Criminological Perspectives

Criminologists are important in our society. They study crimes and provide insights into criminal behaviors. Criminologists view crime through one of three perspectives. The perspectives or views are the consensus view, conflict view, and interactionist view. Each of these views is based on the research from a number of great sociologists and help us understand human behavior in regards to crime.

The first perspective is the consensus view. This view is based on the theory that there is a consensus among the mainstream of society regarding criminal behaviors. They share a level of morality and common beliefs on appropriate behaviors. Those standards or beliefs are formed into laws and put into place by the legal branch of government.

This view shows society as a group of diverse people or groups. Society might be made up of politicians, students, business owners, workers, and soccer moms. Each group will have their own needs or agenda and are in conflict with each other over their needs or wants. They will use their political power and manipulate the law to meet their own needs or wants. Criminologist assert this is evident in our legal system. If you look at the penalties for burglary, robbery and larceny and how likely they are to be prosecuted compared to white collar crimes such as sharing copyrighted music or purchasing medication from Mexico and bringing it across the border, you can see the conflict (Baker, 1). The poor are going to prison and the wealthy may not even be prosecuted for their crimes (Siegel, 13). The conflict view points out the political undertones that can be seen in how laws are written and how they are enforced. Professor Edwin Sutherland wrote a book titled “White Collar crime” in which he talks about the injustices seen related to the social position to those who have committed the crime (Baker, 2). Many of those jailed live in poverty (Baker, 3). According to the conflict perspective, there is a divide among the needs and wants of many of the groups in our

In this perspective, people act according to their own interpretations of their life. People will view things through their own frame of reference and make their determinations through that understanding. Everyone’s reality is their own experience and they make their judgements accordingly. This makes everything more subjective. It might be the way they perceived things. Siegel gives the example “Alcohol is legal and marijuana is not.” (Siegel, 14). Because marijuana is not legal it must be worse than alcohol. However, the moral standard is drug use is bad, but because alcohol is sold legally some don’t see it as a drug. Charles Horton Cooley developed the concept of the looking glass self (Vogt Isaksen, 2). It is when a person’s self develops from their interactions with others and they let how other perceive them define how they are in real life (Vogt Isaksen, 2). Their interactions mold them into who they are. A great example of this is with gang members. When a gang member joins a gang they are taught new values and laws such as the values of the gang being their family and that they do whatever it takes to look after family. This new value takes precedence over all other values that society has taught them before. We see it happen with teens who want to fit in with friends, so they drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, or do drugs illegally. Soon that behavior seems normal to the teen. Since reality is