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Sociology

Sociology of Deviance Essay
To what extent do you agree that the Sociology of Deviance and Control has little or no relevance for contemporary social work?
Illustrate your discussion with reference to age and crime.
With the rise in mass media, the reporting of crime and deviance has become commonplace. We are now faced with images of criminal activity, whether that be large scale operations such as terrorism or drug trafficking or small scale like youth crime and delinquency, everyday of our lives and the trend in this seems to be on the rise.
The sense of the immediacy of crime and deviance through the intervention of the media has made it an important political issue. The Blair government’s dictum of being “Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime” has become a cliché of the contemporary political scene but one that seems to have found favor with public opinion. A recent MORI poll, for instance, concerning the public’s attitudes towards the area of crime and delinquency reveals that almost 45 per cent of those poled thought that their concern of crime had “Increased a lot” over the last few years and that 46 per cent had lost confidence in the police and the social services ability to deal with its victims.
With this in mind, this paper attempts to place the theories of deviance and control within the context of modern theories concerning social work and social work policy. Firstly, I would like to outline in some depth the various differing theories of crime and deviance, starting with the historical psychobiological model (leading into more recent notions of genetic and criminal profiling), then I will move on to look at the more sociologically based theories of Emile Durkheim and Robert K. Merton. I will, after this consider the theories of the Chicago school before concluding this section with an assessment of Howard Becker and labeling theory.
With this base firmly established I will move on from there to look specifically at the area of crime...