Different sociological theories have been offered to explain social disruptions and the onset and operation of crime in our society. Crime is not a single entity, of course--there are different kinds of crime, different levels of crime, and probably different reasons for crime. Theories can be expected to explain certain types of criminal activity more effectively than others, and gang activity is one such type of crime. It involves issues of social stratification, social structure, economic forces, and so on. Organized crime can be analyzed using theories such as Routine Activity, Strain Theory, and Differential Association. These issues can also be examined in terms of dramatic presentations of such criminal activity. The film The Untouchables depicts issues of organized crime and social breakdown in the context of the early years of the Great Depression, a period when bootlegging became the primary business for certain crime groups and when warfare between crime families produced an era of great violence on the streets of major cities such as Chicago and New York. This was also the era in which the basic organizational structure of American crime was consolidated, leading directly to the organized crime of today. The plot of the film will be given, followed by an analysis of three of the sociological theories that can then be applied to the film to find how well each theory explains what is seen and the social forces that contributed to it. The film is only an image of a period of time and not a historical document, but it does suggest the players and the forces that were active then. SUMMARY
The movie The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987) is based on true events, though liberties have been taken with the facts. The story pits two groups against one another. On the one hand is the mob in Chicago under the leadership of Al Capone, and on the other is the newly-formed unit of federal agents under the leadership of Tre...