Crime and Deviance

Essay by sneezeHigh School, 12th gradeA+, November 2006

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This paper explains the different sociological perspectives of deviance and in the essay I had compare each perspective to the movies that we watched in class dealing with crime.

The movies that were mentioned in this essay were-

"Menace II Society"

"News from a Personal War" documentary

"The Secret History of Street Gangs" documentary

"Good Fellas"

and "City of God".

There were also some references on the book "1984" by George Orwell.

There are many sociological perspectives on why criminal groups exist and the types of people that chooses to join such groups and why they do it. One of these perspectives, I believed that really explained this to me because of experiences is the Strain theory by Robert Merton. Basically, strain theory is concentrated among the lower classes that have the least legitimate opportunities for achievement. The lower classes are the most vulnerable to this pressure, and will maintain their unfulfilled economic ambition in spite of frustration or failure.

There are other types of context within this theory such as innovation may result instead where people continue to seek success where they strive to obtain it by taking advantage of illegal goals available to them in place of getting real jobs or an education. Another one is rebellion, where people have completely rejected the idea that everybody in society can achieve success and so they go into a rebellious state. They neither trust the government to help them or societal means used to reach success. Instead, these people go into the violent overthrow of the system and community altogether and do things their own way. Retreatism is also applied in the strain theory; retreatism occurs when people basically become dropouts of society and rejects everything. They give up all goals and efforts to achieve success because they...