CHAPTER 8
DEVIANCE, CRIME AND SOCIAL CONTROL
SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE

Good/Admired Behavior – Heroism; putting
one’s life on the line for another, Intelligence;
beyond normal
 Lenny
Skutnik, Air Florida 90 (1982), watch video
 Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
CONTINUE SECTION 1

Odd Behavior – dress, style, different; living
with 50 cats or being pierced all over
CONTINUE SECTION 1

Bad Behavior – law breaking or criminal behavior
 Jeffery
Dahmer
Charles Manson
Jim Jones
CONTINUE SECTION 1
Where does deviance come from?
 Is deviance always bad?
 Is it biological or learned? Nature vs. Nurture
 Is it the person, the personality, the act or action?
 Will it be inherent or can it be changed? Will one
always be deviant? Can one be deviant on a
temporary basis or is it a permanent change? Can it
be situational?
 What inhibits or initiates deviance?


These are the questions we’ll hope to address in this
chapter.
SECTION 2: DEVIANCE AND CONTROL
Lord of the Flies and Worksheet
 What is deviance?

A
violation of established contextual, cultural or social
norms (folkways, mores, law)
 Not always bad
 Rosa
Parks
 Little Rock Nine
 Depends
on factors such as location, audience and
the individual committing the act
 As norms vary across culture and time, so does what
we consider deviance or deviant behavior
CONTINUE SECTION 2

Quick review of key terms:
Society - a group of people whose members interact,
reside in a definable area, and share a culture
 Culture – a group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs
 Norms - informal understandings that govern society’s
behaviors
 Morals - Rules or habits of conduct, especially of sexual
conduct, with reference to standards of right and wrong
 Mores - norms that are widely observed and have great
moral significance
 Folkways - norms for routine or casual interaction

CONTINUE SECTION 2
 For
easier understanding: mores distinguish the
difference between right and wrong, while folkways
draw a line between right and rude

As norms vary across culture and time, so do the
notions of deviance change as well
 Women
wearing pants (but not men wearing skirts)
 Men with a single earring, then to men with both ears
pierced (but not to women with a bald head)
 Killing in war and rewarded for it (but not rewarded for
killing someone for protecting yourself or property)
CONTINUE SECTION 2

Deviance can be situational which can also lead
to conflict and differences in opinion
 Dying

for Everest video
Sometimes things viewed as outside of
conventional norms (mild forms of deviance) can
become a mark of distinction
 Conformist
vs. Non-conformists
 Although deviance is often viewed as a violation of
norms, it’s not always viewed in a negative light
CONTINUE SECTION 2


Emile Durkheim made a very strong and controversial claim in The
Rules of Sociological Method:”NO ACT IS INHERENTLY DEVIANT IN
AND OF ITSELF. DEVIANCE IS DEFINED SOCIALLY AND WILL VARY
FROM ONE GROUP TO ANOTHER.”
If we want to carry this further, can we say that Adolph Hitler or
Joseph Mengele were criminals? Whose norms did they
violate? What laws did they break? (Certainly not their own!) The
Nazi's were found guilty of war crimes at Nuremburg, but by whom?
The Allies! Would the Nazi's have ever found themselves guilty of
crimes against humanity, had they won the war? Of course
not! The allies had the power and were able to enforce their
definition of crime (and deviance) upon the vanquished. (The
Nazi's would never consent to the Allies claim of authority over
them). What about US crimes during WWII?
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
What happens when a person violates a social
norm?
 Speeding
driver gets a speeding ticket
 Student wearing a bathrobe gets sent home
 All societies practice social control – the regulation
and enforcement of norms
 Goal
is to maintain social order – an arrangement of
practices and behaviors on which society member’s base
their daily lives

Analogy – Social order is like an employee handbook and social
control is like a manager or boss
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
Enforcing the rules are know as sanctions
 Can be positive or negative
 Positive sanctions – rewards given for conforming to
norms
 Negative sanctions – punishments for violating norms
 Can be formal or informal (positive and negative
 Informal
sanctions – emerge in face to face interactions
 Formal sanctions - ways to officially recognize and
enforce norm violations
CONTINUE SECTION 2
 Chart
– Informal/Formal Sanctions
Informal
Positive
Negative
An expression of
thanks
An angry comment
Formal
A promotion at work
A parking fine
 Summary
 Deviance
is a violations of norms. The context of the
deviance depends on contextual definitions, the situation
and people’s response to the behavior. Society seeks to
limit (or some cases, increase positive) deviance through the
use of sanctions that help maintain a system of social
control
SECTION 3: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
DEVIANCE

Functionalism (concerned how the different
elements of society contribute to the whole)
3
Functionalist Perspectives on deviance in society
 Strain

Robert Merton
 Social

Theory
Disorganization Theory
Researchers at the University of Chicago in the 1920’s and 1930’s
 Cultural

 Emile
Deviance Theory
Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay
Drukheim: The essential nature of deviance
 Deviance
is a necessary part of a successful society
 Challenges people’s present views
CONTINUE SECTION 3

Example: Sit-ins in the 1950’s and 1960’s during the civil rights
movement in the South
 When
deviance is punished, it reaffirms currently held social
norms that also contributes to society

Example: Seeing a student given detention for skipping reminds
other students that it isn’t allowed and they too can get detention
(deterrence)
 Strain
Theory – Robert Merton
 Agreed
with Durkheim about deviance being an inherent
part of a function society but added to it by developing his
theory that access to socially acceptable goals plays a part
in determining whether a person conforms of deviates

We are encouraged to strive for the American Dream but not
everyone in society stands on equal footing
CONTINUE SECTION 3
While one may have a socially acceptable goal of success, they may lack
a socially acceptable way to reach that goal (due to name, lack of grades,
money)
 Merton defined 5 ways to respond to the gap of having a socially
accepted goal but no socially accepted way to pursue it
 Conformity – Those who conform choose not to deviate; they pursue
their goals to the extent they can through socially accepted means
 Innovation – Those who innovate pursue goals they can’t reach
though legitimate means by instead using criminal or deviant means
 Ritualism – People who ritualize lower their goals until they reach
them through socially acceptable ways; focus on conformity rather
than attaining a distant dream
 Retreatism – People who retreat and reject society’s goals and
means; (beggars and street people)
 Rebellion – Replace a society’s goals and means with their own
(terrorists and freedom fighters)

CONTINUE SECTION 3
CONTINUE SECTION 3

Strain Theory Basic
Option
Socially Approved Goal
Socially Approved Means
Conformity (Only “nondeviant” option)
Yes
Yes
Innovation
Yes
No
Ritualism
Abandoned
Yes/No depends
Gives up on goals
Gives up on means
Rejects and substitutes
personal goals
Rejects and substitutes
personal means
Retreatism
Rebellion
CONTINUE SECTION 3

Stanley Milgram Experiment
 Conformity
 Obedience
to authority figures
 Milgram wanted to test the theory/question: "Could it
be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the
Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call
them all accomplices?“
 Maintained consistent results throughout different
societies, although percentages may change
 Considered by some to be unethical and physically or
psychologically abusive
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 While
this may seem like deviance, if you are applying
the theory that Milgram was working with (that the
Nazi’s compelled the people because it was a socially
approved goal) it would fall under conformity
 Watch the Milgram experiment video
CONTINUE SECTION 3

Social Disorganization Theory
 Developed
by researchers at the University of Chicago
in the 1920’s and 1930’s
 Asserts that crime is most likely to occur in
communities with weak social ties and the absence of
social control
 Individuals
that grow up in poor neighborhoods with high
rates of drug use, violence, teenage delinquency and lack of
parenting is more likely to become a criminal than an
individual from a wealthy neighborhood with good schools
and families who are involved in a positive manner in the
community
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 Uses
broad social factors as the cause for deviance
 One
isn’t born a criminal but becomes one over time, many
times based on factors in their social environment
 Research greatly influences public policy
 When positive public programs are put into disadvantaged
communities (preschool, head start, etc), those individuals
are less likely to engage in criminal activity
CONTINUE SECTION 3

Cultural Deviance Theory – Clifford Shaw and
Henry McKay
 Conformity
to the prevailing cultural norms of lowerclass society causes crime
 Based
off of a 1942 study of crime patterns in Chicago in
the early 1900s
 Found that violence and crime is at its worst in the middle of
the city and decreased the farther one traveled from the
urban center toward the suburbs
 Socioeconomic status correlated to race and ethnicity
resulted in a higher crime rate
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 Further
tested (1989) and found that poverty, ethnic
diversity and family disruption in given localities had a
strong, positive correlation with social disorganization
 Also, social disorganization was associated with high rates of
crime and delinquency (deviance)
 More testing (2006) show that high rates of poverty and
single-parent homes correlated with high rates of juvenile
violence
CONTINUE SECTION 3

Conflict Theory
 Social
and economical factors being the cause of
crime and deviance
 Conflict
theorists see those variables not as positive
functions of society but as further evidence of inequality
 Feel that Social Disorganization Theory and Control Theory
both ignore racial and socioeconomical issues and
oversimplify social trends
 Theorists look for answers to the correlation of gender and
race with wealth and crime
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 An
Unequal System – Karl Marx
 Create
the foundation for Conflict Theorists
 Divided population into 2 rigid social groups:
Bourgeois – small and wealthy segment of society that control the
means of production
 Proletariat – composed of workers who rely on the means of
production for employment and survival that is controlled by the
bourgeois

 The
bourgeois have the means to control the way society is
regulated (laws, government, authority agencies) giving them
the opportunity to maintain and expand their power in
society
 Watch A Class Divided

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 The
Power Elite – C. Wright Mills
 Described
the existence of the power elite – a small group of
wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold
the power and resources
Often have access to national and international power
 Many times their decisions affect everyone in society
 They decide what is criminal and what is not; those who feel the
effects most are those with little power

CONTINUE SECTION 3
25 years ago,
the top 1% of
Americans
owned 33% of
the nation’s
wealth.
CONTINUE SECTION 3
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 Top
1% take home roughly 24% of the nation’s income,
up from 9% in 1976.
Top 1% own over ½
of the nation’s
stocks, bonds and
mutual funds
CONTINUE SECTION 3
The top 1% have only 5% of the nation’s personal debt
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 Crime
and Social Class
 While
crime is often associated with the underprivileged,
crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful tend to be
under-punished and are more costly to society

$15.3 billion loss for victims of burglary, larceny and motor vehicle
theft vs. Bernie Madoff whose Ponzi scheme cost close to $50
billion vs Enron Scandal cost close to $64 billion, vs. MCI fraud that
cost over $11 billion
 Crack
epidemic in the early 1980’s, typically used by poor
blacks vs. cocaine, typically used by rich whites.
Federal law mandated high sentences for less gram possession, 1 to
100
 Disproportionate sentencing in socioeconomic and racial classes
 Does it correlate to those that make the laws (typically wealthy white
legislators)?

CONTINUE SECTION 3

Symbolic Functionalism
 Explains
how societies and/or social groups come to
view behaviors as deviant or conventional
 Labeling Theory, Differential Association, Social
Disorganization Theory and Control Theory
 Labeling Theory
 Examines
the ascribing of a deviant behavior to another
person by members of society
 Deviance isn’t necessarily the behavior itself or the person
who commit those behaviors but by the reactions of others
to those behaviors

Thus deviant behavior changes over time and across cultures
CONTINUE SECTION 3
2
Types of deviance that affects identity formation
 Primary
deviance – a violation of norms that does not
result in any long-term effects on the individual’s selfimage or interactions with others
Speeding as an example
 Individuals still feel a belonging in society and more likely
to conform to norms in the future

 Secondary
deviance – occurs when a person’s selfconcept and behavior begin to change after their actions
are labeled as deviant by members of society


They take on and fulfill the role of deviant to rebel against the
society that has labeled them
Students that are labeled as “problem” students that accept
that role and label, and embrace their deviant identity
CONTINUE SECTION 3
Master Status – a label that describes the chief
characteristic of an individual
 Examples: Doctors, lawyers, beggars, convicts or addicts
 Some of those statuses can continue long after the
individual has changed and the label should be dropped

 Differential
 Theorizes
Association
that individuals learn deviant behavior from those
close to them who provide models of and opportunities for
deviance
 Less of a personal choice and more as a result of
differential socialization processes
 May explain why crime can be multigenerational
CONTINUE SECTION 3
 Control
Theory
 States
that social control is directly affected by the strength
of social bonds and that deviance results from a feeling of
disconnection from society

4
Those that believe that they are part of society are less likely to
commit crimes against it
types of social bonds connecting people to society
Attachment – our connection to others
 Commitment – investments we make in the community
 Involvement – participation in socially legitimate activities
 Belief – out agreement on common values in society

CONTINUE SECTION 3
 Summary
 Functionalists
– deviance is a social necessity since it
reinforces norms by reminding people of the
consequences of violating them
 Violating
norms can open society’s eyes to injustices in the
system
 Conflict
Theorists – crime stems from a system of
inequality that keeps those with power at the top and
those without at the bottom
 Symbolic Interactionists – focus attention on the
socially constructed nature of the labels related to
deviance
SECTION 4: CRIME AND THE LAW
 Deviance
is a violation of social norms, it’s not always
punishable nor necessarily bad
 Crime is a behavior that violates official laws and is
punishable through formal sanctions
 Ambiguity
exists concerning what constitutes a crime and
whether all crimes are in fact bad and deserve punishment

1950’s and 1960’s civil rights campaigns and non-violent protest
techniques
 Legal
codes maintain formal social control through laws
which are adopted and enforced by a political authority
Those who violate these rules incur negative formal sanctions
 Punishments are relevant to the degree of crime and the importance
to society of the value underlying the law


In the US, punishment must pass Eighth Amendment challenges
CONTINUE SECTION 4

Types of crimes
 Violent
crimes – based on the use of force or threat of
force (Murder, rape, armed robbery)
 Street
crime – Offenses committed by ordinary people
against other people or organizations, usually in public
spaces
 Nonviolent
crimes – the destruction or theft of
property, but not with force or threat of force (Larceny,
car theft, vandalism)
 Corporate
crime – crimes committed by white-collar workers
in a business environment (Embezzlement, insider trading,
identity theft); unseen damages
CONTINUE SECTION 4
 Victimless
crime – the perpetrator is not explicitly
harming another person (Underage drinking,
prostitution); unseen damages
 Hate crime – attacks committed because of a person’s
race, religion or other characteristic
 Majority
are racial motivated (3 to 1)
CONTINUE SECTION 4

Crime Statistics
A
look at the crime statistics tabulated by the US
Bureau of Statistics, US Census Bureau and the
Federal Bureau of Investigations
 http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/crimestats
 http://www.bjs.gov/
 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/law_enforc
ement_courts_prisons.html
CONTINUE SECTION 4

The United States Criminal Justice System
 Criminal
justice system – an organization that exists to
enforce a legal code
 In
the US there are 3 branches: the police, the courts and
the corrections system
 Police
 Police
– civil force in charge of enforcing laws and public
order at a federal, state or community level
Federal – FBI, ATF and Homeland Security: Deal with matters that
are within the powers of the federal government and have a narrow
field of expertise
 State police have the authority to enforce statewide laws
 Local or county police have limited jurisdiction with authority only in
a town or county in which they serve

CONTINUE SECTION 4
 Courts
 Court
– a system that has the authority to make decisions
based on the law

Divided into state (trial, appellate and state supreme courts) and
federal courts (US District, US Appeals, US Supreme Court)
 Corrections
 Corrections
system (prison system) – tasked with supervising
individuals who have been arrested, convicted and sentenced for
a criminal offense
Approximately 7,000,000 Americans are behind bars
 Rehabilitation vs. Punishment


Roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of former prisoners re-offend within 3 years of
release
Solitary confinement and Supermax Prisons
 Zimbardo prison study (conformity and situational attribution)
