Outline and assess Functionalist explanations of crime and deviance.
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Outline and assess Functionalist explanations of crime and deviance. This question includes assessment of your understanding of the connections between crime and deviance and sociological theory. Functionalist explanations of deviance begin with society as a whole looking for the origins of deviance in the nature of society, not the biological or psychological make up of an individual. Functionalists favour quantative methods to look at society, using statistics to see society as a whole, rather than looking at the individual's effect on society. The majority of Functionalist's ideas on crime derive from the work of Durkheim. Durkheim believes that crime in inevitable because not every member of society shares the same values and norms; every society has crime, particularly the most advanced industrial societies. Crime is seen as not only inevitable, but functional to society because it allows for change, which is vital for society to function. Durkheim argues that crime brings society...



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