crime - ReviseSociology

Social Class and Crime

Prison statistics suggest the lower class commit more crime, which consensus theorists and right realists accept, but Marxists believe the crimes of the elite are hidden and yet more harmful.

In this post we examine the relationship between social class and crime.

According to available statistics, social class background is correlated with crime rates and victimisation rates. However, there are significant limitations with the statistics on social class and crime and we will examine these here.

We then apply some of the theories of crime and deviance to see how they explain the relationship between social class and crime:

Consensus theory explains the higher rates of working class crime in terms of differential access the working classes and middle classes have in relation to the legitimate opportunity structure, which generates different cultural responses
Interactionism broadly rejects the consensus theory arguing that the higher rates of working class crime are a social construction
Marxism recognises the fact that the high levels of working class crime are a social construction in that emphasises the role of crimogenic capitalism in generating crime.

Right Realism focuses our attention on the underclass, rather than the working class as the main cause of crime in society today, while left realism sees crime as an outgrowth of inequality and marginalisation, without blaming Capitalism per se as Marxists do.

Statistics on social class and crime

The UK government does not routinely collect statistics on the relationship between social class and crime. Instead, we have to rely on proxies for social class such as income, deprivation and education levels.

Prisoners are 3-4 times less likely to have GCSEs in English or Maths. This suggests a correlation between low levels of educational achievement and crime.

Those in deprived areas are more likely to be victims of crime.
Those in higher income households are more likely to be victims of crime.
Prisoners have low levels of educational achievement

50% of prisoners had literacy levels at Entry Level 3 or below, and 55% had numeracy skills at Entry Level 3 or below. (Level 1 is next, then Level 2, which is GCSE.)

Only 13% of prisoners have English at GCSE level, and less than 10% have maths. This compares to national GCSE pass rates in 2023 of 52% in English and 55% in maths.

See Creese (2016) An Assessment of the English and Maths Skills Levels of Prisoners in England for more details on the above.

‘Social Class’ and victimisation statistics

Depending on whether you look at the general levels of deprivation in an area or household income, you get a different picture of the relationship between social class and crime.

The proportion of adults in England and Wales who were victims of all crime in the year ending to March 2023 was slightly higher in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas. However, if we look at the statistics by household income we find that households with an annual income of £52000 or more have the highest rates of victimisation, and those with the lowest income the lowest rates of victimisation.

Victimisation rates for all crime:

Most deprived 20% of areas – 10.7%.

Least deprived 20% of areas – 9.8%.
Households with income £52 000 or above – 12.7%.
Households with income below £10 400 – 9.6%.

So it would seem that it is houses with the highest incomes in the most deprived areas that are most likely to be victims of crime.

Limitations with statistics on ‘social class’ and crime

The above statistics are proxies for social class, not actually measuring social class, only aspects of it.
Those in the least deprived areas or in lower income households may be less likely to report victimisation as they are more suspicious of middle class researchers compared to more middle class respondents.

Crime surveys may not ask about the types of crime the deprived are more likely to be victims of, such as health and safety at work breaches.
Where prisoners are concerned, from a Marxist perspective all classes commit crime but the middle classes and elite are less likely to get caught. Thus you would expect to see those with low educational achievement in prison, because these are the people the criminal justice system focuses on.

Consensus Theories, Social Class and Crime

Consensus theories generally accepted the fact that crime rates were higher among the lower social classes and set out to explain why – two theories which explicitly focused on the differences between working class culture and crime were Strain theory and Status Frustration theory.

Robert Merton: Strain Theory, Blocked Opportunities and Working Class Innovation

Robert Merton argued that crime increased when there was a strain (or gap) between society’s success goals (achieving material wealth) and the available opportunities to achieve those goals through legitimate means (having a well-paying job). Merton called this imbalance between goals and the ability to achieve them ‘anomie’.

Merton argued that crime was higher among the working classes because they had fewer opportunities to achieve material success through legitimate means and were thus more likely to adopt innovative cultural responses in order to achieve material success through criminal means – through burglary or drug dealing, for example.

Merton saw crime as a response to the inability of people to achieve material wealth, emphasising the role of material or economic factors.

(More detailed notes on Merton’s Strain Theory)

Albert Cohen: Status Frustration and Working Class Subcultures

Albert Cohen put more emphasis on cultural factors (values and status) rather than material factors in explaining working class crime.

Cohen argued that working class boys strove to emulate middle-class values and aspirations, but lacked the means to achieve success. This led to status frustration: a sense of personal failure and inadequacy.

In Cohen’s view they resolved their frustration by rejecting socially acceptable values and patterns of acceptable behaviour. Because there were several boys going through the same experiences, they end up banding together and forming delinquent subcultures.

This delinquent subculture reversed the norms and values of mainstream culture, offering positive rewards (status) to those who were the most deviant. Status was gained by being malicious, intimidating others, breaking school rules or the law and generally causing trouble.

This pattern of boys rejecting mainstream values and forming delinquent subcultures first started in school and then becomes more serious later on, taking on the form of truancy and possibly gangs.

(More detailed notes on Subcultural Theory)

Interactionism, Social Class and Crime

The main piece of sociological research which has specifically examined the relationship between the police and the social class background of offenders is Aaron Cicourel’s ‘Power and The Negotiation of Justice’ (1968)

Cicourel argued that it was the meanings held by police officers and juvenile officers that explained why most delinquents come from working class backgrounds, and that the process of defining a young person as a delinquent was complex, involving mainly two stages of interactions based on sets of meanings held by the participants.

The first stage is the decision by the police to stop and interrogate an individual. This decision is based on meanings held by the police of what is ‘strange’, ‘unusual’ and ‘wrong’. Whether or not the police stop and interrogate an individual depends on where the behaviour is taking place and on how the police perceive the individual(s). Whether behaviour is deemed to be ‘suspicious’ will depend on where the behaviour is taking place, for example an inner city, a park, a suburb. If a young person has a demeanour like that of a ‘typical delinquent’ then the police are more likely to both interrogate and arrest that person.

The Second Stage is that the young person is handed over to a juvenile delinquent officer. This officer will have a picture of a ‘typical delinquent’ in his mind. Factors associated with a typical delinquent include being of dishevelled appearance, having poor posture, speaking in slang etc. It follows that Cicourel found that most delinquents come from working class backgrounds.

When middle class delinquents are arrested they are less likely to be charged with the offence as they do not fit the picture of a ‘typical delinquent’. Also, their parents are more able to present themselves as respectable and reasonable people from a nice neighbourhood and co-operate fully with the juvenile officers, assuring them that their child is truly remorseful.

As a result, the middle class delinquent is more likely to be defined as ill rather than criminal, as having accidentally strayed from the path of righteousness just the once and having a real chance of reforming.

Cicourel based his research on two Californian cities, each with a population of about 100, 000. both had similar social characteristics yet there was a significant difference in the amount of delinquents in each city. Cicourel argued that this difference can only be accounted for by the size, organisation, policies and practices of the juvenile and police bureaus. It is the societal reaction that affects the rate of delinquency. It is the agencies of social control that produce delinquents.

Marxism, Social Class and Crime

Marxists argue that while working class crime does exist, it is a rational response to crimogenic capitalism. Moreover, all class commit crime, and the crimes of the elite are more harmful than street crime, but less likely to be punished.

Crimogenic Capitalism

Capitalism encourages individuals to pursue self-interest before everything else.
Capitalism encourages individuals to be materialistic consumers, making us aspire to an unrealistic and often unattainable lifestyle.
Capitalism in its wake generates massive inequality and poverty, conditions which are correlated with higher crime rates.

Marxist Sociologist David Gordon says that Capitalist societies are ‘dog eat dog societies’ in which each individual company and each individual is encouraged to look out for their own interests before the interests of others, before the interests of the community, and before the protection of the environment. If we look at the Capitalist system, what we find is that not only does it recommend that we engage in the self-interested pursuit of profit is good, we learn that it is acceptable to harm others and the environment in the process.

Marxists theorise that the values of the Capitalist system filter down to the rest of our culture. Think again about the motives of economic criminals: The burglars, the robbers, and the thieves. What they are doing is seeking personal gain without caring for the individual victims.

The Capitalist system is also one of radical inequality. At the very top we have what David Rothkopf calls the ‘Superclass’ , mainly the people who run global corporations, and at the very bottom we have the underclass (in the developed world) and the slum dwellers, the street children and the refugees in the developing world.

The Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman points out that the super wealthy effectively segregate themselves from the wealthy, through living in exclusive gated communities and travelling in private jets and armoured vehicles with security entourages. If people can afford it, they move to a better area, and send their children to private schools. However, this doesn’t prevent the poor and the rich from living side by side.

Marxists argue that the visible evidence of massive inequalities give people at the bottom a sense of injustice, a sense of anger and a sense of frustration that they are not sharing in the wealth being flaunted in front of them (the flaunting is the point is it not?) As a result, Capitalism leads to a flourishing of economic crime as well as violent street crime.

William Chambliss even goes so far as to say that economic crime ‘’represents rational responses to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies”. As we have seen from previous studies. Drug dealers see themselves as innovative entrepreneurs. So internalised is the desire to be successful that breaking the law is seen as a minor risk.

Marxists hold that more egalitarian societies based on the values of the co-operation and mutual assistance, have lower crime rates.

Key Concepts

White Collar Crime: Crimes committed in the furtherance of an individual’s own interests, often against the corporations of organisations within which they work.

Corporate Crime: Those crimes committed by or for corporations or businesses which act to further their interests and have a serious physical or economic impact on employees, consumers and the general public. The drive is usually the desire to increase profits.

The Crimes of the elite are more costly than street crime

Marxists argue that although they are hidden from view, the crimes of the elite exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of the ‘ordinary people’. Laureen Snider (1993) points out that the cost of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime to the economy far outweighs the cost of street crime by ‘typical’ criminals.

The Cost of Financial Crime (Fraud)

Organisations such as Corporate Watch and…. Multinational Monitor, suggest that Corporate Fraud is widespread. The General Accounting Agency of the USA has estimated that 100s of savings and loans companies have failed in recent years due to insider dealing, failure to disclose accurate information, and racketeering. The cost to the taxpayer in the USA of corporate bail outs is estimated to be around $500 billion, or $5000 per household in the USA.[1]

Case Study – Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme

In 2009 the disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced to the maximum 150 years in prison for masterminding a $65bn (£38bn) fraud that wrecked the lives of thousands of investors.

The US district judge Denny Chin described the fraud as “staggering” and said the “breach of trust was massive” and that a message was being sent by the sentence. There had been no letters submitted in support of Madoff’s character, he said. Victims in the courtroom clapped as the term was read out.

Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, theft and money laundering. The sentencing, in what has been one of the biggest frauds ever seen on Wall Street, was eagerly anticipated. Described by victims in written testimony as a “thief and a monster”, Madoff has become an emblem for the greed that pitched the world into recession. Nearly 9,000 victims have filed claims for losses in Madoff’s corrupt financial empire.

Madoff masterminded a huge “Ponzi” scheme. Instead of investing client’s money in securities, it was held with a bank and new deposits used to pay bogus returns to give the impression that the business was successful. At the time of his arrest in December, he claimed to manage $65bn of investors’ money, but in reality there was just $1bn left.

Please see this linked post for more details on The Marxist perspective on crime.

Right Realism/ Underclass Theory and Crime

Right Realists disagree with Marxists – Right Realists point to the underclass as being responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in society.

Charles Murray and the Underclass

Charles Murray argued that changes to family structure was responsible for much of the increase in the crime rate in the 1970s and 80s – he largely attributes the growth of crime because of a growing underclass or ‘new rabble’ who are defined by their deviant behaviour and fail to socialise their children properly. The children of the underclass fail to learn self-control and also fail to learn the difference between right and wrong.

The underclass has increased because of increasing welfare dependency. Murray argues that increasingly generous welfare benefits since the 1960s have led to increasing numbers of people to become dependent on the state. This has led to the decline of marriage and the growth of lone parent families, because women can now live off benefits rather than having to get married to have children. This also means that men no longer have to take responsibility for supporting their families, so they no longer need to work.

According to Murray, lone mothers are ineffective agents of socialisation, especially for boys. Absent fathers mean than boys lack paternal discipline and appropriate male role models. As a result, young males turn to other, delinquent role models on the street to gain status through crime rather than supporting their families through a steady job.

Increasing crime is effectively a result of children growing up surrounded by delinquent, deviant criminal adults which creates a perfect crimogenic environment.

Unemployment and Crime

A recent comparison 4.3 million offenders in England and Wales whose names appeared in court records or the Police National Computer with separate benefits records held by the Department for Work and Pensions revealed that more than 1.1 million of the 5.2 million people claiming out-of-work benefits had a criminal record, or 22 per cent. This means that people who are claiming unemployment benefit are more than twice as likely to have a criminal record as those who are not. (Source: More than a fifth of people on unemployment benefits have a criminal record.)

NEETS and Crime

NEETS stands for young people aged between 16 and 24 Not in Education, Employment or Training. They first came to the government’s attention in the mid 2000s when they numbered 1.1m. At that time, a study by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) conservatively estimated that each new NEET dropping out of education at 16 will cost taxpayers an average of £97,000 during their lifetime, with the worst costing more than £300,000 apiece.

Their impact on crime, public health and antisocial behaviour was so marked that the study found that a single 157,000-strong cohort of 16 to 18-year-old NEETs would cost the country a total of £15 billion by the time they died prematurely in about 2060. They are, says the study, 22 times more likely to be teenage mothers; 50% more likely to suffer from poor health; 60% more likely to be involved with drugs and more than 20 times more likely to become criminals.

Left Realism, Social Class and Crime

Left Realists Lea and young conclude that they can explain this using the following key concepts; relative deprivation, marginalisation and subculture.

Relative deprivation

Lea and Young argue that crime has its roots in deprivation, but deprivation itself is not directly responsible for crime – for example, living standards have risen since the 1950s, so the level of deprivation has fallen, but the crime rate is much higher today than it was in the 1950s.

Left Realists draw on Runciman’s (1966) concept of relative deprivation to explain crime. This refers to how someone feels in relation to others, or compared with their own expectations.

The concept of relative deprivation helps to explain the apparent paradox of increasing crime in the context of an increasing wealthy society. Although people are better off today, they have a greater feeling of relative deprivation because of the media and advertising have raised everyone’s expectations for material possessions – we are wealthier, but we feel poorer, and thus there is more pressure to get more stuff to keep up with everyone else, which generates historically high crime rates.

Marginalisation

This is where people lack the power or resources to fully participate in society. According to Left Realists marginalised groups lack both clear goals and organisations to represent their interests. Groups such as workers have clear goals (such as wanting better pay and conditions) and organisations to represent them (such as trades unions), and as such they have no need to resort to violence to achieve their goals.

By contrast, unemployed youth are marginalised – they have no specific organisation to represent them and no clear sense of goals – which results in feelings of resentment and frustration. Having no access to legitimate political means to pursue their goals, frustration can become expressed through violence.

Subculture

Left Realists see subcultures as a group’s collective response to the situation of relative deprivation, and they draw on Cohen’s theory of status frustration to explain how they emerge. There are many different subcultural adaptations to blocked opportunities, and not all result in crime – but those subcultures which still subscribe to the mainstream values of material wealth but lack legitimate opportunities to achieve those goals.

Revision Notes for Sale

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Crime and Deviance Revision Notes – 31 pages of revision notes covering the following topics:

Consensus based theories part 1 – Functionalism; Social control’ theory; Strain theory

Consensus based theories part 2 – Sub cultural theories
The Traditional Marxist and Neo-Marxist perspective on crime
Labeling Theory

Left- Realist and Right-Realist Criminology (including situational, environmental and community crime prevention)
Post-Modernism, Late-Modernism and Crime (Social change and crime)
Sociological Perspectives on controlling crime – the role of the community and policing in preventing crime

Sociological Perspectives on Surveillance
Sociological Perspectives on Punishment
Social Class and Crime

Ethnicity and Crime
Gender and crime (including Girl gangs and Rape and domestic violence)
Victimology – Why are some people more likely to be criminals than others

Global crime, State crime and Environmental crime (Green crime)
The Media and Crime, including moral panics

Signposting and Related Posts

This topic is taught as part of the Crime and Deviance compulsory unit with the AQA’s A-level Sociology specification.

Outline and analyse two ways in which patterns of crime may vary with social class (10)

Philip Green, the Collapse of BHS and the Continued Relevance of Marxist Theory

This is a useful documentary on the role of billionaire Philip Green in the collapse of British Home Stores, which demonstrates the relevance of some key concepts within Marxism.

British Home Stores was one of the best known high street retail stores in Britain for many decades, employing thousands of people, but in 2016 it went bankrupt, with a massive £550 million deficit in its pensions fund, and it seems Philip Green has a lot to do with this.

Philip Green bought British Home Stores in the year 2000, for £2 million. At the time, the store was failing, mainly due to its inability to keep up with the retail competition. Philip Green (in fairness to him) did turn the store around from being a failing company to a profitable enterprise in the early years of his ownership, but then he went to extract more money out the company than it was actually making, causing its ultimate collapse a decade later.

In total, over the next 15 years, Philip Green and his family extracted almost £600 million from the store in dividends, rental payments and interests on loans, £100 million of which went to fund their new super yacht named ‘Lion Heart’.

Green was very clever about the way he extracted money – it was technically his wife’s companies which owned most of BHS, and so it was his wife who received the millions of pounds in dividends payments , and because his wife was based in Monaco, a tax haven, she (and thus he) effectively paid no tax on those dividends. Between 2002 and 2004, shareholders extracted just over £422m in dividends, most of which went to Green’s wife.

Another strategy Green used was to sell off all the freeholds on which the BHS stores stood – to another of his wife’s companies, which were based in Jersey, another tax haven. This company then charged BHS rent for being on the land that BHS had previously owned. This amounted to several millions of pounds over the years, and again, all of this was tax free because Jersey was another tax haven. In total, the Green family collected £151.4m in rent using this strategy.

Things started to go pear shaped after the financial crash of 2008,, following which the pension fund had a £140 million deficit, which had grown to £225 million by 2015.

It was at this point that Green sold British Home Stores to a little known investment company for £1 – he agreed to pay in £40 million to the pension fund and gave then tens of millions in other sweeteners, knowing that he was effectively saving himself at least £150 million by passing on the pension-debt to this new company.

Retail Acquisitions failed to keep the company afloat, resulting in the eventual bankruptcy of the company, the closure of every single BHS store in the UK, thousands of job losses and, after a further year of no-profit, a massive £551 million deficit in the pension fund, which 20 000 people are members of.

Meanwhile, Philippe Green continues to enjoy the benefits of the nearly £600 million he extracted from the company during his time in charge, and it’s estimated that his wife’s property company is still currently earning about £20 million a year in rentals from the old BHS freeholds.

Sources

The Guardian

Analyse two ways in which crime has changed in postmodern society (10)

Outline and analyse some of the ways in which crime has changed in postmodern society (10)

An example of how you might go about answering such a question (not an exhaustive answer)

(Before reading this through, you might like to recap the difference between modernity and postmodernity.)

Postmodern society is a society based around consumption and consumerism rather than work – people primarily identify themselves through the goods and services they buy rather than the jobs they do. As a result there is simply more stuff being bought, which means here is more opportunity to commit crime – Robert Reiner has identified a straightforward link between the increasing amount of stuff and the increase of property crime, as witnessed with the crime explosion since the 1950s. The increase in property crime has been further fuelled by an increase in the type of ‘strain’ identified in the 1940s by Robert Merton- The mass media today is rife with programmes promoting high consumption, celebrity lifestyles as both normal and desirable, thus increasing demand for stuff, which combined with insufficient legitimate opportunities to earn enough money to buy such a lifestyle, creates what Jock Young calls a ‘Vertigo of Late Modernity’, fuelling a historically high level of property crime.

Baudrillard calls postmodern society a hyperreal society – mediated reality (basically life as experienced through the media) is more common and more ‘real’ than face to face reality – it is thus no surprise that the fastest growing type of crime is cyber-crime of many different varieties – where criminals do not come face to face with their victims – this at least partially explains one growth area of cyber crime – which is sexual and racist abuse and ‘trolling’ more generally via social-media – many such criminals would not dare say the things they do face to face. Another example of cyber crime is the online-dating romance scam, which illustrates all sorts of aspects of ‘postmodern’ crime – it is hyperreal, in that the criminals make up fake IDs to put on dating sites to lure victims into giving them money, and many of these scams are done by people in West Africa, illustrating the global nature of much postmodern crime, this particular example being at least partially fuelled by the wealth gap between the developing and the developing world. In short, the fact that we are connected via the internet globally, the relative ease of access to the internet, and the relatively low risk of getting caught, all help to explain the increase of cyber crime in the age of postmodernity.

Related Posts

Post and Late Modern Criminology – summary sheet

Assess the Contribution of Post and Late Modern Perspectives to Our Understanding of Crime and Deviance – essay plan

Broken Windows Theory: An Evaluation

The Broken Windows Theory posits that physical disorder like litter and vandalism can lead to higher crime rates, with informal social control methods seen as effective remedies. Evidence is mixed; a 2008 experiment found increased deviant behaviour in untidy environments, while a 2015 meta-analysis supported disorder-focused community interventions as crime reducers. However, a study on the “Moving to Opportunity” program found no correlation between disorderly environments and crime rates. Evaluating the theory is complex due to issues like defining and measuring disorder, and the possible influence of confounding variables.

Broken Windows Theory suggests that high levels of physical disorder such as litter, graffiti, vandalism, or people engaged in Anti-Social Behaviour will result in higher crime rates. Broken Windows Theory is one aspect of the Right Realist approach to criminology.

Broken Windows Theory suggests that the most effective way to reduce crime is through informal social control methods. Policies which focus on urban renewal, and neighbourhood watch groups for example should help to reduce crime.

The evidence supporting Broken Windows Theory is somewhat mixed.

Broken Windows Theory: Supporting Evidence

This 2008 ‘£5 Note Theft and Social Disorder Experiment’ offers broad support for the theory…

In this (slightly bizarre sounding) experiment the researchers placed an envelope containing a £5 note poking out a letterbox, in such a way that the £5 note was easily visible.

The researchers did this first of all in a house with a tidy garden, and later on (at a similar time of day) with a house with litter in the garden.

13% of people took the envelope from the house with the tidy garden.
25% of people took the envelope from the house with the untidy garden.

This suggests that that signs of physical disorder such as littering encourage deviant behaviour.

The experiment was actually a bit more complex – for the full details see the Keizer et al source below – this was also actually one of six experiments designed to test out Wilson and Kelling’s 1996 ‘broken windows theory’.

Meta Analysis supports Broken Windows Theory

A 2015 Meta-Analysis of 30 studies which had been designed to evaluated social disorder policing. The analysis found that community and problem-solving interventions focused on reducing levels of social disorder in specific locations had the strongest effect on reducing crime levels.

Evidence not supporting Broken Windows Theory

A second experiment, however, does not support broken windows theory…

Empirical results of the “Moving to Opportunity” program (reviewed in 2006) – a social experiment in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Boston did not support Broken Windows Theory.

As part of the program, some 4,600 low-income families living in high-crime public housing communities—characterised by high rates of social disorder—were randomly assigned housing vouchers to move to less disadvantaged and less disorderly communities. Using official arrests and self-report surveys, the crime rates among those who moved and those who did not remained the same.

This study suggests the root cause of crime lies with individuals, not the quality of the physical locations.

The problems with evaluating Broken Windows Theory

Wesley Skogan (see source below) identifies several reasons why Broken Windows theory is hard to evaluate – mainly focusing on how hard the theory is to operationalise:

There are several different ways of defining ‘social disorder’ (litter, vandalism, antisocial behaviour) – so which do you choose?
It difficult to measure levels of social disorder accurately. How do you actually measure how much disorder what type of littler represents? is one sofa in a garden worth 14 toffee wrappers, or what? And if you’re talking about anti-social behaviour, you can’t necessarily rely on public reports of it because sensitivity levels vary, and it’s just not practical to measure it using observational techniques.

Then there is the problem of other confounding variables. Many of the early experiments in the 1980s and 1990s which tested Broken Windows Theory were running at a time when broader social changes were occurring, which could have been the causes of the lowering crime rate.

For example in the late 1990s in New York, the crack-epidemic was decreasing, there were declining numbers of young males aged 16-24 and more people being put in jail, all of which could have reduced the crime rate. Any experiment set up to improve levels of social disorder in a New York neighbourhood thus may not have been the cause of a decrease in crime over the years, it could have just been down to these factors. The same logic can be applied to any long-term experiment.

For these reasons, the validity of broken windows theory is always likely to remain contested, and so it’s worth considering the possibility that it’s popularity could be more to do with ideological bias rather than being based any significant body of supporting evidence.

Signposting and Sources

This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance Module, usually taught as part of the second year A-level in sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

Keizer et al – The Spreading of Disorder – Science Express Report.

More details on the Moving to Opportunity study.

This chapter by Wesley Skogan identifies a number of reasons why Broken Windows Theory is difficult to evaluate.

Why is Crime Falling?

According to both Police Recorded Crime and the Crime Survey of England and Wales, there has been a steady decrease in crime in England and Wales since 1995 – that’s over 20 years of crime reduction.

There are several possible reasons behind this decrease in crime (IF you believe the statistics, of course!)

The Relative Decrease in Property Crime since 1995

Trends in Property Crime - Crime Survey of England and Wales — Trends in Property Crime – Crime Survey of England and Wales

The Office For National Statistics identifies seven existing theories/ pieces of evidence for why property crime has fallen. Read them through and consider how many of them support Rational Choice Theory.

ONE – The rise in the use of the internet has roughly coincided with falls in crime

In 1995, use of the internet was not widespread. As it became more popular, it may have helped to occupy young people’s time when they may otherwise have turned to crime. Farrell et al., 2011 suggests the internet also provides more opportunity for online crime – which possibly explains the increase in Fraud in recent years, although this may be down to improvements in detection and recording of this offence.

TWO – Reduced consumption of drugs and alcohol is likely to have resulted in a drop in offending

A 2014 Home Office research paper ‘The heroin epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and its effect on crime trends – then and now’ supports the notion that the changing levels of opiate and crack-cocaine use have affected acquisitive crime trends in England and Wales, potentially explaining over half of the rise in crime in the 1980s to mid-1990s and between a quarter and a third of the fall in crime since the mid-1990s. (Bunge et al., 2005).

THREE – Significant improvements in forensic and other crime scene investigation techniques and record keeping

Advancements in areas such as fingerprinting and DNA testing may have led to a reduction in crime.perceived risk to offenders may have increased, inducing a deterrent effect (Explaining and sustaining the crime drop: Clarifying the role of opportunity-related theories, Farrell et al., 2010).

FOUR – The increase in abortions

The ONS also site this classic study by Levitt et al – which suggested that the introduction of legalised abortion on a wide number of grounds in the US meant that more children who might have been born into families in poverty or troubled environments and be more prone to get drawn into criminality, would not be born and therefore be unable to commit these crimes (The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, Donohue and Levitt, 2001).

FIVE – Changes (real or perceived) in technology and infrastructure.

This includes an increase in the use of situational crime prevention technieques such as CCTV, which may act as deterrents to committing crime (CCTV has modest impact on crime, Welsh and Farrington, 2008).

SIX – Longer Prison Sentences

The impacts of longer prison sentences and police activity on reducing crime, particularly property crimes, are likely to act as deterrents (Acquisitive Crime: Imprisonment, Detection and Social Factors, Bandyopadhyay et al., 2012).

SEVEN – Target Hardening

Increased quality of building and vehicle security is also likely to have been a factor in the reduction in property crime. This concept of ‘target-hardening’ which makes targets (that is, anything that an offender would want to steal or damage) more resistant to attack is likely to deter offenders from committing crime (Opportunities, Precipitators and Criminal Decisions: A reply to Wortley’s critique of situational crime prevention, Cornish and Clarke, 2003).

Findings from the CSEW add some evidence which may support this, indicating that alongside the falls in property crime, there were also improvements in household and vehicle security. Since 1995, there have been statistically significant increases in the proportion of households in the 2014/15 CSEW with:

Window locks (up 21 percentage points from 68% to 89% of households)
Light timers/sensors (up 16 percentage points from 39% to 55% of households)
Burglar alarms (up 11 percentage points from 20% to 31% of households)

The ONS also notes that it does not endorse any one of the theories over the others and that many of these theories are contested and subject to continuing discussion and debate.

NB – Just because most of the above theories seem to offer broad support for RTC and RAT theories, doesn’t mean there aren’t other factors that need to be considered when explaining the decrease in property crime.

Cultural Criminology – consumerism and the changing crime

Cultural criminology seeks to understand how consumer culture has changed the motives and nature of crime in contemporary society.

Cultural criminologists argue that crime in contemporary society has changed because of hyper consumerism.

Today crime is more about:

Instability of Desire – consumer culture encourages insatiable desire, crime is one way to get what one wants!
New forms of ‘hyper strain’ – people commit crime because they want to stand out, rather than just accumulating stuff.
Engagement with Risk – crime is more likely to be about seeking thrills and excitement and seeking escape from mundane, regulated, working life.

Instant Gratification/ Impulsivity – people commit crime because they want a thrill now, they don’t think about the future as much as they used to.

Crime and emotions

Cultural criminologists stress the highly emotional nature of crime – instead of what the criminals will gain, these researchers are interested in how committing the crime actually makes people feel. The focus of cultural criminologists is on the thrill of the act. Crime can offer a brief escape from an otherwise grey emotional existence. They argue there is an intoxicating mix of fear and pleasure that often accompanies risk taking.

Crime is not a rational mundane activity, where costs and benefits are weighed up. Rather it is a reaction against the mundane. It is a time when those involved momentarily experience status, excitement and even some control over their own lives, which are otherwise characterised by feelings of worthlessness and insecurity.

The crime consumerism nexus

The crime-consumerism nexus is a theoretical concept used by cultural criminologists. The crime-consumerism nexus refers to the relationships that exist within consumer societies between the values and emotions associated with consumerism and various forms of acquisitive criminality.

The crime-consumerism nexus asserts that consumerism cultivates new forms of subjectivity based around desire, individualism, hedonism and impulsivity, which can find expression in transgressive and even criminal behaviour. Examples include gang activity, rioting, mugging and drug use. This applies especially to young people.

The crime-consumerism nexus simply outlines the striking convergence between novel forms of subjectivity propagated by consumerism and many aspects of criminality as outlined by traditional criminological theories.

It does not claim there is any causative link between capitalism, consumerism and crime.

Cultural Criminology: four themes

Cultural criminology is interdisciplinary and draws on behavioural economics, consumer research, and the sociology of risk and identity. Cultural criminology has four main themes:

Instability of Desire

New forms of ‘hyper strain’
Engagement with Risk
Instant Gratification/ Impulsivity

Instability of desire

In contemporary consumer culture insatiable desire is not only normalised but essential to the survival of the economy. Insatiable desire is actively cultivated in consumer culture.

The flip side of this is a constant sense of unfulfillment, dissatisfaction and disillusionment. The criminogenic consequences of this are that a lot of crimes – from shoplifting to street robbery – are an attempt to bridge a perceived ‘consumer deficit’ and as a form of identity construction. A lot of crimes are no longer simply a response to poverty.

New forms of hyper strain

Contemporary hyper-consumerism is contributing to the crime problem in ways qualitatively different from those expressed by classic strain theorists such as Merton. Today people are feeling deprived of not just the physical products themselves but also the sense of identity that products bestow on people. This means that crimes which happen because of hyper strain rather than just ordinary strain are about people expressing themselves, rather than about the instrumental desire to simply have a product they can’t get through legitimate means.

Engagement with risk

In contemporary society there is a tension between the desire for excitement which is a part of consumer culture and the over-controlled nature of ordinary, mundane life – as we see in the over surveilled and drudge like nature of many jobs.

People try to compensate for this by exerting more personal control – or rather a ‘controlled loss of control’ through engaging in risky activities. Many crimes within urban areas such as street fighting and graffitiing can be interpreted as risk-seeking activities.

Instant gratification and impulsivity

Consumer culture cultivates a need for immediate rather than deferred gratification. We see this in the buy-now nature of advertising and the expansion of buying on credit. This constant focus on the ‘now’ separates people from the longer term consequences of their immediate actions. People are more likely to pursue excitement in the moment rather than thinking longer term.

Examples of cultural criminologists

Two examples of cultural criminologists are Katz (1988) and Lyng (1990).

Katz (1988) He argued that people get drawn into crime because it is seductive, because it is thrilling. He saw this simply as part of a postmodern society which calls on us to enjoy our leisure time – crime is one means whereby some people do just that – this is very much the feeling of many people who took part in the London Riots in 2011.

Lyng (1990) developed the concept of ‘edgework’ – by this he meant that crime was a means whereby people could get a thrill by engaging in risk-taking behaviour – going right to the edge of acceptable behaviour, and challenging the rules of what is acceptable. Again, we can see this very much as an outgrowth of a postmodern society which encourages and rewards risk-taking behaviour.

The risks involved in law breaking act as a challenge, and crime is carried out precisely because the rules are in place. Cultural criminologists argue that most young offenders do not set out on their escapades assessing the chances that they will be arrested, and this is why the steady increase in control in culture over our lives (CCTV, ASBOs, anti-terrorist legislation and creation of new offences) does nothing to deter, but actually creates more law breaking as they are faced with more ‘thrilling’ challenges

Relevance to A-level sociology

Cultural criminology can be used to criticise many earlier criminological theories within the crime and deviance module.

Cultural Criminologists argue the exact opposite of Right Realists who focus on the ordinary motivations and repetitiveness of much crime. For cultural criminologists crime is about feelings and identity, not just accumulating stuff.

In a way they develop some aspects of Marxism by looking at the relationship between consumer capitalism and crime. However they do not argue that capitalism is criminogenic, they don’t see capitalism as causing crime.

We can regard cultural criminology as a postmodern theory of crime. This is because they look at how consumer culture encourages crime. Also because they focus on how crime makes individuals feel, and ultimately hold them responsible for the crimes they commit.

Postmodern and Late Modern Criminology

A Summary sheet covering post and late modern theories of crime – focusing on Jock Young’s ‘Vertigo of Late Modernity’, the cultural criminology of Katz and Lyng (edgework), and Foucault’s concept of discplinary power and the shift to control through surveillance.

Post and Late Modern Theories of Crime

(PM/ LM Theories of Crime Control PART 1)

Introduction – Post/ Late Modern Society and changing crime

Post-Modern society refers to society since about the 1970s

Numerous social changes mean that both the nature of crime and the causes of crime are more complex
Some of the key social changes which influence criminal behaviour (and crime control) include
The rise of the consumer society – the norm of high consumption

globalisation, de-industrialisation and increasing instability and uncertainty
The fact that we live in a media-saturated society which celebrates celebrity-culture
The increase in individual-freedom (individualisation) and cultural diversity

Various technological changes, especially the increasing centrality of ICT.
This revision sheet (and the main class-notes) only look at sociologists who have developed new theories about the relationship between changes in post/ late modernity and changing crime.
Other areas of the course which could be included under postmodernism include gloablisation and crime, and aspects of the media and crime.

Jock Young – Late Modernity, Exclusion and Crime

The 1950s was a ‘golden age’ of full employment, cultural inclusion and low crime

Today, de-industrialisation has resulted in low-employment, instability, insecurity, uncertainty, social-fragmentation and high crime rates
Economic exclusion combined with the pressure to consume and be a celebrity result in anomie
Crime is a means of coping with this anomie – it offers us a ways not necessarily to get rich (like Merton says), but to ‘be somebody’, vent our frustrations, or simply escape.

As a result, crime gets more diverse, more spread out in society, and nastier (more extreme).

Cultural Criminology – Edgework

Developed by Katz and Lyng in the 1980s and 1990s
Criticises Rational Choice Theory – crime is not always rational, it is done for emotional reasons
Crime is increasingly about ‘edgework’ – flirting with the boundaries of the acceptable because it’s exciting, or thrilling.

This is very much part of living in a risk-society (Ulrich Beck)

Simon Winlow – Violent Night

Researched young working class men in Northern cities who regularly engaged in binge-drinking and violence at the weekends.
Found that their jobs were low-status and insecure, they offered them no sense of identity
Binge-drinking was a way to escape the boredom and low-status of work.

Fighting meant numerous things – it was about status, but also simply thrilling and exciting.
Offers broad support for both the theories above.

Surveillance and Crime Control

(PM/ LM Theories of Crime Control PART 2)

Michel Foucault – The Birth of the Prison and the rise of Surveillance

Punishment used to be violent, carried out on the body and it used to be done in public, now punishment is psychological, it expects people to change the way they think, and it is carried out in prisons, behind closed doors.

This reflects a shift from sovereign power to disciplinary power.
Sovereign power involved controlling people through the threat of force – people were punished severely and other people obeyed because they were afraid of the same punishment.
Disciplinary power now involves controlling people through surveillance and expecting people to change their own behaviour – prisoners are locked away and monitored, and change their own behaviour because they know they are being watched.

This logic of control now extends to everyone – even non-criminals – surveillance is now everywhere in society – it is not just criminals who are under surveillance by agents of social control, we are under surveillance from cradle to grave – school, work, pregnancy, child-birth, on the streets and roads, our health data.
Most people now obey the rules because they know they are being watched – they regulate their own behaviour for fear of becoming the wrong kind of person – a failing student, an unproductive worker, a bad mother, an obese-person, for example.
NB – This is quintessentially sociological – it is only in very recent human history that we have become so obsessed with monitoring every aspect of our daily-lives, and one of Foucault’s points is that this constant surveillance doesn’t necessarily improve our lives – there are both winners and losers.

Late Modernity, Social Exclusion and Crime

Jock Young (1999) argues we are now living in a late modern society characterised by instability, insecurity and exclusion, which make the problem of crime worse.

Structurally and economically there is much more insecurity and marginalisation than ever, but culturally there is more pressure to publicise how successful you are, even if you don’t have the means.

This is really an application of Merton’s anomie theory, but the nature of ‘strain’ between legitimate means and ends is different, more constant and more severe.

Mind Map summarising Jock Young's (1999) The Exclusive Society.

Increasing Insecurity and marginalisation

Young contrasts today’s society (since the 1970s) with the period preceding it, arguing that the 1950s and 60s represented a golden age of modern capitalist society. This was a period of stability, security and social inclusion, characterised by full employment and a well functioning welfare state. There was also low divorce, rate, strong communities and a general consensus about right and wrong, and crime rates were very much lower.

Since the 1970s, however, society has become a lot more unstable. De-industrialisation and the corresponding decline of unskilled manual jobs has led to increased unemployment, underemployment and poverty, especially for young people. These changes have also destabilised family and community life and contributed to rising divorce rates, as have New Right policies designed to hold back welfare spending. All of this has contributed to increased marginalisation and exclusion of those at the bottom.

A Media saturated society

However, just as more and more people are suffering from the economic exclusion described above, we now live in a media saturated society which stresses the importance of leisure, personal consumption and immediate gratification as the means whereby we should achieve the ‘good life’.

The media today generally informs us that the following are normal and desirable – in in order to belong to society we are required to do the following:

We need to have high levels of consumption – and buying now, paying later, and debt are seen as legitimate strategies for maintaining our consumption levels.
We need to have active leisure lives and publicise this – in effect we should turn ourselves into mini-celebrities – in short, we need to be somebody.

We should strive to achieve success ourselves rather than depending on others. Anyone can be successful if they try hard enough is the message.

Crime in Late Modernity

Young essentially applies Merton’s Strain Theory to explain crime in late modernity. He argues that today there are millions of people (just in the UK) who will never earn enough money to live a high-consumption, celebrity lifestyle, and this results in many people suffering relative deprivation, and frustration (basically anomie).

However, Young goes beyond Merton by arguing that deviant and criminal behaviour become a means whereby people can not only attempt to realise material goals, but crime can also the means whereby they can seek to achieve celebrity, or simply to seek a temporary emotional release from the anomic-frustrations of coping with the usual contradictions and pressures of living in late-modernity.

Two further consequence of the trend towards economic exclusion combined with the media message of ‘cultural inclusion through consumption and celebrity’ are firstly that crime is more widespread and found increasingly throughout the social structure, not just at the bottom, and secondly crime is nastier, with an increase in ‘hate-crimes’.

Examples of attempts to achieve celebrity through deviance include extreme-subcultures, or any form of extreme ‘one-upmanship’ videos on YouTube, while examples at escapism include binge-drinking and violence at the weekends. Young also argues that the anomie and frustration generated in late-modernity also explains the increase in more serious crimes such as hate-crimes against minority groups and asylum seekers.

Evaluating Jock Young’s theory of crime in Late Modernity

These ideas can add a new dimension to our understanding of the causes of crime and deviance – particularly with regard to the non-economic reasons why people commit crimes – those acts which seemingly have no monetary reward, by focusing on the emotions and feelings involved in offending.

Young argues against the idea that crime is committed when there are available opportunities (rational choice theory) or lack of controls against criminal behaviour. He says that crime here is depicted as quite a routine and logical act, and something which we, the victims, have to protect ourselves against.

Young argues that these approaches do not explain why why crime is such an attractive option for so many young people (particularly young men). He says that there are many crimes such as drug use and vandalism, joyriding and even rape and murder, which clearly involve much more than a simple rational choice. There is obviously something much more appealing for those involved in crimes such as street robbery than the promise of (very small) profits on offer.