Course: Criminology (9603)

Semester: Spring, 2020

ASSIGNMENT No. 2
Q.1 Criminal behavior is learnt through the process of social interaction. Discuss.
The concept of social process in criminology is the foundation for several criminological theories. These
theories emerged in response to earlier criminological theories that contended that people commit crime for
psychological or biological reasons. Social process explores how we learn things in our interactions with other
people. It relies on the concept of symbolic interactionism, which focuses on how people interpret and define
their social reality based on interactions with others. It also examines how people assign meanings to things.
For instance, if you were in a serious relationship and your significant other unexpectedly broke up with you on
a date, you might get rid of the clothes you were wearing when it happened. You attached meaning to the
clothes based on your association of them to a negative interaction with someone else that you cared about.
Another component of social process and symbolic interactionism is the element of social reality. A famous
related quote is called the Thomas Theorem, which states: 'What we believe is real is real in its consequences.'
Back in our breakup example, you may have believed the outfit you wore that night was bad luck. So, if you did
wear it again, and that same day you slammed your hand in your car door, you might believe it was because you
wore that outfit. It's not likely that the outfit had anything to do with you slamming your hand in the car door.
However, you made the connection with your mind, and you ultimately believe that the outfit is the reason that
happened. This is just one of many examples of how a person's beliefs affect their social reality.
Differential Association
One of the first criminological theories to use social process was differential association theory. This was one
of the first theories to state that criminal behavior is learned, rather than biological. Furthermore, it stated that
the behavior is learned by interacting and communicating with other people. No one had ever proposed these
ideas specific to criminal behavior before. Sutherland contended that this learning typically occurs in small,
closely-knit groups and includes the techniques of committing a crime. It also provides an avenue for direction
regarding the motivations, attitudes, values, beliefs, and rationalizations for committing the crime. Just like a
child isn't born knowing how to tie his shoes, he also must learn how to pick a pocket on a train, as well as why
he should pick a pocket on a train. Part of the learning also includes favorable or unfavorable perspectives on
criminal laws - what it means to live within or outside the boundaries of the law.
A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of unfavorable perspectives towards the law. This is no
surprise: young people often listen more to their friends and peers than their adult parents. So, if their friends
scoff at the law, they likely will, too, if they are spending more time with their friends than their parents.
Sutherland also contended that differential associations will vary in frequency, duration, intensity and priority.
Thus, the longer and more frequently one youth interacts with a delinquent youth, the more likely he is to
become delinquent himself.
Another component of differential association is that the core process of learning criminal behavior is the same
as that of learning law-abiding behavior. People learn to commit crime the same way they learn anything else.

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Lastly, Sutherland argued that the motivations for criminal and law-abiding behavior cannot be one and the
same. In that vein, you can't be driven to achieve academic excellence and cheat on a test at the same time. You
wouldn't be academically excellent by cheating because your test scores wouldn't actually be yours.
Social Learning & Social Bonds
Akers and Burgess, two prominent criminologists, built onto differential association by blending a bit of operant
conditioning (learning by associating an action with its consequences) into the theory. They developed social
learning theory, which added the notion that non-social conditions can contribute to a person's learning of
criminal behavior. Specifically, it noted that certain environments can offer situations ripe for learning criminal
behavior without any social interaction. Let's say you live in a busy city and are riding the subway home. It's a
crowded train during rush hour and people are packed like sardines. You observe a young man wedge his way
through the crowd on his way to the exit. Along the way, you see him slip a cell phone from an unsuspecting
standing passenger's bag into his pocket as he squeezes his way through the crowd. You try to say something
but your voice is drowned out through the din of the crowd and the announcements on the train. You weren't
directly instructed, but your experience and observation of the consequences of the thief's actions could enable
you to later model your behavior in accordance to what you just learned. Without exchanging a word with the
thief, you now know how to steal a cell phone on a train.
If we want to be able to reduce crime, we must first understand why it occurs. Sociologists generally discount
explanations rooted in the individual biology or psychology of criminal offenders. While a few offenders may
suffer from biological defects or psychological problems that lead them to commit crime, most do not. Further,
biological and psychological explanations cannot adequately explain the social patterning of crime discussed
earlier: why higher crime rates are associated with certain locations and social backgrounds. For example, if
California has a higher crime rate than Maine, and the United States has a higher crime rate than Canada, it
would sound silly to say that Californians and Americans have more biological and psychological problems
than Mainers and Canadians, respectively. Biological and psychological explanations also cannot easily explain
why crime rates rise and fall, nor do they lend themselves to practical solutions for reducing crime.
The Functional Perspective: Social Structure Theories
Social structure theories all stress that crime results from the breakdown of society’s norms and social
organization and in this sense fall under the functional perspective. They trace the roots of crime to problems in
the society itself rather than to biological or psychological problems inside individuals. By doing so, they
suggest the need to address society’s social structure in order to reduce crime. Several social structure theories
exist.
Social Disorganization Theory
A popular explanation is social disorganization theory. This approach originated primarily in the work of
Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay (1942), two social scientists at the University of Chicago who studied
that city’s delinquency rates during the first three decades of the twentieth century. During this time, the ethnic

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composition of Chicago changed considerably, as the city’s inner zones were first occupied by English,
German, and Irish immigrants, and then by Eastern European immigrants, and then by African Americans who
moved there from southern states. Shaw and McKay found that the inner zones of Chicago consistently had the
highest delinquency rates regardless of which ethnic group lived there, and they also found that the ethnic
groups’ delinquency rates declined as they moved to outer areas of Chicago. To explain these related patterns,
Shaw and McKay reasoned that the inner zones of Chicago suffered from social disorganization: A weakening
of social institutions such as the family, school, and religion that in turn weakens the strength of social bonds
and norms and the effectiveness of socialization. Research today confirms that crime rates are highest in
neighborhoods with several kinds of structural problems, including high rates of residential mobility, population
density, poverty, and single-parent families (Mazerolle, Wickes, & McBroom, 2010).
Anomie Theory
Another popular explanation is anomie theory, first formulated by Robert K. Merton (1938) in a classic article.
Writing just after the Great Depression, Merton focused on the effects of poverty in a nation like the United
States that places so much emphasis on economic success. With this strong cultural value, wrote Merton, the
poor who do not achieve the American dream feel especially frustrated. They have several ways or adaptations
of responding to their situation.

Q.2 Why is informal social control not as effective today in Pakistani society? Discuss how social
cohesion can be improved in a society.
To call the police, to report crime or suspicious activities, to provide information to help police identify a
criminal – these are acts of ‘the community to regulate itself and the behaviour of residents and visitors’ (Bursik
& Gramsik, 2003: 15). Linking formal and informal mechanisms of social control, such cooperative acts
constitute a certain kind of normative order. They also imply recognition of the police role in maintaining order
and ‘fighting crime’, and endorsement of the legitimacy of the police as the appropriate institution to deal with
such issues (cf. Beetham, 1991).
Public cooperation is central to effective and equitable day-to-day police work, with the vast majority of
criminal offences becoming known to the police through being identified first by a member of the public.
Cooperation from citizens is then required throughout the criminal justice process. An absence of cooperation
impairs the efficiency of the police and other criminal justice agencies, and erodes the fairness of their
operations (Goudriaan, Wittebrood and Nieuwbeerta, 2006). For instance, if crimes are less likely to be reported
by people living in certain areas, then police resources will be allocated in ways that do not reflect the ‘true’
distribution of crime, favouring those areas where people are more likely to report (even if the incidence of
crime is lower).
Why do people cooperate? Procedural justice theory is the dominant account in this area of research (Tyler,
2009; Huq, Jackson and Trinker, 2016), but in this paper we contribute to the literature by assessing not just the

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associations between trust in police fairness (and effectiveness) and willingness to cooperate, but also the role
of wider social concerns. Positioning it as indicative of informal social control in a sense close to Carr’s (2003)
‘new parochialism’, we argue that cooperation with police can be seen as an act of social control initiated at the
informal level – because it stems from the way people react to the characteristics of, and events in, their social
environment – but implemented at the formal or public level, because they invoke the police and, in almost all
cases, hand the problem over to the officers who arrive (Waddington, 1999).
Understood in these terms, public cooperation with the police may have a number of antecedents. The first area
of interest is public trust in police fairness and group engagement – this is closely linked to motive-based
perceptions of shared group membership, and legitimacy (Bradford, Murphy and Jackson, 2014; Van Damme,
Pauwels and Svensson, 2015). Second, opinions about police effectiveness more narrowly defined should not be
forgotten. This may be an important predictor of intention to cooperate, being an assessment of the ‘job done’
by the police organization across its wide range of tasks. Third, concerns about the condition of local social
order, and of society more generally, may be associated with cooperation (mediated, perhaps, by public trust in
police), whether these be couched in terms of social or moral decline, increasing neighbourhood disorder, or
community cohesion or collective efficacy (Jackson, Bradford, Hohl & Stanko, 2013; Jackson & Bradford,
2009; Kochel, 2016; Nix, Wolfe, Rojek and Kaminski, 2015).
Testing these potential antecedents of public cooperation, we highlight a complex set of associations between
perceptions of social cohesion and moral consensus, trust in the police, and willingness to cooperate with these
agents of formal social control. Public cooperation may be shaped not only by people’s relationships with police
but also by their relationships with each other. In particular, when individuals experience a strong sense of
social cohesion and collective efficacy, they may be more likely to cooperate with police. Yet, equally,
willingness to cooperate with and support police may be higher among those who perceive threats to social and
moral order.
Why do people call the police – and what does it mean to do so?
Many recent studies concerned with public cooperation with the police have focused primarily on the extent to
which such cooperation is an outcome of trust and/or legitimacy judgments (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Jackson et
al., 2013; Murphy, Sargeant & Cherney, 2015; Van Damme et al., 2015). Often concerned with issues of
procedural justice, such research has tended to see cooperation as a more or less ‘natural’ outcome of positive
police-public relationships. Yet, individuals may have many reasons for seeking to contact and cooperate with
police (or not), some of which may have little to do with the extent to which they trust and grant legitimacy to
officers and institution. We examine here the calls that citizens imagine they might make to the police to report
crimes or anti-social behaviour, and the situations in which they could assist the police through the provision of
information. These are types of cooperation that might not involve matters of personal concern to those
involved, but are nonetheless indicative of the application of social control, and we therefore assess alongside

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issues of trust the extent to which people’s perceptions of and concerns about their social environment might
encourage or inhibit such cooperation.
Calling the police as AN ACT OF informal social control
According to Bursik and Gramsik (1993; see also Warner, 2007) there are three types of ‘informal’ social
control: private social control, which is embedded in the relationships between family and close friends;
parochial social control, exerted by more diffuse networks of people usually imagined to be operating within a
geographically and/or socially bounded area; and indirect informal social control, or what Warner (ibid: 101)
calls public control, something that is bound up in the readiness and ability of individuals and social networks to
‘secure public goods and services that are allocated by agencies located outside the area’ (Bursik and Gramsik,
1993: 17; quoted in Warner, 2007: 101). Informal social control sits alongside, interacts with, and is generative
of formal social control – the most important and salient mechanism of which is, in many circumstances, the
police. Most obviously, one way an individual can seek to challenge the behaviour of others, or attempt to assert
order, is to summon police officers to deal with the issue.
Carr (2003) usefully blurs the line between parochial and public social control. In his view, low levels of social
cohesion might be expected to weaken parochial social control (people are less willing to get involved if they do
not feel that others around them share similar concerns and would support them). But this does not necessarily
mean that informal social control is absent in areas with low social cohesion. The ‘new parochialism’ describes
situations in which individuals, although perhaps not ready to ‘have a go’ themselves, are willing to call on and
cooperate with agents of formal social control, creating ‘a partnership between parochial and public spheres’
(ibid: 1252), wherein these different types of control are not separate from each other but intimately linked. This
type of social control is initiated at the personal level and implemented at the public – or formal – level. Such
behaviour will not, of course, be limited to areas with generally low levels of social cohesion; Carr’s ideas build
on earlier conceptions that also stressed the mutual interdependence of the parochial and public orders and the
forms of social control that maintain them (Hunter, 1995: 221).
Criminological research often measures social control mechanisms at the community level (e.g. Jackson et al.,
2012). The relative strengths or weaknesses of social control mechanisms are related to factors such as the
social composition of an area, population stability, and relationships with the police (Carr, 2003; Sampson,
2012; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998; Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, 1997; Silver & Miller, 2004; Wells,
Schafer, Varano and Bynum, 2006). But our focus in this paper is at the individual level. We are concerned with
the factors that influence the decisions of citizens to invoke the police – to summon officers and assist them
when they arrive. People summon and cooperate with police when they witness transgressions social norms,
such as crimes or disorderly behaviour: ‘conduct regarded as undesirable from a normative viewpoint, that is
… conduct which ought not to occur’ (Black, 1993: 22, emphasis added; see also Bursik & Gramsik, 1993: 14).
Social control and reactions to deviancy are then intimately bound up with the function of the police as
envisaged by Bittner (1990: 249). All are oriented to the problem posed by events or behaviours that ought

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not to be happening, and ‘about-which-someone-had-better-do-something-now’, and aim to correct
transgression and restore normative order. People’s willingness to contact and cooperate with the police should
therefore be related to their normative assessments of the place in which they live and of those they share it with
– what ought or ought not to occur, what should be done about deviancy, and whether it is worth getting
involved.
Trust and public cooperation with police
Despite this, much of the empirical evidence on public cooperation with the police links, as noted, cooperation
to procedural justice via the intervening mechanisms of legitimacy and social identity (Tyler, 1990; 2006; Tyler
& Huo, 2002). The central concern is with the extent to which relations between police and policed shape
cooperation. In this body of work, the experience of procedurally just treatment at the hands of authorities is
associated not only with satisfaction with decisions and decision-makers, but also with increased propensities to
offer them assistance. These effects are held to emerge partly because the experience of procedural fairness
fosters in people feelings of motive-based trust in – and shared group membership with – the authority
concerned (Murphy, Bradford & Jackson 2016). Fairness encourages the idea that citizens and the police have a
shared set of ends and should work together to achieve them. By treating people justly and equitably, police
communicate to citizens that they are valued members of the social group that the police represent (Tyler, 1990;
Tyler & Blader, 2000) – a group that can be conceptualized as the nation, state, or community (Bradford et al.,
2014; Jackson & Bradford, 2009). Conversely, unfair treatment communicates division, social denigration and
exclusion, fostering an ‘us and them’ situation. Under such conditions, trust, legitimacy, identification with the
group the police represent, and therefore cooperation, will decline, and this might encourage or force authorities
to take a more punitive and/or aggressive stance – one which may well be perceived as procedurally unfair by
members of the public, leading to a downward spiral of increasing distance and antagonism between police and
public (Bradford, 2015; Brunson, 2007; Carr, Napolitano & Keating, 2007; McAra & McVie, 2005).
Central to procedural justice theory, then, is not only the fairness of police activity, but also what
fairness communicates to citizens. One reason why the behaviour of officers is identity-relevant to citizens is
that police represent dominant social categories, and it is across the dimension of fairness that people draw
conclusions about their status and belonging within the categories involved. Yet, the symbolism of police –
what this institution means to people – may have implications for public relationships with it that go beyond
questions of fairness.
Social Concerns and Public Cooperation – A British Perspective
In British criminology, Reiner (2010), Loader (2006) and others have developed distinctive accounts of the
cultural significance of the police. In this work, the police are held by citizens to be representatives of law and
order, the nation-state, respectability, and even a certain form of Englishness or Britishness (Girling, Loader &
Sparks 2000; Jackson & Bradford, 2009; Loader, 2006; Smith, 2007; Waddington, 1999). We might ask
therefore: what opinions, outlooks or ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams, 1964; see Loader & Mulcahy, 2003) are

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implicated by adherence to the police as representative of, for example, a stable, cohesive national past (Girling
et al., 1998, 2000; Reiner, 2010)? And what do such representations imply for public propensities to cooperate
with police?
It has been suggested that the nature of the relationship between police and public in Great Britain can be
explained not, primarily, by reference to crime – concerns about crime per se often have only a tangential
connection with assessments of the police (Jackson et al., 2009; but see also Sindall, Sturgis & Jennings, 2012)
– but by reference to a range of ‘deeper’ social concerns (albeit that many of these concerns shape the way
people think and talk about crime itself, Sasson, 1995). When many British people think about the police and
their activities, it seems they also think about the erosion of norms and social ties (signified perhaps by crime
and disorder) and about policing as the organized defense of those norms and ties (Bradford & Myhill, 2015;
Girling et al., 2000; Jackson & Bradford, 2009; Loader & Mulcahy, 2003). When thinking about ‘the state of
society’ and its apparent direction of travel, those who are concerned about long-term social change, who
perceive a modern world in long term moral and social decline, or who buy into a ‘community lost’ narrative,
seem often to blame the police as representatives of the social order that allows these things to happen, and their
trust in police is undermined (Jackson & Bradford, 2009). At a more local or neighbourhood level, assessments
of community cohesion, social control and civility, which may of course themselves reflect wider concerns
about the breakdown and fragmentation of society, also seem to damage trust in the police (Jackson &
Sunshine, 2007).
This is a perspective that positions the police as exactly the kind of ‘proto-typical group representatives’
(Sunshine & Tyler, 2003) envisaged by the procedural justice model. Concerns about cohesion, disorder and
collective efficacy are thought to be associated with informal social control (Carr, 2003; Sampson 2012;
Sampson & Bartusch, 1998; Sampson et al., 1997; Warner, 2003, 2007; Wells et al., 2006), with lower levels of
social cohesion and collective efficacy linked to lower propensities to engage in social control activity –
including, we argue, cooperation with police. Citizens hold accountable group authorities perceived to be
allowing the norms, values and standards of public behaviour erode, motivating withdrawal from relationships
with those authorities. Conversely, cooperation with police should be reinforced by high levels of social
cohesion. This latter argument finds echoes in other studies that have looked at the effect of community level
characteristics on individual behaviour. In a study that examined the associations between area-level
characteristics and crime reporting, Goudriaan et al. (2006) found that high social cohesion, measured at the
aggregate level, was associated with higher chances of reporting crime victimization at the individual level.
Similarly, Warner (2007) reports a strong association between aggregate social cohesion and trust and
individual propensities to engage in ‘direct’ social control (self-assessed readiness to involve landlords, police
or others in neighbour disputes). We investigate here whether the relationship between social cohesion and
cooperation with police holds in a British context, but at the level of individual perception only. We ask, that is,
whether the relationships people feel they have with others in their social environment are associated with their

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propensity to cooperate with the police. One hypothesis is that concerns about neighbourhood disorder and
social cohesion are associated with low cooperation – that people withdraw from the police when social order
appears fragmented.
Q.3 What is criminal deviance? Briefly discuss different types of crimes.
Deviance is any behavior that violates social norms, and is usually of sufficient severity to warrant disapproval
from the majority of society. Deviance can be criminal or non‐criminal. The sociological discipline that deals
with crime (behavior that violates laws) is criminology (also known as criminal justice).
Although there are many different kinds of crimes, criminal acts can generally be divided into four primary
categories: personal crimes, property crimes, inchoate crimes, statutory crimes, and financial crimes.
Personal Crimes
Personal crimes are those that result in physical or mental harm to another person. They can be divided into two
main categories, forms of homicide and other violent crimes. Where the physical harm to another individual is
so severe that it causes death, a defendant may be charged with any one of several types of homicide, including,
for example, first-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, or vehicular homicide. Conversely violent
crimes, which are also very severe, include:
 assault and battery
 arson
 child abuse
 domestic abuse
 kidnapping
 rape and statutory rape
Property Crimes
Property crimes typically involve interference with the property of another. Although they may involve physical
or mental harm to another, they primarily result in the deprivation of the use or enjoyment of property. Many
property crimes are theft crimes, including burglary, larceny, robbery, auto theft, and shoplifting.
Inchoate Crimes
Inchoate crimes refer to those crimes that were initiated but not completed, and acts that assist in the
commission of another crime. Inchoate crimes require more than a person simply intending or hoping to commit
a crime. Rather, the individual must take a “substantial step” towards the completion of the crime in order to be
found guilty. Inchoate crimes include aiding and abetting, attempt, and conspiracy. In some cases, inchoate
crimes can be punished to the same degree that the underlying crime would be punished, while in other cases,
the punishment might be less severe.
Statutory Crimes
Statutory crimes include those crimes, in addition to the crimes discussed above, which are proscribed by
statute. Three significant types of statutory crimes are alcohol related crimes, drug crimes, traffic offenses,

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and financial/white collar crimes. These crimes are specifically prohibited by statute because society hopes to
deter individuals from engaging in them. Alcohol-related crimes include a variety of offenses regarding how
and where alcohol can be consumed, such as:
 Driving Under the Influence (DUI/OWI/DWI)
 Open Container Violations
 Minor in Possession of Alcohol
 Public Intoxication
 Underage DUI
 Boating DUI
 Selling and Supplying Alcohol to Minors
 Refusing to Perform a Field Sobriety Test
 Refusing to Perform a Breathalyzer or Provide a Blood Sample
Drug crimes concern any involvement in the creation or distribution of drugs, including drug possession, drug
manufacturing, and drug trafficking. One area of criminal law that is currently receiving a great deal of
attention is the regulation and prosecution of drug crimes related to medical marijuana. Due to state trends
toward the legalization of medical marijuana, this is an area of criminal law that is in flux.
Traffic offenses include crimes that may arise while an individual is driving a vehicle on public roadways.
Because a DUI/OWI/DWI involves both alcohol and the use of a vehicle, it is considered both an alcohol
related crime and a traffic offense. Additional traffic offenses include driving on a suspended or revoked
license, driving without a license, hit-and-run accidents, reckless driving, and vehicular assault. Where a
traffic offense results in death, it can be charged as a far more serious crime, such as a form of homicide.
Financial and Other Crimes
Finally, financial crimes often involve deception or fraud for financial gain. Although white-collar crimes
derive their name from the corporate officers who historically perpetrated them, anyone in any industry can
commit a white-collar crime. These crimes include many types
of fraud and blackmail, embezzlement and money laundering, tax evasion, and cybercrime.

Q.4 What do you mean by White collar Crimes? Describe in detail the situation of white collar crimes in
Pakistan.
 White-collar crime, is similar to corporate crime, because white-collar employees are more likely to
commit fraud, bribery, ponzi schemes, insider trading, embezzlement, cyber crime, copyright
infringement, money laundering, identity theft, and forgery.
 The term “white-collar crime” was coined in 1939 by the sociologist Edwin Sutherland, who defined it
as a “crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his
occupation”.

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 White collar crimes stand in contrast to blue-collar street crimes include arson, burglary, theft, assault,
rape, and vandalism.
 Corporate crime deals with the company as a whole. Their difference is that white-collar crime benefits
the individual involved, and corporate crime benefits the company or the corporation.
 Insider trading, the trading of stock by someone with access to publicly unavailable information, is a
type of fraud.
White-collar crime is a financially motivated, nonviolent crime committed for illegal monetary gain. White-
collar crime is a financially motivated, nonviolent crime committed for illegal monetary gain. White-collar
crime, is similar to corporate crime, because white-collar employees are more likely to commit fraud, bribery,
ponzi schemes, insider trading, embezzlement, cyber crime, copyright infringement, money laundering, identity
theft, and forgery. The term “white-collar crime” was coined in 1939 by Edwin Sutherland, who defined it as a
“crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” in a
speech entitled “The White Collar Criminal” delivered to the American Sociological Society. Much of
Sutherland’s work was to separate and define the differences in blue-collar street crimes such as arson, burglary,
theft, assault, rape, and vandalism, which are often blamed on psychological, associational, and structural
factors. Instead, white-collar criminals are opportunists, who learn to take advantage of their circumstances to
accumulate financial gain. They are educated, intelligent, affluent, and confident individuals whose jobs involve
unmonitored access to large sums of money. Corporate crime deals with the company as a whole. The
relationship that white-collar crime has with corporate crime is that they are similar because they both are
involved within the business world. Their difference is that white-collar crime benefits the individual involved,
and corporate crime benefits the company or the corporation. Insider trading, the trading of stock by someone
with access to publicly unavailable information, is a type of fraud. One well-known insider trading case in the
United States is the ImClone stock trading case. In December 2001, top-level executives sold their shares in
ImClone Systems, a pharmaceutical company that manufactured an anti-cancer drug. The U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission investigated numerous top-level executives, as well as Martha Stewart, a friend of
ImClone’s former chief executive who had also sold her shares at the same time. The SEC reached a settlement
in 2005. One common misconception about corporate crime is that its effects are mainly financial. For example,
pharmaceutical companies may make false claims regarding their drugs and factories may illegally dump toxic
waste. Indeed, the Hooker Chemical Company dumped toxic waste into the abandoned Love Canal in Niagara
Falls and sold the land without disclosing the dumping. It was sold in the 1950’s to a private housing developer,
whose residents began experiencing major health problems such as miscarriages and birth defects in the 1970’s.
Organized crime refers to transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by
criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Sometimes
criminal organizations force people to do business with them, as when a gang extorts money from shopkeepers

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for “protection.” Gangs may become “disciplined” enough to be considered “organized.” An organized gang or
criminal set can also be referred to as a mob.
Patron-client networks are defined by the fluid interactions they produce. Organized crime groups operate as
smaller units within the overall network, and as such tend towards valuing significant others, familiarity of
social and economic environments, or tradition.
Bureaucratic and corporate organized crime groups are defined by the general rigidity of their internal
structures. Focusing more on how the operations works, succeeds, sustains itself or avoids retribution, they are
generally typified by: a complex authority structure; an extensive division of labor between classes and the
organization; responsibilities carried out in an impersonal manner; and top-down communication and rule
enforcement mechanisms.
A distinctive gang culture underpins many, but not all, organized groups; this may develop through recruiting
strategies, social learning processes in the corrective system experienced by youth, family, or peer involvement
in crime, and the coercive actions of criminal authority figures. The term “street gang” is commonly used
interchangeably with “youth gang”, referring to neighborhood or street-based youth groups that meet “gang”
criteria.
Organized crime groups often victimize businesses through the use of extortion or theft and fraud activities like
hijacking cargo trucks, robbing goods, committing bankruptcy fraud, insurance fraud, or stock fraud. Organized
crime groups seek out corrupt public officials in executive, law enforcement, and judicial roles so that their
activities can avoid, or at least receive early warnings about, investigation and prosecution.
Q.5 Write short notes on the following:
1. Functions of deviance
Deviance has four social functions. Deviance clarifies our cultural values, and deviance helps to define our
morality. And thirdly, deviance helps to unify society. And finally, fourth, deviance promotes social change.
Those are the four functions of deviance that Durkheim theorized. So we're going to explore each of them in
turn, and then look at a theory, a theoretical application of Durkheim done by a sociologist, Kai Erikson, who
studied the Puritans. So let's move into the four functions of deviance.
Firstly, we're going to start with how deviance clarifies our cultural values. The first of Durkheim's functions of
deviance is that deviance clarifies our cultural values. Deviance helps to define what is good and what is bad in
society. So what is good rests on the polar opposite what is bad. We can only define the good in relation to the
bad, and we can only define the bad in relation to the good. So these two concepts are inextricable. They are
always going to remain paired. So we need examples in society of what is wrong so that we can become unified
around what is right. And deviant behavior helps to define these boundaries for us. So without definitions of
deviance, we can't have any social order, because everyone would be running around with their own moral
code, their own set of standards that society would come unraveled.

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 Course: Criminology (9603)
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So what deviance does is, by referencing what is bad, it gets us all on the same page with respect to what is
good and how to act in society. So recall that Durkheim was a structural functionalist. And structural
functionalists are concerned with what makes society harmonious, orderly, and stable. And deviance, then, was
one of these functions. Because deviance holds society together. Paradoxically, deviant behavior sets an
example for the rest of us so we can become unified on what is culturally valued and right as opposed to what is
wrong. So those cultural values of right, sharing them is what holds us together. So in that way, really
fascinatingly, deviance helps to hold society together.
The second function of deviance that Durkheim theorized is that when we respond to deviance, this defines our
collective notions of morality. So this is closely related with defining cultural values. In addition to our values,
then, our moral notions are also clarified when we respond to deviant behavior. If someone gets caught stealing,
for instance, and is punished, this sends a signal to the rest of us that stealing is wrong. And in this way, it helps
to shore up the edges of our moral behavior and define what is right and wrong.
This gives us all the same code to live by. Right and wrong behavior, we're all on the same page. And this
allows us to live in groups and play by the same rules, as I said before. So deviance, then, is an absolutely
critical function for society because it enables us to live in groups when we uphold the same notion of deviance
and the same morality.
Thirdly, and most fascinating for me, is that Durkheim theorized that deviance-- when we respond to deviance,
it helps to unify society. And this is a really fascinating aspect because when we respond to deviant behavior,
we come together against the common offender and strengthen our social bonds in the community, strengthen
our social ties, and in the process, create shared values of right and wrong.
This can happen on a large scale or a smaller scale. National responses to disasters like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor
unified an entire nation against a common enemy. Like in 1984, the book, George Orwell talked about the
importance of we always have to have a common enemy. If we don't have a common enemy, we don't have
unity. So unity in this way is created against a common enemy. Or it can happen in a more community base,
like the outcry when a sex offender wants to move into a suburb. Up in arms about that, a community comes
together against this common enemy.
So what happens, then, is that people say things like, he's not like us. We're right. He's wrong. We have
something in common based upon our shared conviction that he is wrong. Fellow feeling is created like this that
helps to glue society together. So the way that we respond to deviance then, unifies society.
Finally, Durkheim theorized that deviance is very important for the process of social change. As is often the
case, deviance is the spark that lights the fire of social change. Recall the civil rights movement from the 1960s.
You had Rosa Parks, who refused to sit in the area of the bus where she was supposed to sit. This was regarded
as deviant behavior that proved a catalyst to galvanize a movement to cause social change. Likewise, the
Greensboro Four, the four black youth who staged the sit-ins at the lunch counter at Woolworth's in

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 Course: Criminology (9603)
Semester: Spring, 2020
Greensboro, North Carolina. They were sitting at the "whites-only" counter. And this proved to be a very
important catalyst in Civil Rights Movement. So we see, then, how deviant behavior can cause social change.
Now I'd like to shift gears and take up the idea of is there any society without deviance. What if there's a society
with little or no deviance? What happens? Well, the answer to this question, emphatically on the board here,
there is no society without deviance. Durkheim has shown how deviance promotes morality, elevates the idea of
good as opposed to bad, promotes social solidarity and the essential functioning of the social order. But what
happens when there's little "conventional" deviance? The idea of deviance is relative. What is deviant in one
society might not be deviant another society. That's not the point. The point is that deviance exists in both
societies.
So let's turn now to a study by a sociologist, Kai Erikson, who did a historical study of the Puritans and their
forms of deviance. Puritans were a very pure, non-offending group of people. Yet they still had relative forms
of deviance. Some infractions had to be identified and prosecuted in order to maintain the social order. So
Erikson looked at conventions of deviance through time and found that the Puritans had several waves of crime.
They were different, but the rate of deviant offenders stayed the same throughout the whole time.
The most famous one of these waves is the witch trials, where witches were burned at the stakes. So, in this
sense, this ludicrous form of deviance got created for all the reasons we talked about before, all those four
functions of having to maintain solidarity in society, set what's good as opposed to what's bad, define a morality
in our cultural values. We can't do this on our own without some exemplar, some pariah.
So in a pretty stable, pure, "Puritan," harmonious society, we still had to have some form of deviance in order
for society to stay glued together. This is brilliant sociology. We are hugely indebted to Durkheim for giving
this theorization, that deviance, counter-intuitively, we might think, actually benefits society. Human beings,
when we live in groups, we need order. We need rules. We need norms. We can't live without it, and deviance
helps to provide these for us. It's an essential part of cohesive, social living.
Functionalists contend that deviance, including crime, is a natural part of society and, furthermore, fulfills
necessary functions for society.1.Deviance clarifies moral boundaries and norms (punishing deviants affirms a
group’s norms and clarifies what it means to be a member of that group).2.Deviance promotes social unity
(punishing deviants fosters a feeling of togetherness in a group’s members, while affirming the rightness of that
group’s ways).3.Deviance promotes social change (when boundary violations gain enough support, they become
new, acceptable behaviors; as such, deviance may force a group to rethink and redefine its moral boundaries and
change its customary ways).Hence, deviance has a functional role in the running of society. In fact, the pursuit
of mainstream values may generate forms of deviance
2. Causes of juvenile delinquency
Poor School Attendance
Poor school attendance is one of the top factors contributing to delinquency. School is not only a place to learn
and grow; it is also a structured routine that provides children with a goal to accomplish each day.

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 Course: Criminology (9603)
Semester: Spring, 2020
The routine of getting up, getting prepared, attending school, completing the work, and returning home each day
establishes a routine that is a basis for good choices in the future.
Children who are not encouraged to learn this type of routine are losing out on establishing good habits. They
are also experiencing a lot of free time that can be used to “learn” about other things that will not enhance their
lives or their futures.
Failure to accept the routine of attending school actually instills in children that they do not have to comply with
societal norms and that they can do as they please.
Poor Educational Standards
The type of school that a child attends may also contribute to their delinquency. Overcrowded and underfunded
schools tend to lack discipline and order.
The chaos often experienced in these schools lead children to act more defensively because they are scared by
their surroundings.
Parental involvement in school work and school based activities has been found to be a very large deterrent for
delinquent activities.
When an adult is active in the lives of a child, that child is more prone to perform well in school and social
surroundings because they know that the adult will see their actions.
Violence In The Home
One of the largest contributing factors to delinquency is violence in the home. Every Tulsa juvenile criminal
defense attorney will tell you that when a child is subjected to violence, they are in turn violent people.
Lashing out at others for the violence they experience at home is very common.
Teens subjected to violent actions, or those who witness it to others, are more likely to act ut their fears and
frustrations. They often have a “don’t care” attitude and this allows them to get into trouble more easily.
Violence In Their Social Circles
If the neighborhood is in which a child lives is violent, the children will have a tendency to be more prone to
delinquency.
Many people describe this as street survival methods because the child gets into trouble as a way to stay out of
trouble from area gang members or violent people. In many cases, when you remove the child from this type of
situation, their tendency for delinquent actions is removed.
Peer Pressure
Similar to neighborhood pressures, peer pressure from direct acquaintances can have an effect on how a
juvenile reacts to bad situations. If all of their friends are committing delinquent acts, the child may feel
pressured to do the same to be accepted.
The best way to avoid this type of situation is to be actively involved with who your child is hanging out with
on a regular basis. Know their friends. Know about their friends’ parents. This not only instills confidence in
your child to do the right thing, but it can also help parents keep their children away from bad influences.

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 Course: Criminology (9603)
Semester: Spring, 2020
Socioeconomic Factors
Juvenile delinquency is more common in poorer neighborhoods. While all neighborhoods are not exempt from
delinquent activities, it is believed they happen more in areas where children feel they must commit crimes to
prosper.
Theft and similar crimes may actually be a result of necessity and not that of just a petty crime. The only true
help for this situation is to make sure that children in these areas have access to what they need and understand
that they do not have to commit a crime to get ahead in life.
Substance Abuse
Substance abuse in a home or by the child is a very common cause for delinquency. Children who are exposed
to substance abuse often do not have the necessities they need to thrive and are forced to find these necessities
in other ways. Others, who become dependent on a substance may also need to commit crimes to sustain their
habit.
Counseling and treatment for this type of situation is the only real remedy to help these children. This type of
situation can cause their self-worth to deteriorate and allow them to commit acts that they would not otherwise
have considered.
Lack Of Moral Guidance
Parental or adult influence is the most important factor in deterring delinquency. When a parent or other adult
interacts with the child and shows them what is acceptable behavior and what is considered wrong, the child is
more likely to act in a way that is not delinquent.
It is very important for a child to have a bond with a good adult who will influence their actions and show them
the difference between what is right and what is wrong.
Even if your child has committed an act of delinquency, their lives are not over. You, as their caregiver have the
chance to turn around their lives and show them how to change their ways.
It starts with hiring a quality Tulsa juvenile criminal defense attorney so that they can receive a fair trial. Once
they have gone through this process, as a caregiver, you can begin to change the influences in the child’s life so
that they can start fresh and go into adulthood with a clean slate.

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