Societal Perspectives on Crime
...al striving towards those goals. The second is subcultural theory, which states that some subcultures in society have values and attitudes that tend to crime and violence, thus leading members of those particular subcultures to act in a deviant manner. The third theory is that of control. Strong social bonds between people and order keep most individuals from violating the norms of a society. These bonds operate of four elements: attachment to significant others, commitment to conventional goals, involvement in conventional activities, and belief in moral standard of society. The stronger the bond, the lower the probability of criminal behaviour in an individual. Conflict perspectives propose that crimes are inevitable when two groups have differing degrees of power in a society –the greater the inequality between those groups, the greater the crime rate. Those with higher power establish what is considered as criminal and promote laws that enable them to keep their status. The law enforcement likewise serves as a tool of those with power, penalizing those without influence and benefiting those with it. The beliefs of a society are also a result of the power differential. The central idea is that the structure and goals of a society reflect only a small margin of interests of that society as a whole. Conflict differs from other perspectives in that it does not assume interests are common throughout all members of society. Symbolic interactionist stresses the idea that societies are created by the interactions between individuals. There are two important theories of crime. The first is labeling theory, which focuses upon the question of what defines a criminal and what the application of that ...