Social Conflict Theory: Why People Turn To Crime

Crime is something that is apart of every society. It is something that can never be gotten rid of, but it certainly can be controlled. Social theory is something else that is complexed in itself, but most theories apply to everyday life. The purpose of this essay is to take two different theories, social conflict theory and self fulfilling prophercy and apply it crime in our society. Data will be presented to answer the questions, Why people turn to crime? How does class fit in with crime? Is there anything further methods we use to stop crime?

Conflict is to be expected in a society. Social conflict theory is a theory suggests that society is always in some sort of conflict due to everyone battling over limited resources. Groups within

Crime is often associated with the poor and the underprivileged, but crimes that are committed by the wealthy and powerful often go ignored or under punished. This causes a major problem is societies. The FBI reported that victims of burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft lost a total of $15.3 billion dollars in 2009 (FB1 2010). In comparison, when former advisor and financier Bernie Madoff was arrested in 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reported that the estimated losses of his financial Ponzi scheme fraud were close to $50 billion (SEC 2009). This imbalance stretches all the way through United States Judicial System. In the 1980s, the use of crack cocaine (cocaine in its purest form) quickly became an epidemic that swept the country’s poorest urban communities. Its pricier counterpart, cocaine, was associated with upscale users and was a drug of choice for the wealthy. The legal implications of being caught by authorities with crack versus cocaine were starkly different. In 1986, federal law mandated that being caught in possession of 50 grams of crack was punishable by a ten-year prison sentence. An equivalent prison sentence for cocaine possession, however, required possession of 5,000 grams. In other words, the sentencing disparity was 1 to 100 (New York Times Editorial Staff 2011). This inequality in the severity of punishment for crack versus cocaine paralleled the unequal social class of

“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985). This states that positive attitudes will result in positive actions and negative attitudes will have negative actions. This is no more than an assumption and does not take away from the biases and stereotyping that occurs in these situations and cannot explain the personal experiences of these groups of people. Perception skills such as holding back judgement and looking for different causes help to reverse self-fulfilling prophecy because a a lot of information needs to be obtained before we make a judgement, and we should look for different reasons for people's