BA (Hons) Criminology and Psychology

Crime and Society

STU137376

Bisi Akintoye
Introduction

Crime is an anti-social act, prohibited by national law, and punishable by law.

According to Barnes and Teeters, the expression “crime” precisely means any kind
of anti-social behaviour offended by the public to the extent that it is prohibited by
law. To refer to Merrill, the fact of crime implies the disturbance of social relations
and the social meaning of what such trouble is. The research of crime is theoretically
the most fruitful social It is one of the fields of science (Robert, 2000).

Crime is a social reality and a human action (Emile Durkheim, 1895). Crime is
common and functional, it is anti-social behaviour (Becker, 1968). Sutherland
indicates differences in mobility, cultural disputes, and family backgrounds: ideology,
population mass, work, and wealth allocation are the key circumstances that are
closely related to the causes of crime and immediately affect crime rates
(Sutherland, 1955).

Factors that contribute to crime include:

 Poverty and joblessness due to social exclusion, especially of young people.

 Dysfunctional families with indifferent and inconsistent parental mindsets,
brutality, and parental conflict.
 Social appreciation of the culture of violence.
 Presence of helpers for example firearms and drugs.
 Discrimination and exclusion based on sexism, racism, and other types of
tyranny.
 Deterioration of the urban environment and social cohesion.
 Insufficient monitoring of the location and accessibility of supplies that are
easily transported or sold (Mir et al., 2012).

Crime is a social phenomenon, both its causes and consequences, and prison
policies, need to be viewed in the context of broader social and economic
marginalization and exclusion (Dabla and Ahmad, 2007). Though personal
preference is a major element in crime. The socio-economic aspects as well directly
contribute to individuals involving in criminal activity. There are various risk aspects
that make children and teenagers more likely to become criminals later in life. These
involve community disruption, socio-economic disadvantage, family difficulties,
educational and school problems, and individual circumstances (National Crime
Council Tackling, 2002).

The assessment is about the completion of the following are the specific lower class
in the United Kingdom that is excessively engaged in crime; the strengths and
weaknesses of control theory, and likewise assessment of the understanding that its
weaknesses; the degrees of ferocious crime variation over time by important
amounts; and their inked to people with mental health.

Sociological Theories of Crime

Sociologists postulate that various people respond differently to their nature and
criminal behaviour is developed because of this collaboration (Phulia et al., 1992).
Sutherland (1947), in his differential federation theory, argued that criminal behaviour
is studied. It is learned in contact with other people in the development of
communication. A large section of learning about criminal behaviour takes place in
informal individual groups.

When criminal behaviour is learned, learning comprises:

 Methods for committing crimes are from time to time very complex and
occasionally very simple.
 Precise directions of reasons drive rationalizations and attitudes.
 Diverse relationships are associated with regularity and length.
 The method of learning criminal behaviour through connection with criminal
and anti-criminal patterns, which may differ in priority, and intensity, includes
all the processes concerned in all other learning.

In the year 1893, Durkheim suggested that deviant behaviour is a common

adaptation to life in a society constructed by a high sector of labour and built on
competitive individualist values. Deviant behaviour becomes a new method to
problems, and society remains static unless new methods to problem solving are
introduced. Durkheim determined just on his one kind of deviant behaviour; it was
suicide. Robert Merton, in contrast, was concerned in investigating "what it is
regarding social and cultural organisations, not only personal characteristics, that
triggers deviation". Moreover, to compliance in society, Merton wanted to see
deviations and describe different rates. Robert Merton's "Anomy" theory first
emerged in his 1938 article "Social Structure and Anomie". Corresponding to Merton,
anti-social behaviour (criminal behaviour) is generated by the principles of society
itself, and by everyone's individual achievements without providing well-recognized
means to achieve these ends. As a sign of promoting high material ambitions
(Durkheim, 1966).

Social Implications of Crime

The social impact of crime is significant and damages the entire social structure of
society. Crime directs to sociopathology, which misrepresents social interactions for
everyone: kids, adults, and the elderly. Criminal repercussions are physical, sexual,
psychological, financial, or emotional acts or risks of acts that affect other people.
This involves social behaviour that terrifies, manipulates, humiliates, isolates,
frightens, terrorizes, coerces, threatens, criticizes, harms, hurts, or hurts anyone.

The main crimes that harm society are:

 Physical misuse: beating, hitting, pushing, snatching, nipping, hurting, hair

pulling, stinging, and others.
 Sexual Abuse: Coercing or trying to intimidate sexual contact or conduct with
no agreement. Sexual misuse involves, but is not restricted to, spousal rape,
sexual assault, coercion after physical violence, or sexually degrading
treatment.
 Emotional Abuse: impair a person's self-esteem and/or confidence.
 Financial misuse: Making or trying to make a person fiscally reliant by keeping
full control over monetary assets, denying access to money, or prohibiting
schooling or employment.
 Psychological Abuse: Intimidation creates fear, threatening physical damage
to yourself, your spouse, kids, or your lover's family or friends; destroying
animals and property; enforcing loneliness from family, friends, school and/or
job.
Children and old and young human beings are focused within the online
surroundings that they live in, like immediate messaging, chats, and social
networking sites; those who interact in offline misuse, make pics and proportion of
them online with networks of like-minded people or are receivers and creditors of
such materials; or those who use the net to hyperlink up and pick out the quality
locations withinside the global to journey to abuse youngsters or younger human
beings or who utilise the net to entice this susceptible institution into a few shape of
misuse. Though, the results of the brand-new media want to be understood extra
profoundly due to manner where improvements in virtual technology are contributing
to the exercising and the distribution of electricity in society (Silverstone, 1999).
Longe and Chiemeke (2008) shortened the listing of unintentional effects of
Information Communication Technology to consist of acts which includes phishing,
cyber terrorism, digital junk mail mails, cyber-stalking, and pretend copy-cat
websites. The laptop is a goal for illegal acts, illegal get right of entry to laptop/laptop
system/ laptop networks, robbery of statistics contained within the digital shape,
electronic mail bombing, facts diddling, salami attacks, common sense bombs,
Trojan attacks, net time thefts, internet jacking, robbery of laptop system, bodily
detrimental the laptop system. Cybercrime includes intentionally damaging a victim's
reputation, using the Internet (chat rooms), e-mail, mail, bulletin boards and groups)
and mobile phones (SMS/MMS) (Halder and Jaishankar, 2011). Such risks are
damaging to data management and cause a real threat to the socio-economic
structure of society.

Other types of harm-built crimes, for example racial or spiritual hate, persecution, or
political extremism, might be committed by people or organized groups and may
concentrate on specific matters. The public is targeted for criminal and anti-social
behaviour in many ways via the Internet, how to stay safe online, and where such
data may come from, are often concerned about the reason for most information
theft is productivity due to compromised personal data, especially comprehensive
financial data. Criminals either take huge amounts of information, for example credit
card details, and sell it immediately to those who can realize financial value due to
scam, or data brokers collect data from various sources and sell it to other criminals.
The internet fosters a continuous and consistent practice of "hate crimes," and some
victims may experience hate crimes on par with hate incidents over an extended
period. Whether it is an anonymous email or a website disseminating vulgar
messages, being part of a repeat victimization pattern can have a significant effect
on victims and communities. The single evolution, the World Wide Web (WWW), has
the best influence as a vast data resource and distribution channel. The current data
environment is quickly shifting from conventional information systems to digital data
systems (Long and Chiemeke, 2008).

Identifiable ‘underclass’ in the UK

There are many theories examples to consider the notion of underclasses. The one
of Runciman (1990) was chosen. He said that British society has his seven classes:
the upper-class, three middle-classes (upper, middle, and lower), two working-
classes (proficient and unskilled), and the lower class. Runciman illustrates the lower
classes as those who are 'totally excluded from the labour market' (quoted in
Marshall, 1997). This may be due to infirmity, debt, or absence of entitlement, and is
most expected to be women and/or a member of an ethnic minority. The most
important characteristic of the lower class is long-term joblessness (Makori, 2009).

Underclass theories seek to distinguish, identify, and analyse the poorest individuals
in society. Social researchers and reporters have customarily employed the
expression "underclass" to refer to the poor, racist population living in city zones.
This kind of poverty is recurrent and occurs without social movement. Underclass
scholarly views fall in two groups. Structural schools portray the lower classes as
victims of the economic shifts triggered by globalization, whereas behavioural
schools attribute poverty to the poor themselves, concentrating on anti-social
behaviour and inconsistent cultural beliefs and practices. In the mid-to-late 20th
century, behavioural changes of lower-class theory had a major impact on US and
British political spheres, promoting what is usually called the deconstruction of the
welfare state (Makori, 2009).

Murray (1990) approves that long-term joblessness and its rise, alongside with the
increase in lone parents, are responsible for the underclass. These groups have
ready access to social services, generating a culture of dependence. Murray's
meaning of "lower class" concerns the kind of poverty rather than the level of
poverty, supporting the opinion that the lower classes are identified by their
behaviour. Murray concentrates on illegitimacy, which he sees as a separate "issue"
from divorce, separation, and widowhood. He believes that a child who has known
just one parent from birth is more expected to belong to the lower classes than a
child who has had two parents at some point. He assumed that illegitimacy was
more popular in poor families than in wealthy households, and more common in
white households than in black or Asian households (though "race, he does not
consider ethnicity or gender to be factors). He distinguishes among short-term and
long-term unemployed. Welfare dependence and job depreciation continue from
generation to generation, creating early socialization into a counterculture called the
underclass (Makori, 2009).

Criminologists have long believed that socioeconomic circumstances and social

inequalities play an essential part in determining why certain people engage in
criminal activities and the level of crime in a society. The surge in crime from the
1950s to the early 1990s put an end to the simplistic assumption that increasing
wealth certainly leads to a decline in crime, and the decline in crime in current years
has likewise affected economic disasters and levels of crime. Various criminal
theories of persuasion have concentrated on social detriment as a central
explanatory criterion. Especially since the criminal justice system is primarily
concentrated on the crimes of the underprivileged instead than the "crimes" of the
socially advantaged.

Within the United Kingdom, Machin and Meghir (2004), using police station data,
discovered that the relative decline in salaries for low-wage employees among 1975
and 1996 was associated with an increase in crime, especially vehicle and property
crime. They found that it was connected to this basis, they argue, it might be the
nature of the low-salary labour market that has a better impact on crime rates than
on unemployment rates. (Apel and Sweeten, 2010). The relationship among
inequality and crime has as well been shown at the local level. Analysis utilising
police-recorded crime statistics in England and Wales noticed that inequality
(determined by the Crime and Disability Reduction Partnership Gini coefficient
biased by the whole population of each middle-class super-productive area in 2005)
was found to be positive, and "fairly strongly" linked with robbery, burglary, ferocity,
vehicle crime, and, to a slighter extent, vandalism (Whitworth, 2011). Whitworth's
findings were toughest for procurement crimes. All else being identical, a 0.20% rise
in inequality in the Crime and Disability Reduction Partnership is linked with a 0.28%
rise in robbery rate, a 0.28% rise in robbery rate, and a 0.27% rise in vehicle crime
rate" (Apel and Sweeten, 2010).

Control theory of Crime

The theory of social control holds that crime is rooted in social institutes losing
control of people. Weak societies for example some kinds of households, the
breakdown of societies, and the loss of faith in government and police are all
associated with rising crime rates (Sampson, 2000). Travis Hirschi claimed that
criminal behaviour happens when a person's connection to society weakens
(Sampson, 2000).

The crime control model has some strengths and weaknesses. Effectiveness is a
well-known benefit. If a criminal commits a misdemeanour, the capability to move
quickly across the method is critical. Law enforcement is back on the streets and can
catch many criminals in no time. In return, it offers them the opportunity to
concentrate more time on criminal issues where defining the result is more
important. Having to solve easy crimes in court takes longer, but more criminals can
get arrested. Other benefit is the crime-free ambience provided to the community.
The arrest of many criminals within the community can bring calm to its residents. If
you know that criminals are always being caught, you do not need to worry so much
(National Crime Council Initiative, 2002). A drawback of the crime-fighting model is
the possibility of non-prosecution. If you spend very little time on every issue, you
can simply find not guilty criminals, and find innocent people guilty of crimes you
never committed. A second look at the case and his third gives us a fair volume of
information. New witnesses might emerge, or new test outcomes may be noticed,
both of which might result in a significant shift in the direction of the trial. The last
drawback offered in connection with deceptive law enforcement is cost. Processing a
whole case to find a not guilty person can be costly (National Crime Council
Tackling, 2002).

Change of levels of violent crime in the UK over time

Through the first two decades of the 20th century, police within England and Wales
documented a standard of 90,000 crimes per year, rising to around 500,000 in the
1950s (Eisner, 2003). As a result, the crime rate was 250, it quadrupled from per
100,000 population in 1901 to 1,000 in 1950 (Eisner, 2003). However, the history of
20th-century crime has been marked by a further increase in police crimes since the
late 1950s. In the 1960s, recorded crime accelerated. It was just decade in this
century when crime doubled. Crime continued to increase on this scale for most of
the rest of the twentieth century, with a standard of more than one million crimes
documented annually in the 1960s, rising to two million in the 1970s, and rising to
two million in the 1980s. he increased to 3.5 million. (Eisner, 2003). The conundrum
for criminologists today is how to describe the decline in crime. The number of
recorded crimes achieved 6 million in 2003, and since then there has been a
constant decline in most types of documented crimes, with certain crimes for
instance robbery dropping particularly sharply. Certain claim that improvements in
security, especially contemporary vehicle burglary prevention systems, have greatly
decreased the chances of crime being committed. Some argue that incarceration,
police, or demographic issues play the most crucial role (Eisner, 2003).

Violent crimes committed by serious mental illnesses

The link among mental sickness and crime was the subject of strong discussion and
investigation in modern years following several mass killings in the US. The revived
attention and media focus on the significance of mental health following such
disasters is a constructive development, but the link among mental illness and crime
is frequently confused (Gottfried and Christopher, 2017). A widely held principle is
that individuals with mental illness are likely to violent and aggressive behaviour. The
public view of psychopaths as risky people is frequently established in media
portrayals of criminals as “silly” individuals (Gottfried and Christopher, 2017).

A key factor leading to the misunderstanding of mental illness and crime is the
misidentification of all criminals as people with mental illness. Society generally sees
behaviour and behavioural issues as symptoms of mental disorders, leading to the
common misconception that delinquency is equated with mental illness. The high
number of related mental illnesses in prisons and inmates is largely because of the
misidentification of criminals as mentally ill (Steinert et al., 2010). Some mental
disorders rise the danger of committing crimes. Study proposes that people with
mental illness are more susceptible to aggression if they do not get proper therapy, if
they are keenly delusional, or if they have been paranoid for a long time. Such
patients are frequently under the effect of mental illness, like command nightmares.
Other comorbidities involve situations for instance substance use disorders,
joblessness, homelessness, and secondary impacts of mental illness for instance
cognitive impairment, which increase the danger of brutal crime (Steinert et al.,
2010).

The most significant independent risk aspect for crime and violence in people with
mental illness is continuing substance use disorders. Patients with severe mental
illness and comorbid substance use disorders have a four-fold increased threat of
causing crime and aggression. Research have indicated that the increase in vicious
crime by people with mental illness is completely due to their history of alcohol
and/or drug use (Volavka and Citrome, 2011). People with serious mental illnesses
that for some reason have been overlooked or not followed treatment are at
particularly high danger of causing serious violent crimes (Volavka and Citrome,
2011).

Conclusion

The nature, scope, and impact of crime in society have profound sociological effects.
As a social phenomenon, crime may be deviant behaviour that goes against
established standards, cultural norms that dictate how people normally behave. In
this situation, crime in the UK has experienced dramatic shift and tremendous growth
over the past two decades, with far-reaching effects for the social structure of
society. There is a link among conflict situations, unemployment, and crime. In
society, low-level crimes were dedicated by a few unprofessional people. With the
beginning of the conflict setting, the crime rate increased. Available data indicate that
terrible crimes were dedicated, ranging from abducting, rape, prostitution, sexual
harassment, intimidation, verbal misuse to brutality. While physical hurt is the
clearest threat, the psychological and emotional impact of local violence is as well
serious.
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