In this chapter, we are looking at sociological theories of crime. The opening story in the Chapter Overview, about how the oil spill in Alaska changed the dynamics of the surrounding community, is an example of how different aspects in society can drive or influence crime. Let’s start here with some of the original theories from the 1890s.

4.2.1 Anomie

Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist who officially established the field of sociology in the 1890s, believed that we have to look at what makes up a society to understand its social issues. Durkheim claimed that as society develops and grows, unstable relationships evolve between individuals and the community. The larger and more sophisticated the society becomes, the greater difficulties the society has in socializing its members or teaching them how to fit into the society as a whole.

Durkheim saw that there could be some causes of crime within a society, and it all came down to the cohesiveness of the group. He believed that individualism (focusing on oneself instead of the group wellbeing) could be a cause of deviance, or going against the norms of that society.

In today’s society, Durkheim would look at the gap between the rich and the poor and identify that as deviant individualism in the form of greed, or a deviant adaptation to the pursuit of “success.” When such deviances happen and the social equilibrium is disturbed (someone rocks the boat), people are set adrift not having comfort or an understandable place in society. The only way to fix this problem and restore balance or equilibrium is to create a new or updated social equilibrium by working these deviant adaptations into the “new normal” of the society. Basically, the social norm is updated by accounting for individualism within the group.

Think about the last time you heard a news story about someone or a group singled out as being “problematic” in society. Were their issues completely of their own doing? Or were their issues part of a change in society’s structure that caused an imbalance which needed to be addressed through policy?

For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, manufacturing jobs started to leave the United States. This disturbed the equilibrium by removing a solid wage-earning unskilled profession and replacing it with absolutely nothing. Individuals who did not have the education or training for other types of employment were left to their own devices and needed to discover how to earn a wage in a society where their skill was no longer needed. What do you think was the overall result of this disruption in the equilibrium? How would you react if your job was taken away and what you could do no longer mattered in this country?

Social disturbances like this are problematic because (besides hurting people who lose their job, sense of purpose, and ability to take care of their family) it creates a social condition where things are unstable, unfair, and confusing. Durkheim called this social condition anomie, which is the relative absence or confusion of norms and rules in society. He explained that disturbing the norm in this manner was at the core of explaining deviance. In other words, when there is a breakdown in the social norms, society devolves into anomie. What follows is a person feeling adrift with little connection to society, making them no longer care about the group and lifting any constraints they may have had on their behavior as a result. We see this in times of economic decline; inevitably, crime rates increase. The opposite is true when the society is financially prosperous; crime rates decrease.

Anomie provides valuable insight into the changes of crime rates within society. It also can direct ways in which policy can have a direct effect on crime in society. When significant social, economic, or political changes occur, this change can have a direct impact on the crime rate—whether good or bad. Durkheim influenced a number of theorists such as Robert Merton (discussed later in this chapter) who would later study crime and take this theory of anomie deeper into the explanation of crime in society.

4.2.2 Theory of Imitation

Gabriel Tarde was another French sociologist and criminologist working at the same time as Durkheim. These two frequently and publicly disagreed. Tarde focused predominantly on criminology over sociology and tried to figure out how people became criminally involved. In his book, Le Lois de l’imtation (The Laws of Imitation) published in 1890, he made an argument that people do what they know. Tarde was the first theorist to associate crime with learning in what he called the laws of imitation.

According to Tarde’s theory of imitation, he believed that crime is the result of imitation or modeling the behaviors of others. When a person learns new responses by observing others, this is called modeling. He did not view people who committed crimes as biologically or psychologically different from noncriminals; instead, he saw criminals as just modeling the deviant behaviors they saw around them. He felt this was especially true for fathers and their sons (like father, like son). His theory went against the commonly held belief that criminals were simply bad people. If crime, as Tarde argued, is learned by observing and imitating the criminal behavior of those around the individual, then crime could also be unlearned. Tarde believed that this happened more likely in dense, urban areas where individuals had exposure to more people as models, ripe for imitation.

According to Tarde, imitation is the source of all progress that occurs, both good and bad. By recognizing the power of imitation, people could try to control the outcome. He believed that more positive connections and better communication could lead to greater production of good outcomes. An important factor in his “laws of imitation” is that individuals need to be in close contact. People are influenced by those with whom they have a relationship or at least those whom they witness regularly. Think about who you were in close contact with growing up. Your parents? Other family members? Neighbors? The answer to this question could determine the course of your life. According to Tarde, a neighbor who was a medical doctor and a neighbor who was a petty thief both could have a great influence on the behaviors of a child who is observing. For this reason, Tarde named close contact as the first of three “laws” of his “laws of imitation.”

The second law is related to the imitation of superiors by inferiors. Tarde said people are influenced by those who have power or are in positions of power. The person in the inferior position (e.g., child, employee, new kid in school) may want to see themselves as “superior” and by doing so may imitate the behaviors and attitudes they see in those who hold the power (e.g., parents, boss, cool kid in school). Another example is when politicians make certain claims, people who are in their same political party are likely to believe them and not question what they say because it comes from someone who has power.

What is the cost to the “inferior” person, though, of conforming to what the “superiors” are saying and doing? Think about the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Quite a few individuals who had no power imitated those in power who they admired and that led them to criminal acts. Their lack of power also meant they were not able to fight a criminal justice system that did not favor their social status, so many of them have had to face criminal sanctions while those they were imitating remain free.

The third and final “law of imitation,” according to Tarde, is insertion. This means that the new behaviors that were learned from imitating someone you look up to replace your old behaviors. Tarde believed people would observe someone else, want to be more like them, copy their behaviors, then adapt them to make them their own. This could mean “copycat” crimes like we see when some horrible event gets a lot of media attention. It could also mean using new technology to update the crime or even changing weapons from a knife to a gun. The behavior is customized and personalized as it replaces the person’s old behaviors.

Tarde also recognized that opposition can occur. This can happen when someone is torn between different sources for modeling or when new and old ideas collide. Opposition leads to some sort of adaptation. In other words, the person doing the imitating might combine what they observe and learn from more than one influence. In this manner, they create their own way of behaving and thinking, which was fed by more than one source.

So far, we have looked at Durkheim who believed that society was a collective unity, and at Tarde who saw society as individualistic. Now, we will look at theorists who explored the effect of different societal structures on crime.