A Vicious Cycle: Video Analysis

Conor Hill

Professor Kenneth Cruz

CCJ 250 Criminology

10 October 2015

Paper #1

“A Vicious Cycle” is a short clip from a television show that was uploaded onto YouTube on January 8, 2014. The segment watched is the first of three that begins by profiling many families in the city of St. Louis who lost loved ones to homicide. The video connects to the audience pathos by proving that by losing a family member, the “wounds are deep” and “they may never heal”. These wounds of course are those on the families and on the community around them. These violent crimes that take place are destroying the lives of many people in the community.

The video tells us that St. Louis is one of the most dangerous cities in the world due to its crime rate, particularly

Merton focuses on “discovering how some social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain people in the society to engage in ‘nonconformist conduct’” (Merton, 1938: 672). Merton states that there are two important elements of social and cultural structure: culture goals and institutional norms. He states that culturally defined goals, purposes, and interests are the reason why people make poor decisions in situations. The goals of the people are strictly based off of the strive for respect and their emotions in situations. “The social structure defines, regulates, and controls the acceptable modes of achieving these goals” (Merton, 1938: 673). Merton is telling us that based on social structure, people will do whatever it takes to achieve a goal. Tying back to the video, gangs in poorly equipped areas will use the deprived social structure to achieve their goal of respect on the streets. They will do whatever it takes to achieve their goal, constituting murder. According to Merton, the lack of the usual social or ethical standards in society is caused by its weakness: the contributing factors to violent crimes brought up in the clip. Also, Merton’s theory of social structure and anomie looks to clarify deviance. In this theory, circumstances in the social structure cause deviant conduct. An inequality of goals and their means of achievement is what cause deviant behavior. People do not have an equal chance to attain the goals. The low class does not have the same opportunities as the upper class. Anomie is when there is excessive emphasis on the goals of society, but no ways to accomplish them. In the video, there is an importance of financial stability but not everyone can be economically stable. This is the reason why people start to be deviant, including the contributing factors of violent