What calling crime a social construct means
Definition
Social construct
An idea or category that has meaning only because a society agrees on it, rather than being a fixed fact of nature. What counts as a social construct can change across time and place.
- No act is criminal in itself, because nothing about taking a bike marks it out in nature the way a broken bone shows on an X-ray.
- An act becomes a crime when the society it happens in passes a law that says so.
- So the category is built by people, and that is what social construct means.
- Change the society or the century and the same act can move in or out of the category.
Key Idea
- An act counts as criminal because the society it happens in has passed a law saying so, which makes the category one that people build.
- Breaking an unwritten norm makes behaviour deviant, and it turns criminal only once Parliament puts that expectation into law.
- Because the boundary is set socially it moves between countries and across decades, as smoking inside a pub in England did in 2007.
Norms and deviance
Definition
Deviation from social norms
Behaviour that breaks the unwritten rules a society expects people to follow, so it is seen as unacceptable or abnormal.
- Norms are the shared expectations about how you behave in a given situation, such as facing the doors on a busy Tube carriage.
- Most norms are never written anywhere, and you only notice them when somebody breaks one.
- Behaviour that breaks a norm is called deviant, meaning the group judges it abnormal or unacceptable.
- Norms are situational, so shouting is normal on a football terrace and deviant in a library.
- When enough people treat a form of deviance as serious harm, Parliament passes a law and the act becomes a crime.
Example
- Pushing to the front of a queue at a bus stop breaks a strong British norm.
- Nobody is arrested for it, because the norm has never been turned into a law.
- Taking the wallet of the person you pushed past crosses into theft, which the law does cover.
How deviance and crime differ
- Some behaviour is deviant without being criminal, such as talking loudly on your phone in a quiet carriage.
- Some behaviour is criminal without most people judging it deviant, such as driving at 35 mph in a 30 zone.
- Some behaviour is both, such as burglary, which breaks the law and offends the norm at the same time.
- So criminal is a legal label, and only Parliament and the courts decide what carries it.
Common Mistake
- Calling crime a social construct does not mean that crime is not real or that it harms nobody.
- The harm is real, and it is the boundary of the category that is decided socially.
- Deviant and criminal are not interchangeable words, since one describes breaking a norm and the other breaking a law.
The role of culture
Definition
Cultural relativism
The idea that behaviour and beliefs can only be judged fairly within the culture they belong to, so what counts as unacceptable or abnormal may differ from one culture to another.
- Cultures differ in the norms they hold, so they differ in the behaviour they criminalise.
- Drinking alcohol is legal for adults across the UK and a criminal offence in Saudi Arabia.
- Chewing gum can be sold and eaten freely here, while importing it into Singapore is restricted by law.
- Culture shapes what counts as anti-social too, since a level of street noise that draws complaints in a Cardiff suburb may pass unremarked elsewhere.
- Within one country, subcultures also disagree, so an act a friendship group treats as ordinary may still be an offence.
- Whoever holds power has the largest say in which norms become law, so the law tends to reflect the outlook of the powerful.
Note
- Cultural relativism is the label for judging behaviour against the norms of its own culture.
- It gives you a ready criticism of any study carried out in a single country.
- Heaven (1996) sampled only Australian Catholic school pupils, so its picture of delinquency is culture bound.
How the criminal category changes over time
- Sex between men was a criminal offence in England and Wales until the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised it for men over 21 in private.
- Smoking inside a pub was ordinary behaviour until the ban on smoking in enclosed public places took effect in England in 2007.
- Taking a photograph up somebody's clothing without consent became a specific offence under the Voyeurism (Offences) Act 2019.
- Official crime figures only count what the law currently defines as crime, so a change in the law shifts the figures without anybody's behaviour changing.
Example
- Somebody smoking at the bar in 2006 was breaking no law at all.
- The same person doing the same thing in 2008 was committing an offence.
Turning this into marks
- When two ways crime is socially constructed are asked for, make them genuinely separate, such as one difference between countries and one change over time, rather than one point rephrased.
- Name the specific law or country, such as the Sexual Offences Act 1967 or the smoking ban of 2007, because saying that laws differ does not secure the knowledge mark.
- Keep deviant for breaking a norm and criminal for breaking a law, because a mark can turn on which of the two words you use.
- The mark most often lost is writing that crime is not real, when the point is that the harm is real and only the boundary of the category is set socially.
Self review
- What does it mean to call crime a social construct?
- Define a social norm and explain what deviance is.
- Give one example of behaviour that is deviant but not criminal.
- Name one act that has moved into or out of the criminal category in the UK, and when.
- How does cultural relativism work as a criticism of a study?
