JOURNAL
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Why is that? Are there always differences in
what is considered deviant?
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Deviance: behavior that departs from
societal or group norms.
Talking on your cell phone when driving.
Cage Fighting
Tattoos
Drugs/ Drug Dealing
Late to school
Piercings
Underage Drinking.
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Deviance: behavior that departs from
societal or group norms.
Talking on your cell phone when driving.
Cage Fighting
Tattoos
Drugs/ Drug Dealing
Late to school
Piercings
Underage Drinking.
Age
 Location
 Culture
 Social Status
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Deviance is defined differently by these four
groups.
Cutting in line would be considered deviant by us
but Justin Timberlake would be able to cut us in line
because of his elevated social status.
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Negative Deviance: involves behavior that
fails to meet accepted norms.
Stereotypical deviant person.
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Positive Deviance: involves overconformity to
norms.
Someone who is anorexic.
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Some are termed deviant with out committing
a deviant act.
They receive a stigma because of maybe their
behavior or appearance.
Someone dressed in “goth” wear gets labeled a “bad
kid” in school when really he is a tree hugging,
vegetarian, pacifist.
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Techniques and Strategies for preventing deviant
human behavior in any society.
Guns
Legal System
Prisons
Capital Punishment
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Obedience: Compliance with higher
authorities in a hierarchal structure.
 Conformity: Going along with peers--individuals of our own status who have no
special right to direct our behavior.
You conform to peers in school but you obey your
teachers! (Or at least you should!)
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Military
Jail
High School
Sororities/Fraternities
Religion
Nazi Party/ KKK
All require us to conform. Some more than others
•Do you agree with how these institutions have us conform?
•Do you think some of these institutions have a form of
conformity that is “necessary” or “important”?
•Can conformity become dangerous? If so when?
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 Deviance is a common part of human
existence, with positive and negative
consequences for social stability.
 Deviance helps define limits of proper
behavior.
Emile Durkheim:
 Deviance affirms cultural values and
norms.
 Responding to deviance clarifies moral
boundaries.
 Responding to deviance brings people
together.
 Deviance encourages social change.
Anomie: state of normlessness or loss of
direction felt in a society when social
control of individual behavior has become
ineffective.
 Typically occurs during a period of
profound social change and disorder;
time of war or economic collapse.
Merton stated that there was one important cultural
goal in the United States is success largely in terms
of money.
Merton reasoned that people adapt in certain ways
either by conforming to or deviateting from cultural
expectations.
Deviance depends on whether society provides the
means to achieve cultural goals.
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Nondeviant:
 Conformity: Most common and opposite of deviance.
 Acceptance of the overall societal goal and the approved means.
 Goal: Make Money. Approved Means: Word Hard/College
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Deviant:
 Innovator: Accepts the goals of society
but pursues them with means that are
regarded as improper.
 Criminal who finds illegal ways to
succeed.
 Ritualist: Abandoned the goal of
material success and become
compulsively committed to the
institutional means.
 Teacher who goes through the
motions but does not really
“teach.”
 You better not be thinking Mrs. Gaven!
 Retreatist: Withdraws from both the
goals and the means of society.
 Drug Addict, alcoholic.
 Rebel: Feel alienated from the dominant
means and goals and may seek a
dramatically different social order.
 Militia group member.
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Edwind Sutherland’s Differential
Association
 Cultural Transmission
 Emphasizes that one learns criminal
behavior by interacting with others.
 Not only the techniques of lawbreaking
but also the motives, drives, and
rationalizations of the criminal.
•Edwin Sutherland believed that
an individual undergoes the
same basic socialization
process in learning conforming
and deviant acts.
•Sutherland used the term
differential association to
describe process through
which exposure to attitude
favorable to criminal acts
leads to the violation of
rules.
•People are more likely to
engage in norm-defying
behavior if they are part of
a group or subculture that
stresses deviant values,
such as a street gang.
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How can deviance promote social change?
Think of an example of when this happened
and reflect.
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Routines Activities Theory
 Criminal victimization increases when motivated offenders and suitable targets
converge.
 Car theft is more likely in campus or airport parking lots, where cars are left for a
long period of time.
 ATMS are an easy target because you know that there will always be an accessible
victim.
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Labeling Theory
 The idea that deviance and conformity result not so much from what
people do as from how others respond to those actions.
 Emphasizes how a person comes to be labeled as deviant, or to accept
that label.
 “Deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.”
 Cigarette smoking: once completely acceptable, polite, and considered
classy.
 Deviance is all relative and subjective.
 Once we give someone a label: “Troublemaker” One of two things can
happen:
1. Self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in where a person begins to see himself or
herself solely in that role and tries to live up to that label.
2. Person might go our of their way to live down the label.
 People protect their own interests
and define deviance to suit their
own needs.
 Many Conflict theorists believe
that the criminal justice system
serves the interests of the
powerful.
 Believe criminal law does not
represent a consistent application
of society values but instead
reflects competing values and
interests.
 Research has found there to be
differential justice: differences in
the way social control is exercised
over different groups; African
Americans and Latinos
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List five crimes in your journal. Rank them in
order of what you think is worst down. What
caused you to put them in that order?
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Used to describe the willing exchange among adults
of widely desired, but illegal, goods and services.
Supporters of decriminalization are troubled by the
attempt to legislate a moral code for adults.
 No use spending tax dollars and resources of the
criminal justice system in prosecuting such crimes
that are impossible to prevent.
Others however strongly support the criminalization
of such crimes.
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Alcoholics can lead to domestic abuse or drunk driving.
Example:
 Prostitution, Drug Users, Gambling
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Professional Criminal is a person who pursues crime as a
day-to-day occupation, developing skilled techniques and
enjoying a certain degree of status among other criminals.
Develop skills that reduce the likelihood of arrest, conviction,
and imprisonment which make the likelihood of a long career
possible.
Devote their entire working time to planning and executing
crimes.
Example:
 Burglary, Hijacking of Cargo, Pickpocketing
 Ocean’s Eleven
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What kind of criminal do you have the most
respect for, if any? Explain either way.
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Work of a group that regulates
relations among criminal enterprises
involved in illegal activities, including
prostitution, gambling, and the
smuggling and sale of illegal drugs.
Secret, conspiratorial activity, which
generally evades law enforcement.
Takes over legitimate businesses,
gains influence over labor unions,
corrupts public officials, intimidates
witnesses in criminal trials.
 Often serves as a means of upward
mobility for groups of people
struggling to escape poverty.
 Irish- Jewish- Italian: (More
Recently) Colombian- RussianNigerian
Example:
 WE SHOULD KNOW THIS WE LIVE IN
NEW JERSEY!
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Illegal acts committed in the course of business activities, often by
affluent, “respectable” people.
Conviction for corporate crimes does not generally harm a person’s
reputation and career aspirations as much as a conviction for street
crime would.
Example:
 Income tax evasion, Stock Manipulation, Consumer Fraud, Bribery,
Computer Crime
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Crime that occurs across multiple national borders.
Examples:
 Terrorism, Trafficking in body parts, Sex trade, Drug
Trade
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