How I Started My Life in Crime
Sheila Balkan’s How I Started My Life in Crime is a detailed account of how environment and upbringing has a tangible influence on limitations, restrictions and opportunities. The short essay is primarily premised around of her formative years, career path and the paramount of conditioning on the choices that individuals execute. Moreover, the ability to enable social mobility for a betterment of life is directly correlated with ascribed statuses, early personal development conditions and opportunities granted. To understand these sociological forces that formulate criminology and deviance, this essay will implement various theories of multiple famous philosophers and sociologists including, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim.
The functionalist perspective could be utilized to explain the phenomena of how deviance is a social institution that supports the social needs of society. The functionalist perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of society by focusing on how each part influences and is influenced by other parts. Functionalism evolved from the writings of Herbert Spencer who argued that there were many similarities between society and the human body; he suggested that similar to how the body functions, various aspects of societies must work together to sustain social stability. Thus, the social need of the society society’s laws that protect society from violence, while simultaneously punishing criminal behavior. Therefore, if there was no crime in a society, then there would be no mandate at regulation of crime, such as policing, and far less opportunity for what is considered less favorable career paths such as prostitution or drug dealing. Balkan, as a sociologist, argues that individuals are conditioned and predisposed to fulfill a certain lifestyle that is predetermined at birth.
For example, Brenda was deemed a criminal and been implicated in numerous bank robberies, these crimes were caught on tape and more so, Brenda admitted she committed the crime. However, Balkan maintains the stance that “no matter what you may think of the crimes, people are more than the crimes they commit” (178), and saw that Brenda was “susceptible to being victimized.” (179) While she committed the armed robbery she, herself, was being forced at gunpoint by a significant other to carry out the robberies, and would carry out the robberies in fear of the alternative of being beat and raped if she failed to do so. Moreover, as a child Brenda lost both of her parents when her father shot her mother and then killed himself. This predisposition offered Brenda a lifelong environment of fear, she was “conditioned to accept violence and felt hopeless to confront it” (179). A plausible explanation is that Brenda underwent the violentization process— cycling through the brutalization, belligerency, violent performance and the virulency stage, where she ultimately developed an identity of crime. Ultimately this led her to the conclusion that no one would ever be able to protect her and the deviant lifestyle met her need of social stability.
Another case that can be analyzed using a sociological theory is the case of Derrick, who was arrested for drug dealing. Balkan found Derrick to be a family man and this played a pivotal role in the choices he made that ultimately led him to living a life of deviance. Role theory posits that human behavior is guided by expectations held both by the individual and by other people. More so, because Derrick was a father he felt the innate need to provide for his family; when his job wasn’t completely covering the bills, he turned to drug dealing. This is exemplary of the two roles that Derrick filled, the family man— dedicated to cooking meals, helping his children academically and personally, and taking care of the house— and criminal, selling drugs to pay off the bills. Role theory provides expectations that correspond to different roles individuals feel the necessity to act upon in daily life. This dictates that roles, because of social structure and social interactions, guide the behavior of the individual. Therefore, illustrating how Derrick’s criminal activity was solely a “desperate response to his family situation” (180).
Conflict theory, a theory by Karl Marx, argues that society is best understood as a competition rather than a complex system striving for social equilibrium. That mandates that society is made up of individuals competing for limited resources and therefore only select individuals will be success in fulfilling their goals. Broader social structures and organizations, such as criminal justice, government and jail, reflect the competition for resources in their inherent inequalities; some people and organizations have more resources and use those resources to achieve higher positions of power. The following are examples of three primary assumptions of modern conflict theory. First, competition rather than consensus is characteristic at the core center of all social relationships. This is seen during Balkan’s childhood where she would “live from month to month,” only moving so that her father could attempt to achieve “a greater wealth” (171). Second, inequalities in power and reward are built into all social structures. Individuals and groups that benefit from any particular structure strive to see it maintained, such as the “white-collar criminals,” (177) because of their lenient treatment in regards to the criminal justice system. Lastly, criminology and the concept of crime is evolving to envelop “women, mental illness, and sexuality” (176).
Not everyone in society is provided the equal opportunity to achieve their goals. There are many individuals who yearn and have adopted the goal of society, however, many lack means to attain them, leading them to pursue illegal means to reach the goal. Anomie theory, coined by Emile Durkheim, suggests that competition for success creates conflict and crime. More so, it’s often social conditions and not purely personality that account for crime. This dictates who is committing crimes, and this particular strain theory explains why a majority of crimes are lower-class crime as suggested by Balkan when she came to the conclusion that “Race, more than anything, seemed to define how severely the courts would treat a defendant” (176). We have an unequal society and this leads to deviance. Some segments of society don’t have access to the means that will enable them to achieve their goals. In order to deal with the anomie-strain-other avenues must be pursued by these individuals.
In conclusion, while How I Started My Life in Crime is about how there is more to crime than individuals just being “plain bad” (181), it also is suggestive that human behavior, more specifically deviance, can be caused by social structures, interactions, and environment that can be best analyzed through various sociological theories. By viewing it through various sociological lenses, it’s seen that not only is it about the criminal justice system, but also delves into the concepts of self-perception, social institutions, and conditioning.