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Social Action Theory Of Crime Essay

1618 Words7 Pages

Crime is any act which breaks the laws of society, such as murder, rape, speeding etc. Social control is enforced by agencies such as police and the courts, more specifically defined than deviance. Deviance is behaviour which moves away from controversial norms and values such as burping, pass wind in public and queuing. It Can be positive e.g. extreme intelligence. Although in some situation in nature – time dependent of factors, place, who is involved. It is normally in Informal situations. Social action theory on crime and deviance differs from other theories in that instead of focusing on deviants and the influences in society which are seen as determinates of behaviour, they focus on the relations between those who are outlined as …show more content…

legitimacy is banned in the variation of definitions from one society to the next Another strength is that social action recognises the flexible nature of meanings. As such social action takes account of changing norms and values both within societies as well as amongst them. A weakness of social action is that it has been criticised for outlining criminal and deviant behaviour merely on the base of how it is outlined by individuals in society, for example killing someone purely for pleasure would be deemed deviant behaviour in any society. Another weakness would be that social action is very deterministic due to that once an individual becomes deviant, the only real option is that their deviant behaviour purely becomes …show more content…

Gordon states considering the nature of capitalism we should not ask ‘why the working class commit crime?’ but we should instead ask ‘why they don’t commit more crime?’ (D, Gordon, 1991). He argues that the thought of capitalism persuades criminal behaviour in all social classes. Gordon believed that the need to win at all costs just encourages capitalists to carry out white collar crime and also things such as tax avoidance. It is believed that capitalism assists with envy poorer people have so therefore the poorer parts of society may have a criminal reaction to feeling like

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