Outline and assess the view that the law is used to oppress (keep down) women, ethnic minorities and the working class generally.

In order to understand how law is used to oppress any act of crime and deviance, it is important to first understand the explanations that sociologists have offered for crime and its related concept of deviance. Before even that it is important to know how crime and deviance is defined.

Crime is an aspect of social life that affects everyone at some time. To sociologists crime means the breaking of rules that have been made into laws by the rulers or government of a society. Whereas Deviance means behaviour that most or all people disapprove of in the society. Such behaviour will not conform to the society’s norms and values.

The main issue related to crime and deviance is how do class, gender, ethnicity and social controls within a capitalistic society lead to increase in crime due to the criminal laws and criminal justice system imposed on the lower middle class. “Social conflict theory” is the most important criminology theory that deals directly with this problem. This...