Assess Control Theories of Crime

Right realists would argue that in order to reduce crime effectively the causes of crime must be put to a side and efficient formal social control mechanisms i.e. police patrolling must be put into place in order for crime rates among young working class males to decrease successfully. Wilson and Kellings presented the ‘broken windows’ theory. They argued that if minor crimes such as broken windows were to go unnoticed and unpunished the area would be more likely to become crime ridden because of the lack of social control. The evidence suggests that if in rundown area crime rate is high then the solution is to enforce that areas are well looked after, thus crime rate would be inevitably low. For that reason this implies that individuals will become more likely not to commit crime and to conform to the social norms and values of society. Conversely, it is argued by sociologists that some social control mechanisms can have the opposite effect of controlling societies, for example, police patrolling can lead to the labelling of a certain group of people. This evident in the work of Cicorel, he argued that the police had ‘typifications’ whereby they used it to negatively label and stereotype African-Caribbean’s and purposely ‘stop and search’ them.   The negativity of the scientific research was disregarded and put in the status of
It has been argued by Functionalists that social control has an important purpose in society and can help keep order in society stable as consensus of social norms and values is needed to keep the smooth running of society. Durkheim argued that crime is inevitable and serves a purpose in society. He argued that its function is to create consensus with the boundaries of what is known to be criminal and what is known to be deviant. The evidence suggests that crime is socially constructed and that deviancy allows social change to occur, therefore, change is needed in society for social control to work and for society to remain healthy and...