Criminology based on Alcoholic Anonymous

Introduction

The use of open meetings with alcoholic anonymous has helped researchers to study the wide array of behaviors and societal norms in sociology including symbolic interaction, rules roles beliefs deviance, resocialization stratifications and research techniques in social psychology. The meetings also provide excellent case studies to compare and contrast different theories in sociology and other disciplines. It is for this course that a study was conducted by students in an alcoholic Anonymous meeting in a bid to identify the reasons why different people commit crime and to examine the experience in light of the theories and concepts discussed in this class.

The Meeting and Examination

The meeting was attended on a Tuesday evening at a popular joint in the city as organized by the university’s criminology department. The participants in the meeting were all males most of whom had prior jail experience their identity was however confidential and not subject to disclosure in line with the anonymity principle. Alphabetical letters shall be used in this report to represent the participant’s ideas.

The rational choice theory suggests that crime is committed by individuals in their self interest. The individuals weigh the options and decide whether to commit crime or not. In the meeting, person X admitted to this theory in his prior case of robbery with violence, he had committed the crime in a shopping mall after weighing the reward of the cash and consequences of being caught. The reward of cash was too promising that he decided to commit the crime.

Person Y was a middle aged man who had pending cases of ordinary theft cases. He lived in the surrounding city suburbs with low standards of living. Life was too misera...

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... theory compel him into crime. According to him religion was a powerful tool that worked for him. His strong Christian faith commanded him not to covet nor steal any property. This was a case of the social control theory which points out that were it not for the controls that the society places on individuals using institutions such as churches schools work places and families, most people would commit crime.

The society may also compel individuals into committing crime by mere labeling. The community may form a perspective and label an individual a suspect to whichever crime that happens in the community. Most of these people finally turn into criminal behavior this is in line with the labeling theory. Person K was a dreadlocked black citizen who was a habitual criminal. He claimed to be a victim of criminal labeling even when he had nothing to do with a crime.