There are many different sociological theories of crime and deviance, none of which provide a
complete explanation of crime in society, let alone of all deviant behaviour.
Why, then, has been difficult to reach consensus in sociology on how to explain crime and deviance?
There are at least five main reasons for this.
First, there are differences in the aims of the theories or in what they seek to explain.
These, in turn, are related to the different research questions researchers are asking or the different hypotheses they are trying to test.
Some theories, for example, are concerned with explaining the causes of crime or deviance while others are concerned with explaining how
certain activities come to be defined as crime or deviance in the first place.
Second, different theories are focussed on different aspects of crime and deviance.
For example, some theories focus on explaining the motivations for crime or deviance while
others focus on social responses to crime, such as how offenders are dealt with in the criminal justice system.
Third, different studies focus on different units of analysis.
These can range from the individual or community level up to the level of the whole society or even
how globalisation affects patterns of crime or deviance.
Theories which are developed to explain phenomena at these different levels will also
consequently vary in terms of their scope and level of abstraction.
Fourth, where different theories come into conflict with each other in explaining crime or
deviance, there are not always decisive test situations which can decide which theory is right.
Experiments are often used in the natural sciences to test theories, to isolate cause and
effect mechanisms, and to understand how things work.
Experiments, however, have been used much less in sociology to establish relationships of cause and effect.
This is for a number of reasons including cost, impracticality and ethical issues.
Sociologists, for example, could not ethically expose different groups of people to affluent or
poor social conditions just to see how this affected their propensity to crime.
Participants in such a study, other people affected by any crimes committed, and
sociologists themselves, with knowledge of any crimes committed, would all be placed in danger.
Sometimes, however, experiments are possible to resolve disputed theoretical issues.
When television was introduced for the first time to the South Atlantic island of St Helena in the
1990s, it gave researchers a unique opportunity to conduct a natural experiment.
They could study children’s behaviour before and after the introduction of television.
In particular, they could study whether children’s behaviour changed after watching violence on television.
The researchers noted that television is often accused of inciting anti-social behaviour, such as destructiveness, teasing and fighting.
However, the researchers found this view was not borne out by their study.
They found ‘no significant increases’ in anti-social behaviour among the children after television was introduced to the island.
Finally, theories will differ because of the background assumptions they are based on.
For example, some theories are based on assumptions about society being a consensual
order which makes fairly uniform judgements about crime and deviance.
However, other theories are based on assumptions about society being pluralistic and culturally diverse.
In this case, judgements about right and wrong, crime and deviance, will not always line up
between different groups, and there will be important differences between them on these issues.
These kinds of differences can all be very productive for sociologists in thinking through how certain kinds of activities come to be
criminalised or decriminalised, or how judgements about deviance or normality come to be made.