Page 198 - Essencials of Sociology

the Functionalist Perspective 171

Illegitimate Opportunity Structures: illegitimate opportunity struc-
Social Class and Crime ture opportunities for crimes that
are woven into the texture of life
Over and over in this text, you have seen the impact of social class on people’s lives—and
you will continue to do so in coming chapters. Let’s look at how the social classes pro- white-collar crime Edwin Suther-
land’s term for crimes committed
duce different types of crime. by people of respectable and high
social status in the course of their
Street Crime. In applying strain theory, functionalists point out that industrialized occupations; for example, bribery
societies have no trouble socializing the poor into wanting to own things. Like others, of public officials, securities viola-
the poor are bombarded with messages urging them to buy everything from iPhones tions, embezzlement, false advertis-
and iPads to designer jeans and new cars. Television and movies are filled with images ing, and price fixing
of middle-class people enjoying luxurious lives. The poor get the message—full-fledged corporate crime crimes commit-
Americans can afford society’s many goods and services. ted by executives in order to ben-
Yet, the most common route to success, education, presents a bewildering world. Run efit their corporation
by the middle class, schools are at odds with the background of the poor. In the schools,
what the poor take for granted is unacceptable, questioned, and mocked. Their speech,
for example, is built around nonstandard grammar. It is also often laced with what the Explore on MySocLab
middle class considers obscenities. Their ideas of punctuality and their poor preparation Activity: How are Crime and
in reading and paper-and-pencil skills also make it difficult to fit in. Facing such barriers, Punishment Distributed across the
the poor are more likely than their more privileged counterparts to drop out of school. United States?
Educational failure, of course, slams the door on many legitimate avenues to success.
Not all doors slam shut, though. Woven into life in urban slums is what Cloward and
Ohlin (1960) called an illegitimate opportunity structure. An alternative door to suc-
cess opens: “hustles” such as robbery, burglary, drug dealing, prostitution, pimping, and
gambling (Anderson 1978, 1990/2006; Duck and Rawls 2011). Pimps and drug deal-
ers, for example, present an image of a glamorous life—people who are in control and
have plenty of “easy money.” For many of the poor, the “hustler” becomes a role model.
It should be easy to see, then, why street crime attracts disproportionate numbers of
the poor. In the Down-to-Earth Sociology box on the next page, let’s look at how gangs White collar crime usually involves only
are part of the illegitimate opportunity structure that beckons disadvantaged youth. the loss of property, but not always.
White-Collar Crime. As with the poor, the forms of crime of the more privileged To save money, Ford executives kept
faulty Firestone tires on their Explorers.
classes also match their life situation. And how different their illegitimate opportunities The cost? The lives of over 200 people.
are! Physicians don’t hold up cabbies, but they do cheat Medicare. Investment managers Shown here in Houston is one of
like Bernie Madoff run fraudulent schemes that cheat people around the world. Mug- their victims. She survived a needless
ging, pimping, and burgling are not part of this more privileged world, but evading accident, but was left a quariplegic.
income tax, bribing public officials, and embezzling are. Soci- Not one Ford executive spent even
a single day in jail.
ologist Edwin Sutherland (1949) coined the term white-collar
crime to refer to crimes that people of respectable and high
social status commit in the course of their occupations.
A special form of white-collar crime is corporate crime, execu-
tives breaking the law in order to benefit their corporation. For
example, to increase corporate profits, Sears executives defrauded
$100 million from victims so poor that they had filed for bank-
ruptcy. To avoid a criminal trial, Sears pleaded guilty. This fright-
ened the parent companies of Macy’s and Bloomingdales, which
were doing similar things, and they settled out of court (McCor-
mick 1999). Not one of the corporate thieves at Sears, Macy’s, or
Bloomingdales spent even a day in jail.
Citigroup, another household name, is notorious for breaking
the law. In 2004, this firm was fined $70 million for stealing
from the poor (O’Brien 2004). But, like a career criminal, this
company continued its law-breaking ways. In 2008, Citigroup
was caught red-handed “sweeping” money from its customers’
credit cards, even from the cards of people who had died. For
this, Citigroup paid another $18 million in penalties (Read
2008). Then, in 2010, Citigroup paid a $75 million penalty