Structural Functionalism From a Structural

Structural Functionalism

From a structural functionalist perspective, explain a raise in the police establishment at a time when crime has decreased.

According to the structural functionalist perspective, the causality of different sociological phenomena is not necessarily determined by logic alone. For example, one might assume that because crime was decreasing, fewer police were needed to supervise the streets; therefore the numbers of individuals choosing to enter law enforcement would remain at an equilibrium, or even decrease, to divert other vocational resources into other areas of the nation.

However, a number of other factors may come into play, as no single aspect of society exists as a microcosm. For example, the resurgence of patriotism after 9/11 meant that many persons were drawn to enter the law enforcement profession because of the renewed sense of idealism in America at the time. The fact that other sectors of the economy were not growing at as rapid a rate as they were during the 1990s also meant that the stability of a public service job might prove attractive to many individuals. Also, a decreased crime rate and a relatively safer environment for persons working on the streets in law enforcement might prove to be a draw to the profession, as it meant that many individuals might feel that they were safer working as officers than in previous eras.

The war in Iraq meant that the military, a traditional refuge for individuals seeking a public service job to pay for their education and provide training from a law and order perspective might also cause prospective candidates to seek the relatively less risky field of policing instead. Structural functionalists stress the need for society to exist in a state of equilibrium, and policing as a profession can provide a needed psychological release for individuals who wish to work in a profession that allows them to enforce order, but also seek to deemphasize risk to their physical safety that might be posed by a job in the military. The stress upon the harmony of society also suggests the commonality of individuals, and the common interest to reduce crime, thus the overall drop in the crime rate might sound less surprising to a structural functionalist like Parsons, in contrast to other sociologists.

But how, then one might ask, to structural functionalists explain deviance at all? "Without deliberate planning on anyone's part, there have developed in our type of social system, and correspondingly in others, mechanisms which, within limits, are capable of forestalling and reversing the deep-lying tendencies for deviance to get into the vicious circle phase which puts it beyond the control of ordinary approval-disapproval and reward-punishment sanctions" (Parsons, cited by Gingrich, 1999, from the Social System, pp. 319-320). In short, although 'normal' people' exist within an approval-disapproval and reward-punishment network, and their behavior can be modified and controlled through schemas of approval and disapproval, rewards and punishments, psychologically deviant or anomalous persons like criminals ignore these networks. Also, deviant circles can themselves generate positive rewards and an approval and disapproval micro system that rewards 'bad' behavior, forming a subculture. As this subculture becomes eradicated, crime goes down, but as law-abiding behavior is rewarded by the community and viewed in a more positive light, this behavior becomes more, rather than less common.