Functionalist Theory Of Shoplifting

There are people in the world that act deviant every day that they live. Some of these people do small deviant things, but then other people do things like shoplift. Shoplifting is a deviant act that can start small but, then turn into thousands of dollars stolen. Does an intervention help a shoplifter stop what they are doing? The functionalist perspective would best explain the expected outcomes and research questions, because if there is an intervention for a shoplifter then they could hopefully be able to stop with what they believe is a need to shoplift. “Shoplifting is a crime that is not well suited for study via apprehension data. Police data (e.g., UCR) are particularly problematic because only a small fraction of all shoplifters …show more content…
This is important to note, because these students did actually say that they did get apprehended, most of them would have their parents called when the store personnel apprehended them. Even if a person starts to shoplift young, if someone can apprehend them and get them to a different way to express what they want to do, then the young person would hopefully not shoplift for the rest of their life. Although, most of the students in this survey had said that they still continued to shoplift even after being apprehend, so it is just hard to figure out what a person is going to do with their lives after being apprehended. “Deterrence theory predicts that being caught will heighten one 's fear on anti-shoplifting devices” (Klemke, 1978: 400). Even though deterrence theory predicts that this will happen, it probably will not. If a shoplifter is not apprehended and made to have some way to make sure that they will not shoplift again even if there are anti-shoplifting devices, they will shoplift again. Anti-shoplifting devices are just a small thought in a shoplifters mind and they will find a way to get around those devices so that they can shoplift …show more content…
There are the normal reactions that people have when reacting and that is when they report the shoplifting. The thoughts that someone has when they find out that someone has shoplifted could be: why would you do that or what do you think this is going to do with the rest of your life? “ 'Reactions ' was defined in terms of variations in the willingness of store customers to report behavior (shoplifting) which was blatantly illegal and deviant” (Steffensmeier & Terry, 1973: 419). There are some people that when they see the littlest sign of someone shoplifting they will go and report it immediately. There are other people that will just believe that it did not happen and will go about their day. There are many different reactions that happen when someone shoplifts, the best reaction that a person can have when seeing a person shoplifting is to calmly walk away and find an employee to alert them of the