Foundation degree in public service - Essay Example

Social organizations are so set up that crime is not required to obtain the essential necessities of life-food, sex satisfaction, the gratification of primary emotional urges. This is the theoretical assumption of our social philosophy, our constitutions, and criminal codes. But social reality often falls short of these ideal expectations. The most popular theories used to explain crime are Strain Theory and Social Learning Theory. The strain theory was developed by Robert Merton in the 1940s.

this theory states that social stress has a dominant impact on behavior of individuals. The loss of social cohesion leads to criminal behavior and isolation form society by an individual. Five reactions to social stress are conformity, ritualism, innovation, ret realism and rebellion. People who experience social stress of this sort must be expected to commit crimes when confronted by an average or even subnormal degree of environmental pressure (Spalek 2005). As long as this disposition has not undergone a change, a sequence of criminal acts must be anticipated.

Many of our criminals, endowed by nature with a loosely suspended reactivity, become genuine criminals by recurrence. They acquire abnormal touchiness by the grinding effects of repeated crime and repeated punishment. This theory is important for police and fire services, emergency etc, to understand human behavior and possible consequences of social stress factors (Hellman and Alper 1997). Social learning theory was developed by Bandura in 1970. This theory is based on psychological concepts and explanations which determine behavior of a person as socially learned.

Paramour is learned while overriding actions and communication of other people, their relations and interaction patterns,. According to this theory, criminal behavior is also learned by individuals surrounded by other criminals. Social life