How Cultural Criminology Contributes to Our Understanding of Crime and Deviance

How Cultural Criminology Contributes to Our Understanding of Crime and Deviance
Name
Course
Professor’s Name
Institution
Due Date
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 b...