Factors Affecting Criminal Behaviour

Why Do Rates of Crime Vary Across Social Groups?

Sociology asks not just what crime is, but who commits it, and why certain social groups appear in crime statistics more than others. Official figures and self-report studies consistently show that rates of offending are not evenly spread across society. They vary by social class, gender, ethnicity and age. Sociological perspectives disagree sharply about what drives these patterns and what they actually mean.

Social Class and Crime

Police-recorded crime shows working-class individuals overrepresented in offending data, particularly for street crime, theft and burglary. Self-report studies, though, find offending spread far more evenly across the classes. However, sociological perspectives explain this in very different ways.

From a functionalist standpoint, Robert Merton’s strain theory argues that crime results from a mismatch between the shared cultural goal of material success and the unequal availability of legitimate means to achieve it. Those with fewer educational qualifications and employment prospects are more likely to turn to “innovation” — using illegal means to achieve socially approved goals. This places working-class individuals at higher risk, but Merton does not treat their criminality as inevitable or biologically determined.

Albert Cohen, writing in Delinquent Boys (1955), developed a subculture theory that extends Merton’s account. Cohen argued that working-class boys share the same success goals as the rest of society, but that educational failure and poor employment prospects leave them unable to achieve those goals through legitimate routes. The resulting status frustration leads them to reject mainstream values and create an alternative status hierarchy within a delinquent subculture. Within that subculture, status is gained through activities such as theft, vandalism and truancy rather than through school or work. A successful thief earns prestige from peers in a way that the school system denies him.

Critics of Cohen point out that not all working-class young people form delinquent subcultures, and that his theory assumes working-class youths internalise mainstream goals in the first place. Some sociologists argue instead that working-class young men may actively reject those goals rather than feel frustrated by failing to achieve them.

Marxist perspectives challenge the focus on working-class crime altogether. They argue that the law is shaped in the interests of the bourgeoisie, meaning that white-collar crime (fraud, tax evasion, corporate harm) committed by more powerful groups attracts less police attention and lighter sentencing. The official statistics therefore exaggerate working-class criminality not because working-class people commit more harm, but because their crimes are more visible and more likely to be prosecuted.

Gender and Crime

Men commit the large majority of recorded crimes in England and Wales. Official figures consistently show that male offenders account for roughly three-quarters of all prosecutions. Sociologists offer several explanations for this gender gap.

Functionalist accounts emphasise gender socialisation: boys are socialised to be tough, assertive and risk-taking, traits that make criminality more likely. Girls are socialised towards conformity, care and domestic roles, making deviance less likely. This explanation treats gender roles as functional for social order.

Frances Heidensohn, writing in Women and Crime (1985) from a feminist perspective, offers a more structural account using control theory. Heidensohn argues that women commit fewer crimes because patriarchal society controls them far more effectively than it controls men. In the home, women are expected to spend their time on housework and childcare; those who challenge these expectations risk male violence as an assertion of patriarchal authority. In public, women are controlled by the threat of sexual violence and the fear that “inappropriate” behaviour will damage their reputation. At work, women face male-dominated hierarchies and sexual harassment. This web of patriarchal control restricts women’s opportunities for deviance far more than equivalent controls restrict men.

Pat Carlen, in Women, Crime and Poverty (1988), studied 39 working-class women who had been convicted of criminal offences, using in-depth unstructured interviews. Carlen also draws on control theory but foregrounds class alongside gender. She argues that women are controlled through two kinds of deal. The class deal promises working-class women consumer goods and a respectable lifestyle in exchange for their labour. The gender deal offers psychological and material rewards through a male breadwinner in exchange for love and domestic labour. When either or both deals break down — through unemployment, poverty or abusive relationships — crime becomes a rational choice because the usual incentives for conformity are absent. Carlen’s work has been critiqued for its small sample size, but it is important because it connects women’s criminality to structural inequality rather than individual pathology.

Ethnicity and Crime

Official statistics show that Black individuals are overrepresented in stop-and-search figures and in prison populations relative to their share of the general population. Sociologists treat this as a pattern requiring critical analysis, not as evidence of inherently higher criminality.

From an interactionist standpoint, the overrepresentation reflects policing practices rather than offending behaviour. Becker’s labelling theory suggests that the police apply stereotyped labels to young Black men, making them more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested and charged. The label “criminal” then becomes a master status that shapes how the individual is treated by courts and employers, increasing the risk of further offending through a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A Marxist perspective connects racial inequality in the criminal justice system to wider structural inequalities. Ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented among those in poverty and those in low-paid, insecure employment. If crime is partly driven by material deprivation, then economic marginalisation explains some of the overrepresentation. Additionally, Marxists point to institutional racism in policing and the courts as reproducing racial inequality through the criminal justice system itself.

Age and Crime

Crime data consistently shows that offending peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, with the highest rates among those aged 15 to 24. Sociological explanations draw on both structural and interactionist factors. From a functionalist perspective, young people may have less stake in conformity — they are less likely to own property, hold stable employment or have family responsibilities that make law-abiding behaviour rewarding. Cohen’s delinquent subculture theory is particularly relevant here, as it focuses specifically on young working-class men. From an interactionist standpoint, young people are more likely to be subject to police surveillance and labelling, which inflates their recorded crime rates beyond their actual offending.