Social explanations for crime

Since its origins, the criminological imagination has devoted considerable energy to the task of explaining crime. Given the inter-disciplinary character of criminological inquiry, the explanations that have emerged over time are diverse, expressing quite different and, at times, contradictory perspectives on why individuals, groups, corporations, institutions, or the state may engage in criminal behaviour. Theoretical explanations of crime can be understood as a "story" centrally concerned with the societal "battle between deviance and social control" (Pfohl 2009: 6). In re-telling some of these stories, this chapter is a "starting point" that provides a brief introduction to some of the major social perspectives that have been developed to explain crime in modernity. All criminological theories possess an image of deviance and social control that determines what is considered deviant or harmful, which in turn, orders how we filter and interpret complex data linked to crime in order to understand, explain and intervene in relation to the crime problem (2009: 11-13). My aim is to introduce you to four theoretical perspectives, telling a very brief story about each to communicate its theoretical imagery and assumptions, and its core conceptual framework for explaining crime. These perspectives are drawn from theories about the dynamics of modern societies under the conditions of industrial capitalism and the establishment of a liberal state bureaucracy for rationally administering the conditions of social and economic life. These explanations of crime were concerned with social conditions over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, where forms of social organisation were based on the separation of the public and private, strong roles, a culture of the future based on self discipline, duty, sacrifice, and security, and, an emphasis on function, hierarchy, and predictability (McDonald 2003: 63-64). The perspectives selected are not exhaustive, rather they signal some of the tensions in social explanations premised on conflicting assumptions about whether society and its social relations are integrated or divisive. Chapter 16 provides further explanations of crime under contemporary social conditions associated with post-industrial capitalism where social life is more polarised, and where individuality and social connection is constructed within a global/ network culture.