2.4 Sociological School

Crime in society — the modern mainstream. Its main rivers: 1. Social disorganization (the Chicago School: Shaw & McKay — crime's concentration in zones of transition: poverty, mobility, weakened controls). 2. Anomie/strain (Durkheim's normlessness; Merton's modes of adaptation — innovation as the deviant road to the culturally-mandated "success" goal). 3. Differential association (Sutherland: crime is learned in intimate groups, with techniques and motives; the white-collar extension). 4. Control theory (Hirschi: the question is not why they do it but why we don't — the bond's four elements: attachment, commitment, involvement, belief). 5. Labeling theory (Becker: deviance is created by the audience's label; the criminal career as society's manufacture — secondary deviance). 6. Conflict/Marxist criminology — crime definitions as class power; the law's selective aim. 7. Subcultural theories — delinquent gangs' own value systems (the "focal concerns" and gang-subculture literature). Nepal's fit: urbanisation's transitional zones (the Kathmandu valley's squatter and migrant belts), strain in a remittance economy of blocked aspirations, and the labeling of caste, ethnicity and ex-prisoners — the sociological lens is the most natural for Nepal's crime picture.