Crime and Deviance - TCE Sociology (Tasmania) - Level 3
“Explain and evaluate sociological theories of deviance and crime”
Deviance is behaviour that breaks a society's norms; crime is deviance that breaks the law. Durkheim argued deviance is normal and even functional; Robert Merton's strain theory blamed the gap between cultural goals and legitimate means; labelling theorists showed how being labelled deviant shapes identity; Marxists tied crime to capitalism; and feminists examined how gender shapes both offending and the law.
What this dot point is asking
Deviance is a classic sociology topic that lets you apply every perspective from Module 1. This dot point asks you to explain the main sociological theories of why people break norms and laws, and to evaluate them against one another. The key insight is that deviance is socially defined: what counts as deviant varies between societies and over time.
Deviance is socially constructed
Nothing is deviant in itself. An act becomes deviant only when a society defines it as breaking a norm. The same act, such as killing, can be murder, war or self defence depending on the social context. This means deviance is relative to time, place and culture, a point interactionists emphasise. Crime is the subset of deviance that breaks formal laws and attracts official sanctions.
Durkheim and the functions of deviance
Emile Durkheim made the surprising claim that deviance is normal and necessary. A certain level of crime exists in every society, and it performs functions: punishing offenders reaffirms shared values (boundary maintenance), and some deviance drives social change by challenging outdated norms. Durkheim also introduced anomie, a state of normlessness during rapid social change when the rules that usually restrain people break down.
Anomie is a condition of weakened or unclear social norms, leaving individuals without firm moral guidance. Durkheim linked it to rapid social change; Merton reworked it to mean the strain produced when society cannot deliver the success it tells everyone to want.
Merton's strain theory
Robert Merton adapted anomie to explain crime in unequal societies. Society sets universal success goals, such as wealth, but provides unequal access to legitimate means like good jobs. This strain pushes some people toward deviant adaptations, most importantly innovation, achieving the goals through illegitimate means such as theft. Strain theory neatly links crime to inequality, but it focuses on financial crime and struggles to explain non utilitarian deviance such as vandalism.
Labelling theory
Interactionist Howard Becker argued that deviance is not a quality of the act but of the reaction to it: an act is deviant only once it is successfully labelled so. The powerful decide which acts and which people get labelled, and the labelled person may experience a self fulfilling prophecy, taking on a deviant master status and being pushed into a deviant career. This explains why official statistics reflect who gets caught and labelled, not simply who offends.
Official crime statistics, including Australian data, measure recorded crime, which depends on what the public reports and what police act on. The dark figure of unreported crime, the over policing of some groups, and white collar crime that rarely reaches court all mean statistics are a social product, not a simple mirror of reality.
Marxist and feminist views
Marxists argue that capitalism causes crime: inequality and consumerism generate both street crime among the poor and corporate crime among the powerful, yet the law and police focus on the former while the crimes of the powerful go largely unpunished. Marxists also point to selective law enforcement, where laws protecting private property are vigorously enforced while corporate and environmental harms attract weak sanctions. Feminists point out that mainstream theories were built around male offenders and ask why women commit less recorded crime, examining how socialisation, social control and the courts treat women differently. They also study how women are treated by the justice system, sometimes more leniently in line with their conventional role and sometimes more harshly when they breach gendered expectations, a pattern known as the chivalry thesis and its critique.
Subcultural and interactionist extensions
Albert Cohen developed strain theory to explain non-utilitarian deviance, arguing that working-class boys who fail by middle-class standards experience status frustration and form delinquent subcultures that invert mainstream values, gaining status through the very acts the wider society condemns. This addresses Merton's blind spot about crime that brings no financial reward, such as vandalism. Interactionists add that the meaning of an act, and the reaction it triggers, depends on who commits it and where, which is why the same behaviour can be tolerated in one context and policed in another.
A frequent extended-response task asks you to compare and evaluate two theories of deviance. Work through it in steps.
Step 1: Set up the two theories
Name two contrasting theories and state each in one sentence, for example Merton's strain (blocked opportunity produces the motive to offend) and Becker's labelling (social reaction creates the deviant identity).
Step 2: Explain each with a theorist and concept
Develop each theory with its key concept: strain through innovation and the goals-means gap; labelling through master status and the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Step 3: Compare them directly
Show the contrast: strain is structural and explains the push to offend, while labelling is interactionist and explains the amplification of deviance after a reaction. Note that they disagree on whether crime statistics reflect real offending.
Step 4: Evaluate and judge
Weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each, then conclude that the two are complementary lenses rather than rivals, supporting the judgement with a reason.
Many students use the words interchangeably. All crime is deviant, but not all deviance is criminal: tattoos, talking to yourself or queue jumping break norms without breaking laws. Define both terms separately and note that the line between them shifts with time and culture.
Deviance ties the course together: it draws on socialisation, social control, stratification and the perspectives, and it shows how definitions of normal behaviour change as society itself changes.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice4 marksUsing one named theory, explain why official crime statistics may not be an accurate measure of the true level of crime.Show worked answer →
A 4 mark short-answer response needs one named theory and a clear reason linked to it.
Named theory. Labelling theory (Howard Becker) is the clearest choice.
The reason. Official statistics record only crime that is reported by the public and acted on by police, so they measure who gets caught and labelled rather than who offends. The dark figure of unreported crime, the over-policing of some groups, and white-collar crime that rarely reaches court all distort the count.
Markers reward a correctly named theory plus a specific reason tied to it, such as the dark figure or selective labelling. A common loss of marks is naming a theory but then giving a reason that does not connect to it.
Practice16 marksCompare and evaluate two sociological theories of deviance and crime as explanations of why people break society's rules.Show worked answer →
A 16 mark extended response needs balanced exposition of two named theories, a structured comparison and a genuine evaluation rather than description.
Theory one: Merton's strain theory. Society sets universal success goals (wealth) but distributes legitimate means (good jobs) unequally. The resulting strain pushes some people toward deviant adaptations, most importantly innovation, achieving the goals by illegitimate means such as theft. Strain neatly links crime to inequality.
Theory two: labelling theory. Howard Becker argued deviance is not a quality of the act but of the reaction to it: an act is deviant only once it is successfully labelled. The labelled person may take on a deviant master status, experience a self-fulfilling prophecy and be pushed into a deviant career.
Comparison. Strain is a structural theory that explains the motive to offend through blocked opportunity; labelling is an interactionist theory that explains how the deviant identity is created and amplified by social reaction. Strain assumes the statistics roughly reflect real offending; labelling argues the statistics are socially produced.
Evaluation. Strain explains utilitarian, financial crime well but struggles with non-utilitarian deviance such as vandalism. Labelling explains the production of statistics and secondary deviance but says little about why people offend in the first place. A strong answer concludes that the two are complementary: strain explains the push to offend, labelling explains what happens after. Markers reward the named theorists, the structured comparison and a supported judgement.