Essay Example on Crime is an unlawful behavior which is punishable by the state or the Authority

Crime is an unlawful behavior which is punishable by state or the authority It is again termed to be an act that is not only harmful to an individual but again to the society at large and could earn a punishmentby the law There is a sociological discipline that deals with crime and it is known as criminology or in other words criminal justice Deviance according to Durkheim is any behavior that goes against the social rules and it is sufficient to disapproval from a good number of members of the society Deviance could be either a criminal or non criminal In the present moment in America there are a variety of things that could be considered to be deviance like lying playing with fire excessive gambling alcoholism nudity in public stealing prostitution and even failure to bathe just to mention a few Those who engage in deviant behaviors are termed as deviants This study will primarily expound on the view that a certain level of crime and deviance is not only inevitable but functional basing the arguments on theories of crime and deviance Functionalist theory A lot of people have tried to explain the reason as to why there are crimes in the society Functionalist theory primarily focuses the source of deviance in the social context rather than psychological and biological explanations It is termed to be a social structural and social control theory 

This theory has it that is the society that prompts individuals to engage in crimes Every functionalist believes that things like social control measures for instance the police are significant in maintaining deviance in control hence maintaining social order The police are fair and just but the people in the society are selfish where else the official statistics are valid There is a person who contributed a lot to coming up with this theory He was called Durkheim and he believes that the society is based on values that all the members of the society share a culture with a set of values beliefs goals and norms shared According to Durkheim crime in the society is entirely inevitable since not everyone is committed to the law due to person s differences and again every society has its version of how it defines deviant He indeed stressed that crime is normal and necessary in life 

This creates an awareness where all the member converges together in condemning the wrongdoers and reinforce the commitments in their values and norms By so doing the society can remain united Durkheim describes punishment as an affirmation of the society's rules and it means that they are all towards reinforcing the community solidarity He claims that could be done in courtrooms publicizing the wrongdoers which stigmatize the crime suspect offender Marxist theory Marxist theory is another perspective of viewing crimes and deviance in the society it was developed by a scholar called Karl Marx As per Karl Marx's perspective crime is due to the social structure and economic system that is used in a particular society The Marxist theory claims that there are quite some societies in the world where each has different social classes These classes are as per what each group owned and had control over This was measured regarding land tools and labor 

There emerged a conflict between the two the owners of the production and the workers Therefore the emerged two distinct social classes of owners powerful and non owners less powerful The owners of the production plants had a motive of maximizing their profits This means that there should be fewer expenses and that led to a reduction of wages to the workers who complained of continued exploitation by the wealthy owners Out of their endeavors things were made harder on their side Karl Marx claims that the owners again dominated the political arena which was responsible for making the rules therefore the non owners were entirely under the product owners It was true that the rich become richer and the poor continued to be poor and suffered This led to the workers engaging in crimes The Marxist theory claims that if it were not for crimes then some professions like police and judges lawyers could never have been to the place It puts more pressure on wrongdoing rather than individual motives of immorality It claims that deviance is as a result of incompatibility of what the expectations the society has towards the workers and the social structure it is existing in It therefore sees crime as the growth of a capitalist society This is because the economic infrastructure plays a primary role in social relationships values and beliefs Again capitalist production is aimed at maximizing the profits and accumulation of personal wealth economic self interest It therefore motivates many crimes in the society That is why the theory claim there are some groups of people that the police target certain ethnic minorities poor people young specific area and conspicuous people