Functionalist Theory In The Criminal Justice System

The criminals: One of the major things I took out of the internship was working with the criminals hands on and understanding how they ended up on probation and/or parole. Many of their reasons come from a family history, one wrong mistake, or a career in the criminal justice system from a young age. When working with them hands on, interviewing them for an ORAS, visiting them in jail, or watching them in court, I was able to apply several different theories I learned in class to their situations. These are theories I thought I would never be able to put in real life situations. These different theories included the conflict theory and functionalist theory. The conflict theory was based most on the studies of the sociologist Marx. The conflict …show more content…
The functionalist theory, also known as functionalism, is the suggestion that society is a ystem of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole (hawii,edu). I saw this a lot with people whose families had been in and out of the criminal justice system and then they were. These particular offenders seemed to think that being on probation was normal and just a thing of life that “people like them” had to go through, when others did not. The functionalist perspective states that everyone has a place in society and because of that place society functions in a certain way. This is problematic, because it is the idea that it is okay to be a criminal, because someone has to be a criminal anyway. These offenders strongly believe that this is their place in society and do not understand that being a criminal is something they do not have to go through. It was a heartbreaking thing to notice. In class you are not able to see the real life situations these offenders are going through and hear their stories to understand what has led them to crime, but I was able to do that at my