How Cultural Criminology Contributes to Our Understanding of Crime and Deviance

How Cultural Criminology Contributes to Our Understanding of Crime and Deviance
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How does ‘cultural criminology’ contribute to our understandings of crime and deviance?
Cultural criminology focuses on situational, subcultural, and mediated constructions of meaning around issues of crime and crime control (Ferrell, 2013). Cultural criminology places criminality and its control squarely in the context of culture. Thus, understanding what constitutes to be a crime, then culture must be considered because it is the basis of forming the legal framework. The legal framework is the determinant of what is termed as crime and what isn’t. The cultural lens is one of the elements which can define whether an action is wrong or right. Cultural lens the standpoint upon which an individual perceives and understands other diverse culturesCITATION Tra \l 1033 (Williams, 2013). Thus, an action is not necessarily a crime in every community because of cultural diversity. For each crime, using cultural criminology theory, it can be engineered to establish its root causes pertinent to the culture. Understanding cultural criminology theory helps criminologists contextualize societal psychology and the likely triggers of deviance within it. When criminologists understand the culture, he/she can map out the possible patterns of crime and intervene before the crime is perpetrated. Understanding the culture can help fashion strategic tools to combat crime. Cultural criminology narrows to understand the patterns, trends and identifiable characteristics of culture that lead to deviance and crime.
Cultural criminology helps predict the criminal behavior of a person and or a group by analyzing the culture. Though the definition of culture is complex and thus it is difficult to capture its scope in determining its influence on crime accurately, it has few hallmarks that can be used for analysis. Some of them include music, fashion, beliefs, etc. By analyzing these beliefs, a criminologist can predict the criminal patterns of the community i.e., if there is the continued production of gangster music which featured violent scenes and it has a wide audience among the youth. It is likely that the area will be marred by violence. Most youth would start reflecting the music in their dressing, social interactions, hobbies, habits, etc. Giovacchini (1999) talks of how gangster music could be used to influence violence. For example, he makes use of the song “Fuck The Police” a song that was produced in 1988 by a rap group called N.W.A. In this song, the group was addressing racial-instigated violence from the police. However, the approach was wrong because the song appeared to paint a bad picture of all pollice officers and thus set a precedence for the youth as well as the rap world. The message was clear and widely received throughout America. In an article that handles this specific song, Hunte (2015) notes that while some police officers understood the motivation behind the song, others were worried and believed that this could influence violence. By analyzing such a song, a criminologist can, therefore, predict there could be unrests and violence among the youth because they are reflecting the musical industry. A classic case of how the cultural elements interacted with the crime is the late 1960s and early 1970s in America. There was widespread hippie culture that took root in America during the time. The music, clothing fashion and hairstyles were the centers of the cultural revolution of the time that was reflected in actions of deviance all over the country. People started to listen to psychedelic music, embraced the sexual revolution, and many used drugs such as marijuana, etc. CITATION Rus15 \l 1033 (Lang, 2015).
Cultural criminology shows the connection between culture and crime. To understand deviance and crime, you must understand the culture. The two entities are interrelated and influence each other. Culture determines what can be considered a crime because different cultures treat different actions differently and accord them different punishments CITATION Tun04 \l 1033 (Tunick, 2004). Though there are universalities of cultural norms and crime such as rape and murder as crime across all cultures, some other elements might be subjective in the culture. For example, in the Middle East, some civil liberties are limited to women. These are issues and crimes pertinent to the Middle Eastern communities and are derived from the culture of the community. Thus, understanding cultural criminology shows the connection between culture and crime. The framework which determines the crime is legal framework pertinent to the community CITATION Jef95 \l 1033 (Ferrell, Culture,Crime, and Cultural Criminology, 1995). Thus, when criminologists study cultural criminology, the gain understanding of the people’s definition of what is ‘wrong’ and ‘right.’ By studying the legal framework of the written and unwritten rules, a criminologist can show the associative link between culture and crime. If an action is criminal in a certain community, a criminologist can reverse engineer it to determine it to find what cultural element makes a particular action a crime. For example, if a woman in the middle east gets pregnant before marriage which is considered a crime, a criminologist can reflect on the institutionalized discrimination of women in the area that suppresses their voices and freedom.
Trough cultural criminology, criminologists, can analyze and understand how environmental and economic factors lead to crime. According to CITATION Mat14 \l 1033 (Matthews, 2014), Such comparative analysis does not, of course, allow specific predictions of the type that claims that a riot will take place at a particular time and place, but it does allow the identification of propensities and the spelling out of conditions that make riots more probable.’ Thus, through understanding the relationship between these factors and crime, a criminologist can predict possible patterns of crime that may come up. For example, in slums where the community is characterized by low income, a criminologist expects to find organized criminal gangs something which is mentioned by Graif et al. (2014). In this study, the researchers note that “structural conditions like neighborhood poverty contributed to delinquency and crime above and beyond individual disposition.” This is because some of the people in the area could not cope with the economic hardship and resorted to life in crime to get by. These criminals do crime to earn a living. In a rich neighborhood, the criminals in such places do not do their crimes to earn a living. Most suffer from mental illnesses and could potentially be abusing drugs. The environment is also an important factor that influences culture and criminology. Crime is a product of culture and culture is a product of the environment. For example, a slum environment necessitates scrambling for meager resources for survival. Children who grow in this environment are more likely to become criminals CITATION Ame14 \l 1033 (Amendah, Buigut, & Mohamed, 2014). Life of scrambling over very meager resources made them start making difficult choices where some prompted them to try criminal life eventually. In an unforgiving environment, the individuals are forced to make hard choices that could lead them to crime. Thus, since environmental and economic factors partly in...