AQA GCSE Sociology (8192): Crime and Deviance – Study Guide

Crime is behaviour that breaks the law; deviance is behaviour that breaks a society’s norms, whether or not it is illegal. Section 3.5 of AQA GCSE Sociology (8192), examined in Paper 2, asks you to explain how both are socially constructed (3.5.1), how societies control behaviour (3.5.2), which factors affect criminal and deviant behaviour and the public debates they create (3.5.3), and how useful the main sources of data on crime are (3.5.4). The specification names five key sociologists — Merton, Becker, Heidensohn, Albert Cohen and Carlen — whose ideas you must be able to describe.

For the paper as a whole, see the crime and stratification study guide.

Specification coverage

AQA GCSE Sociology 8192 specification, section 3.5 Crime and deviance:

Sub-section	Content	Key sociologists
3.5.1 The social construction of crime and deviance	Social construction of crime and deviance; explanations including anomie, labelling, structural, subcultural and interactionist theories; interactionist, functionalist, feminist and Marxist perspectives	Merton (functionalist, causes of crime); Becker (interactionist)
3.5.2 Social control	Formal and informal methods of social control, including unwritten rules and sanctions; perspectives on social control	Heidensohn (female conformity in patriarchal societies)
3.5.3 Criminal and deviant behaviour	Social class, gender, ethnicity and age; public debates over violent crime, sentencing, young offenders, the prison system and media coverage of crime	Albert Cohen (delinquent subcultures); Carlen (women, crime and poverty)
3.5.4 Data on crime	Main sources of data, collection of official data, patterns and trends, the “dark figure”; functionalist, feminist and Marxist perspectives on data	—

The specification also expects you to understand relevant research methods — for example the use of official statistics and of qualitative and quantitative approaches.

How are crime and deviance socially constructed?

What counts as crime or deviance varies between societies, over time and by situation. Killing is murder in peacetime but may be honoured in war; behaviours once legal have been criminalised and others decriminalised. Laws are made by people with power, so crime is a social definition rather than a fixed quality of an act.

What did Merton argue about the causes of crime?

Robert K. Merton (“Social Structure and Anomie”, 1938), writing as a functionalist, argued that American society emphasised success goals (wealth) more than the legitimate means of achieving them. People in lower positions in the social structure lack those means, producing anomie — a state where “anything goes”. He described five responses:

Adaptation	Goals	Means	Example
Conformity	Accept	Accept	Gaining qualifications and a good job
Innovation	Accept	Reject	Theft or fraud to get money
Ritualism	Reject	Accept	A low-level clerk who follows rules but has given up ambition
Retreatism	Reject	Reject	“Dropping out”, e.g. drug addiction
Rebellion	Replace	Replace	Revolutionaries seeking a new society

Criticisms: ignores who makes laws and benefits from them; assumes value consensus; does not explain why only some people experiencing anomie turn to crime; exaggerates working-class crime and underplays white-collar crime.

What did Becker argue?

Howard Becker (Outsiders, 1963), an interactionist, argued that an act only becomes deviant when others label it so. Whether a label is applied depends on who commits the act, when and where, who sees it and the negotiations involved. Agents of social control such as police and courts have the power to make labels stick. The label becomes a master status, others treat the person accordingly, and the person may come to see themselves that way — a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rejection by others may encourage further deviance, beginning a deviant career, completed when the person joins an organised deviant group with its own subculture.

How does social control work?

Formal social control	Informal social control
Written rules and laws	Unwritten rules and expectations
Police, courts, prisons, government	Family, peers, school, workplace, religion, media
Sanctions: arrest, fines, prison	Sanctions: praise, disapproval, gossip, exclusion

Perspectives: functionalists see control maintaining value consensus; Marxists see control protecting the ruling class; feminists see control maintaining patriarchy; interactionists focus on how agents of control label people.

Why do women commit less crime? Heidensohn

Frances Heidensohn (Women and Crime, 1985), a feminist, used control theory to argue that male-dominated, patriarchal societies control women more effectively than men:

• At home — women are expected to spend most time on housework and childcare; challenging this risks male violence; men’s financial power as breadwinners; daughters are more closely supervised than sons.
• In public — fear of male sexual violence and of losing reputation keeps women out of public spaces at night; the idea of “separate spheres”.
• At work — male-dominated hierarchies and sexual harassment.

Criticisms: generalises about all women; claims are not always backed by strong research evidence.

Which factors affect criminal behaviour? (3.5.3)

• Social class — working-class people are over-represented in official statistics; explanations include blocked opportunities (Merton), subcultures (Cohen) and labelling; Marxists stress crimes of the powerful.
• Gender — men commit more recorded crime; explanations include control (Heidensohn), socialisation and the chivalry argument.
• Ethnicity — some minority groups are over-represented in stop and search and prison; debate centres on discrimination versus deprivation.
• Age — offending peaks in the teenage years and early twenties.

What did Albert Cohen argue?

Albert Cohen (Delinquent Boys, 1955), a functionalist, argued working-class boys share mainstream success goals but, because of educational failure (which he linked to cultural deprivation) and poor job prospects, cannot reach them. They suffer status frustration and form a delinquent subculture that values stealing, vandalism and truancy; success in the subculture brings prestige among peers. Criticism: some argue working-class youths do not accept mainstream goals in the first place, but act out of resentment towards those whose values they reject.

What did Carlen find?

Pat Carlen (Women, Crime and Poverty, 1988), a feminist, carried out unstructured interviews with 39 mostly working-class women aged 15 to 46 who had been convicted of crimes, several of them in prison or youth custody. Using control theory, she argued women are controlled by the promise of rewards from two “deals”: the class deal (consumer goods in return for wage labour) and the gender deal (material and emotional rewards from a male breadwinner in return for love and domestic labour). When these rewards fail, crime becomes a viable alternative. Criticism: a small sample, although it supports the view that crime rises when social control breaks down.

What public debates surround crime?

The specification names concerns over violent crime, sentencing (are sentences too lenient or harsh?), the treatment of young offenders (punishment or rehabilitation?), the prison system (does it reduce reoffending?), and media coverage of crime (does it exaggerate crime and create fear or moral panics?).

How useful is data on crime? (3.5.4)

Source	How collected	Strengths	Limitations
Police recorded crime (official statistics)	Crimes reported to and recorded by police	National coverage; regular; shows trends in recorded offences	Many crimes unreported; police discretion in recording; changes in counting rules
Victim surveys — e.g. the Crime Survey for England and Wales (begun in 1982 as the British Crime Survey)	Asks a large sample about crimes they have experienced	Captures unreported crime	Misses crimes without direct victims, such as corporate crime; relies on memory
Self-report studies	Ask people which offences they have committed	Reveal hidden offending and offenders never caught	People may lie or forget; usually limited to minor offences

The dark figure of crime is the crime that is unreported or unrecorded, and so does not appear in official statistics. Victim surveys have generally recorded much more crime than police figures, and both have shown a long fall in many types of crime since the mid-1990s, though patterns vary by offence.

Perspectives on data: functionalists tend to treat official statistics as broadly showing who commits crime; Marxists argue statistics reflect policing of the working class while crimes of the powerful go unrecorded; feminists point out that domestic and sexual violence against women are heavily under-reported.

Frequently asked questions

Which sociologists must I know for Paper 2 crime? Merton and Becker (3.5.1), Heidensohn (3.5.2), Albert Cohen and Carlen (3.5.3).

What is the difference between crime and deviance? Crime breaks the law; deviance breaks social norms. Some acts are both, some only one.

Why is the dark figure important? Because it means official statistics may misrepresent both the amount of crime and who commits it.

Sources

• AQA, GCSE Sociology (8192) specification, section 3.5 Crime and deviance and the key sociologists’ summaries in the specification’s teaching guidance section.
• Studies are named with publication years in the text.

Related pages: crime and deviance revision notes | social construction of crime practice questions | crime and stratification practice questions