Why is there Crime and Deviance?

It is difficult to thoroughly explain what crime is and how a person can become a deviant. Many sociologists have tried to tackle this explanation by creating different theories to try to describe how crime and deviance functions. In Anthony Giddens’ Essentials of Sociology, he mentions a few of these theories to try to help others understand deviance. In The Code of the Street, Elijah Anderson explores one example of crime and deviance in a specific subculture – the lower class that exist in inner-city life and its suburbs. Anderson touched on a few crime and deviance theories; however, the most prominent were differential association, subcultural explanation and conflict theory. Of those three, subcultural explanation has the most impact.

Young children are very susceptible to adapt to and absorb their surroundings, which is essentially primary socialization. Children in poor city neighborhoods are generally born into two types of homes – the “decent” home, where good morals and valued, and the “street” home, which tend to go against mainstream norms and can be abusive. Since children are so easily influenced by their environment, “simply living in such a [hostile] environment places young people at special risk of falling victim to aggressive behavior,” (Anderson 171). These young people will learn that aggressive behavior is the only way to effectively survive in the street environment. Most of this forceful behavior is learned from the home, where parents will be harsh to kids since punishment is what they are most familiar with. Moreover, the more violent the parent is with their children, the more they “learn that to solve any kind of interpersonal problem one must quickly resort to hitting or other violent behavior,” (Anderson 174). As the children grow up, they learn that it is acceptable in their street society to behave violently, as they are accustomed to those actions. After they have successfully learned to behave in the street manner from their home, these street kids group to form their own subculture of street life.

After assimilating the aggressive behaviors from their parents, children find others with similar backgrounds and come together to share what they have learned. Whether they are conscious of this act or not, “in the street, through their play, children pour their individual life experiences into a common knowledge pool, affirming, confirming, and elaborating on what they have observed in the home and matching their skills against those of others,” (Anderson 175). It is important to understand that being violent is the only behavior that these children understand. This violence may be the only way they know to communicate with other another and establish community relationships. In addition, they tend to discard what most would consider “normal” behavior because they have never directly experienced such conducts within their own society. In general, subcultures that are lower class have the tendency to “reject the middle-class values and replace them with norms that celebrate defiance, such as delinquency and other acts of nonconformity,” (Gibbons 154). They cannot relate to the middle-class lifestyle, and there are many reasons why these lifestyles are different. Of course, those of the lower class are not as well-off, and perhaps some feel the need to commit petty thefts in order to survive. Also, they have different experiences growing up in the home, and a more violent setting can cause a different outlook on life and how to respond to life matters.

Another issue with city life is the fact that the police are not always able to deal with every problem that occurs in street life. This shortage of police force encourages some to resort to their own measures to ensure their safety. To ensure this security, “the street code emerges where the influence of the police ends and personal responsibility for one’s safety is felt to begin,” (Anderson 172). They create their own code that everyone in their subculture has to live up to, otherwise they will punished with forces described within this code. The street people do not think that the police adequately guarantee the safety amongst their society. Many times, however, different societies have felt the need to create their own rules. It has been an observed phenomenon, and “theorists of the new criminology frame their analysis of crime and deviance in terms of the structure of society and the preservation of power among the ruling class… They reject the idea that laws are neutral and are applied evenly across the population,” (Giddens 156). The societies that feel neglected by the “ruling class” recognize that they must develop their own laws in order to protect their society and the individuals within the group. People must form their own rules to organize themselves to create a stable society.

The functionalist theory, specifically subcultural explanations, best explains crime and deviance. It incorporates not just the functionality of the subculture itself, but how each individual’s background helped shape this subculture. Without sharing similar experiences, these people would not feel the need to form their won group identity, separate from the social norm. Furthermore, the addition of each individual’s poor behavior forms a sort of “snowball effect,” and “researchers located deviance in terms of subcultural groups that adopt norms that encourage or reward criminal behavior,” (Giddens 153). Each new bad behavior encourages the well-established street mannerisms to continue, and these new additions are encouraged by the existing behaviors that they are accepted in street life. These behaviors, though, were adopted from what the individuals have learned from their environment, and most importantly, their home. Once they have established their own street act, they can continue to join their appropriate subculture and foster their aggressive behaviors. Also, it is the interactions of these personal experiences that can help create an attitude for the group as a whole.

Deviance and crime are not clear-cut ideas. They are complicated, and while one theory may suite most examples of deviance, it is how these theories relate that can best describe and help to understand why there is crime and deviance.