How Useful Are Marxist Explanations of Crime and Deviance Essay Sample
Marxist accounts of offense and aberrance are based on struggle and prevarication on the foundations on their belief that there is a category battle in society between the middle class and the labor. Marxists believe that jurisprudence is portion of the superstructure that is used to socialize people as the law’s definitions of aberrance in general. reflect and serve governing category involvements. This maintains the opinion class’ power and coerces and controls the capable category. Therefore if members of society commit to these Torahs it is an facet of ‘false category consciousness’ . since these Torahs merely benefit the opinion category. Marxists argue that societal control of the population is maintained through menace and socialization. and menace is the fall-back if socialization fails. The consequence of this is a society in which the basic values steering action support the capitalist political and economic system. The definition of what is condemnable reflects the dominant societal values. Chambliss ( 1976 ) suggests that capitalist economy encourages values such as greed and philistinism which are contributing to all categories perpetrating offense. Such values promote non-economic offenses such as force and hooliganism as inequalities in wealth and power lead to defeat and ill will for some members of the on the job category who may perpetrate offense in an effort to recover power and position.
On the other manus. unfavorable judgment to this. point out that such a position is instead obscure as the entirenesss of the on the job category are non revolt or condemnable. Sing all offense as a rebellion against the capitalist system ignores single motive and the fact that many people are jurisprudence abiding and take non to interrupt the jurisprudence. Marxist accounts of offense and aberrance may besides be criticised for concentrating entirely on the societal category dimension of offense and pretermiting issues of gender and ethnicity. Snider ( 1993 ) argues that the effects of robberies and junior-grade larceny are much smaller than the losingss created by large concerns prosecuting in corporate offenses which are condemnable Acts of the Apostless committed by companies to increase their net incomes. Despite the tremendous sum of corporate offense. the punishments and the opportunities of prosecution are really little. Frank Pearce argues that the grounds for why there are so few prosecutions is ideological because the governing category want to keep the thought that offense is concentrated chiefly among the working-class and cultural minorities.
However. Left realists argue that Marxist theoreticians put excessively much accent on corporate offense at the disbursal of other signifiers of offense. Left realists province that robberies and burglaries can do greater injury to working category and cultural minority communities as it affects them straight. Law harmonizing to Marxists is enforced selectively. So certain types of offense such as larceny and assault would be pursued by the constabulary much more earnestly than ‘white collar crime’ such as fraud. Crime is regarded to be most common with the working category ; therefore there is a much greater constabulary presence amongst this population.
Sentencing is besides said to be selective as minor offenses are more likely to be punished with long prison footings than fiscal cheats which are non needfully punished with imprisonment at all. To reason. Marxist theories have moved accent further from the influences on the person and their motives and farther towards the things which consequence society and the influence that has on felons and offense. Sociologists now explore the wider societal. economic and political factors which shape society. On the other manus. Marxist accounts of offense and aberrance concentrate excessively much on the condemnable act itself. whilst disregarding the experience of the victims and any possible solutions to offense there may be.
