Conflict Criminology

Views on crime causation vary, from theorist to theorist. Some theorists have presented theories that assume sociological, biological, or psychological influences to cause people to commit crimes (Bohm & Vogel, 2011). Other theorists have presented theories that focus on the oppression of the individual, the group, and society by self-imposed influences. Theories in this category are critical theories and are a product of misconceptions that were prevalent in the United States during the 1950’s (Bohm & Vogel, 2011). Because of this, various forms of criminology were created to set the record straight about how citizens were being misled about the true nature of current events. Among the forms of critical theories is presented around the 1950’s

In comparison, Conflict criminology is different from radical criminology, in that it is less specific than radical theory, in the identification of causes of crime (Bernard, 1981). Conflict criminology also specifies stratification or relative powerlessness as criminogenic factors, while radical theory focuses on the political and economic structures of society. Another difference between conflict and radical theories is the erroneous assumption held by conflict theorists, that radical theorists believe power in society is the exclusive possession of a capitalistic ruling class (Bernard, 1981). Conflict theorists argue that different groups in society possess and exercise varying degrees of power. Lastly, a difference is that conflict is reformist, which means that conflict theory assumes that social problems like crime can be corrected by the existing social institutions. When compared to peacemaking criminology and postmodern criminology, conflict criminology is also different from these two in that it fails to identify the sources of power in society. Conflict theory ignores the social structural sources of power in society while peacemaking and postmodern addresses it (Bernard, 1981). However, all of the theories are similar in that they address social problems yet the breadth of the scope of each theory is