likely to be arrested. The ‘typical delinquent’ is seen to be working class male juveniles, this stereotype is named a typification. Cicourel’s study using participant and non-participant observations found that typifications led police officers to look for certain people. This led to a ‘class bias’ as the working class fits the stereotype. As a result, more patrols are dispatched in working class areas and therefore more working class members are arrested. This idea is supported by the offender’s statistics that show that…. % of offenders belong to the working class. Research by Pavilion also supports this idea as he found that the police are more likely to base decisions to arrest youth majorly based upon visual cues. This phenomenon may be able to explain why the working class is over represented within the official crime statistics. However, interpretivist theorists are very critical of official crime statistics as they argue that the statistics themselves are socially constructed. This leads to the continuum of if the idea of deviance is socially constructed, then so must their statistics, and thus can statistics every be reliable? Hall et al. in the book ‘Policing the Crises’ follow on form this idea that statistics are also constructed as the argue that ethnic minorities were targeted and used as a scapegoat to distract society from the capitalist crises of low employment and high inflation. In order to protect the dominance of the ruling class, they argued that police selectively released statistics of which suggested that young black Britons were the most responsible for street robbery/mugging. This creation of a moral panic played a crucial ideological function to benefit capitalism to shift the focus onto a race divide and does not represent a true difference in ethnicity and crime (thus the phenomena was socially constructed). Edward Lemert describes two types of deviance in his labelling theory. Firstly, primary deviance, this is the occurrence of a deviant act being performed which has not yet been publicly labelled, these are often trivial and go uncaught. (Labelling theory however does not explain why primary deviance occurs in the first place). Subsequently, secondary deviance- this results from societal reaction and creation of stigma surrounding the act. Once an individual is labelled they may experience prejudice and may only be seen in this label, thus becoming their ‘master status’. The master status is where society interprets all actions in light of the label given to an individual. This occurrence can be seen in the case of Jimmy Saville, a philanthropist who helped raise millions for charity, yet he is only viewed as his master status of a paedophile.

Secondary deviance is likely to provoke further hostile reactions from society, for example a falsely identified criminal may find it difficult to find legitimate employment due to a criminal record, this can lead to a ‘deviant career’- this is the practical consequence of treating an individual as deviant. The individual will then accept the label of a deviant and then live up to the name, performing a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea of the self- fulfilling prophecy and the deviant career is incredibly deterministic. It suggests that individuals are passive victims of labelling and have no free will in choosing their own path, criminal or not. This idea is argued against by Clarke’s rational choice theory, of which argues that to commit crime is a logical process that comes from within an individual and not from outside influence. The media is also seen to be the cause of moral panics- these are exaggerated and irrational over-reactions by society to a perceived problem. Left realists view peoples fear if crime as a rational response, however the media exaggerate and distort reality in order to create fear of certain groups. The process of the creation of moral panics is illustrated by Stanley Cohen in his research of the Mods and Rockers. The media initially labelled the two groups as a threat to society’s values and thus became ‘folk devils’. The media then exaggerated the deviance of the groups causing moral entrepreneurs (police) to condemn their behaviour and crackdown on the ‘problem’. The media thus predicts further deviance and distort the truth, marginalising the groups. As the groups have become labelled as deviants and stigmatised, they then became a self-fulfilling prophecy, acting up to the media concern of their behaviours. Therefore, causing deviancy amplification and creating increasingly more crime. Young sees moral panics as a result of deviancy amplification as the media worsens the problem they initially condemned; in other words, what initially was a fantasy problem, becomes a real problem. However, Cohen has been criticised for failing to explain why the media choose to amplify some problems and not others, nor how moral panics come to an end. Reiman in his book ‘The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Prison’ theorises of selective enforcement. Street crimes are highly prosecuted whereas white collar crimes such as tax evasion are underrepresented and are less likely to be seen as a criminal offence and prosecuted. A recent example of this is the controversy over Amazon and Starbucks getting away with not paying taxes in the UK. However, even in cases where the corporate business are prosecuted the punishment or result is not harsh or harmful towards them as prosecution is mainly used to perform and ideological function to make the system appear impartial. Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralisation aid the idea that deviance is a social construction. These techniques include: denying there was a victim (for example by labelling the victim as a terrorist of extremist), denial of injury (the other side –Iraq- started it), denial of responsibility (government officials are doing their duty to their country), lastly, appealing to a higher cause (such as divine intervention)....