Am in desperate need of some help!!

Hi everyone,

Am doing an essay on "Why might the sociological approach to understanding social issues and social events be important?" Would really appreciate any advice on how I should approach this essay. Have done a brief bullet point list of what I want to talk about - The social issue that I want to link it to is crime. Firstly, I will talk about C.W Mills - how he introduced sociological imagination and what it does for its possessor. Second, talk about Durkheim and the functionalist reason for crime. Would like to include another explanation for crime e.g how people that are from disadvantaged areas make up most of the prison system, and how white collar crime goes unpunished. Is this a critical theory or an interpretive theory?
Then maybe how crime is actually more feared than an actual occurrence?
Just don't know how to link what I have. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

is the essay specifically in relation to crime? if so you could also broach the aspects of suicide and drug usage , ie escapism. (can't remember the exact theories for those but they are very useful) maybe introducing the alternate perspectives (ie marxist, functionalism, post modernist) about each theory.

It would be a critical theory if you could back it up with some hard evidence from some significant studies. It's a hard theory to prove because a lot of studies done on it are skewed to fit the viewpoint of the author.

I think that crime is more of an actual occurrence...how many people are actually conscious of being afraid of crime? Most people don't worry until it actually happens. At least that's how it was for me.