Sociology consists of three main perspectives: functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist. The conflict perspective was first suggested by Karl Marx and was based on the economic differences among various social classes. Although the perspective was ignored by the majority of scientists and sociologists 60 years ago, nowadays, conflict theorists focus on social conflicts between any groups and on many topics such as religion, race, or politics. This perspective focuses on the negative sides of society in contrast to the functional and symbolic interactionist perspectives; however, it attracts attention to democracy, right equality, and altruism. Conflict theorists pay attention to the understanding of social classes and the explanation of their differences. This model presents a strong dependence between social status and public processes and structures. Therefore, its essence is determined by the word conflict that depicts the confrontation of various viewpoints on the same issue. Hence, the conflict perspective can be described with antonyms such as power and lawlessness. The conflict perspective is popular nowadays as it allows to consider the social problem from different sides and does not require to proceed it as an interdependent or symbolical subject.
There are no similar people in the world; however, there are some groups or social classes that are more predisposed to getting into prison. The conflict perspective examines inequalities among those groups, and the most common criteria of the analysis on that topic are psychological and social. Every persons’ life starts with childhood, and it is well-known that the psychological environment surrounding the child forms the background for the future adult. Therefore, people with psychological trauma from their childhood, such as parents’ death, sexual abuse, are more predisposed to becoming criminals, burglars, and murderers. Social criteria like bankruptcy, poverty, hunger, poor living conditions influence the children’s future as well. Condry (2018) argues that children of prisoners cannot be excluded from the group of potential prisoners as they lack a good example of an adult from their parents’ side. People whose parents used to have financial problems during their childhood show the diathesis to committing economic crimes in a strive for a better life. In this case, the conflict perspective focuses on differences in the economic state, school bullying, insult, divorced parents, and the like.
In my opinion, the implementation of the conflict perspective is the best way to analyze the issue of the probability of being put to jail among people from different social classes. This examination is rather controversial; therefore, the conflict perspective best reflects the differences and allows one to look at facts from various viewpoints. To my mind, the risk of imprisonment can be applied to every person; however, I agree that people with hidden psychological traumas are more predisposed to committing crimes. However, the border between objective and subjective thinking is thin; therefore, people need to be cautious in their judgmental statements. For example, the parents’ divorce does not always impact children’s psychological health and correspondingly future if both adults solve this problem peacefully and keep in touch with their child. This is an example of the conflict perspective, as well as we estimate various states, conditions and compare them. In conclusion, I might say that the conflict perspective is relevant for considering the issue as a subject separated from other social processes. However, to analyze the whole situation, there is a need for a combination of perspectives.
Reference
Condry, R., & Smith, P. S. (2018). Prisons, punishment, and the family towards a new sociology of punishment? Oxford University Press.