Crime as a Social Problem: Essay

A crime is an offense by a person by action or omission that is punishable by law. Most crimes are dealt with by fines or prison sentences. The person who commits a crime is then prosecuted by the state or commonwealth. According to the Legal Services Commission of South Australia, there are 4 principles of criminal law: 1) innocent until proven guilty, i.e. every person charged with a crime is assumed to be innocent until otherwise stated, a judge/jury has to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt this person has committed the offense; 2) the burden of proof, where the prosecution must prove a person charged with an offense is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; 3) the right to remain silent, i.e. a person who is arrested for suspicion of an offense has the right to not answer police questions in particular cases where the police officer asks for name and address and gives false or won't cooperate, it can be seen as another offense; 4) double jeopardy, which means a person cannot be charged twice for a crime where he has been found not guilty. Two elements of a criminal offense are the prohibited conduct and the mental element, the prosecution must show both elements are present to prove the person is guilty of committing an offense. An exemption case would be the likes of strict liability offenses, these are offenses required by the prohibited conduct element and not the mental. Crimes are split into two parts: summary and indictable convictions. Summary convictions are less serious than indictable offenses and are usually not carried with a prison sentence.

According to Hester and Eglin (1992), social problems are defined as the activities of individuals or groups who make assertions of grievances and claims concerning some putative conditions. Social problems are what people are concerned about at present and what they think should be done about the problem. Some forms of social problems have only arisen recently but have always existed as a problem, such as child abuse which only became recognized as a social problem in the early 1960s, and the likes of mugging a person only became recognized as a social problem in the 1970s, even though both crimes existed before then, they were only brought into concern during those timeframes. Sociological problems are defined as concerns that encourage sociological inquiry; the concerns are used by sociologists who are thinking deeply about different theoretical perspectives. The primary concern for sociologists is social order. Our interest in crime has more to do with sociology rather than looking for a way to fix it, in other words, punishment. The primary question in crime is what causes it and how can we stop it. The main problems with crime by people who believe crime to be a social problem are how crimes are increasing and becoming more violent, even though there has been more money invested into solving crimes and harsher penalties are being carried out.

Some sociologists view crime as a social problem because of the connection between sociology and criminology. Criminology is the study of crime and factors associated with criminal behavior; if we can understand the behavior, we can have an estimate of when it can occur and try ways to prevent a crime from happening. “Let us state quite categorically that the major task of radical criminology is to seek a solution to the problem of crime, and that of a socialist policy is to substantially reduce the crime rate”, stated Young (1986) (cited in Hester and Eglin, 1992). Lombroso studied biological criminology in the 19th century, which included criminals who were identified by their body shape, eyes, etc. Eysenck studied psychological criminology during the 20th century, which included the criminal's personality such as introversion and extraversion, as well as insanity.

Hester and Eglin (1992) state sociological views of criminal behavior have to do with the difference in how a normal person's and a criminal person's environment they were brought into affected. Hilbert (1989) links deviant behavior to access to opportunities. In Sutherland’s theory in 1939, he stated there is a link between society and criminal behavior because there is exposure to ‘definitions favorable to violation of law’. The correction criminology social problem theory of crime is failing due to the attitude to do something about a crime, in other words, to enforce punishment, due to the assumption that people show a failure to appreciate the socially important character of crime as a form of both social action and human behavior and due to correctional criminology taking for granted the goal of a crime before identifying that crime is socially defined and relative. In correctional criminology, two factors of crime are: social action is intersubjectively important and crime is socially constructed.

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Sociological approaches involve symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and structural conflict theory. Symbolic interactionism looks at how acts are not criminal themselves, it is the criminal property associated with them, stating crime to be a matter of social definition. It looks at social interactions with others, looks at other people's behavior and identifies it as criminal, and looks at how acts by a person are interpreted. Ethnomethodology looks at members of society; it looks at the recipient's design and it looks at the social actor. The structural conflict perspective, which looks at any social fact, the structure of society more known as conflict of interests, it looks at different classes, including power, gender, and race, and their conflicts, and it looks at sociological analysis such as social and political change.

According to Henry (2009), social construction is about the idea that social reality has no independent existence outside the human mind, humans interact with the world and create images of what they believe to be reality. Some social constructionists believe primary reality to exist, and when the idea of social construction is created, it also defines reality to some level because humans are defining situations as real, they are real in relevance. Crime is an example of a social reality. We as groups construct deconstruct and replace with a less harmful reality. There are many varieties of social constructionist theory such as personal construct theory and social constructionist theory, there is also a question of to what extent social reality can be changed by humans freeing themselves from their social constructions. Crime, in this perspective, is seen as a behavior defined by individuals who have the power and authority to make laws that distinguish behavior to be offensive and to make a punishment for such behavior. The extent of crime varies in different societies, but Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn (1952) from their studies found that no society accepts lying, stealing, violence, and incest. The effect of the social construction of crime and the existence of moral panic increases crime rates in particular types of crimes due to the public discussion in the media, resulting in public awareness of behavior which increases the number of crimes reported to the police.

Harold Garfinkel (1967), who studied ethnomethodology, focused on how social order, social institutions, and social structure came about through interactions with people and everyday lives. Through their studies, they became familiar with behavior that is unacceptable or deviant, as well as normal. Ethnomethodologists' studies distinguish people as deviants or offenders, they are trying to understand what becomes of a crime rather than people who behave as deviants and participate in radical social constructionism. Ethnomethodologists don’t just use human interactions in their studies but as well as their analysis from the constitutive process. Ethnomethodologists were focused on ways of interpretation through routine practices, whereas Herbert Blumer and George Herbert Mead were focused on John Dewey's view of human interactions with the environment. Dewey’s (1969) demonstration showed that rather than humans being fixed to objective roles, statuses, etc., social meaning had to do with the interaction between others. According to Mead (1934), human identity was created by one's emergent sense of self and an internalized sense of social self. Blumer in (1969) stated that people act toward each other and the world around them.

According to Durkheim and his theory of crime (2013), crime is unavoidable because people are socialized differently than others, and someone with poor socialization may think differently making them deviant due to their values and morals being different than mainstream society, and due to large cities and mixed cultures and lifestyles, there are subcultures which also might not have the same value and morals as mainstream society. Another factor to crime being unavoidable is that anomie exists which causes people to do their own thing, where, Durkheim believes, this has an impact on high levels of crime and deviance. Even though crime is bad for society, Durkheim believed that no crime is bad for society. These are two examples he uses to prove this: boundary maintenance (the purpose of the law and justice system is to decrease crimes and warn citizens of the consequence of breaking the law) and adaptation and change (when a person acts out as in goes against society, they are allowing the society to adapt and grow because they are challenging standard society. Durkheim may be criticized for his views because crime is necessarily a bad thing, but Durkheim does not state that crime needs to be in society to function, etc. “Imagine a community of saints in an exemplary and perfect monastery. In it, crime as such will be unknown, but faults that appear venial to the ordinary person will arouse the same scandal as does normal crime in ordinary consciences. If therefore that community has the power to judge and punish, it will term such acts criminal and deal with them as such” (Durkheim, 1982).

Throughout my essay, I have analyzed crime as a social problem. A final question arises: to what extent should sociologists attempt to combat the ‘social problem of crime’? I think sociologists should analyze people's interactions with others and record them to prevent a certain person from acting in a deviant way and committing a crime, they should then inform the police to keep watch on the person with deviant behavior.