SOC115
Deviance and Social Control
Lecture Materials
Updated: January 28, 2008
Dr. Leora Lawton
Spring 2008
TuTh 12:30-2:00 PM
56 Barrows
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Functionalism Recap
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Durkheim
– Nothing is pathological, it’s all relative
– Deviance is normal and common so it must serve a purpose
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Kingsley Davis
– Deviance may be consensual
– Institutions benefit from deviance, control it, and thus sustain it.
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Kai Erikson
– It defines borders of society and communities (and class)
– Deviance is maintained through:
• Deviance-defining rituals
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• Reinforced by social control agents
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Melvin Tumin
– There’s negative functions as well.
– Deviance implies value judgments.
– Evidence is weak and/or inconsistent.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Social Disorganization
The ‘Chicago School’
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Thomas & Znanicki
– There’s social equilibrium with regard to norms
– Then a decrease in influence occurs (e.g., immigration)
– Society goes in and out of equilibrium
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Park
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Delinquency is failure of communities to organize
Old forms of social control are undermined – family, religion, neighborhood.
Progress is disruptive
Migration is a catalyst.
Faris and Durham
– Natural areas ‘just happen’
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CW Mills
– How ethnocentric can you get?
– Whose norms?
– No interplay between structure and social norms. Seen by the ‘pathologists’.
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Differential Association
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Becoming deviant: learning, neutralizations, opportunities. Sort of a
perversion on the adage “success is being ready for opportunity”.
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Role:
Ascribed:
Playing:
Taking:
Set:
Master:
Become acquainted with behavior
Learn its parameters of behavior
Try it out
Adopt it
Perhaps buy into the entire package
Let it dominate your self-concept
In what ways is this process similar/different from entering any other social
role?
Is this model appropriate for non-illegal deviance? What’s the assumption in
the writings about who this model fits?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Sutherland’s Differential Association
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9.
Criminality is learned
“ … through social interaction
“ … with intimates
“ … including techniques, norms, codes
“ … and must be rationalized
“ … benefits to be deviant > benefits of not
“ … and varies in intensity, duration, priority, frequency (between
individuals and over time for same individual)
“ … and learned like any other trade
“ Motivations for deviance are part and parcel of society, hence “deviants
are hypocrites”.
What’s right here? What’s missing?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Cressey’s Other People’s Money
When trust is violated
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Trust violations occur in existing social contracts and relationships
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Rationalizations are required to violate trust
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But these rationalizations are not an ‘avoidance of legal liability’ (p. 247)
But key reason for violating law is thinking you won’t get caught. How would
Cressey explain this?
What other examples besides embezzlement are trust violations?
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Sykes & Matza’s Neutralizations
They expand on Sutherland:
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Denial of responsibility
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Denial of Injury
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Denial of Victim
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Condemnation of condemners
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Appeal to higher loyalties (e.g., family instead of gov’t).
In other words:
1.
You learn your society’s norms and values
2.
You learn differential behavior
3.
You rationalize your behavior by neutralizing the moral objections.
(remember Hilary Duff in Lizzie McGuire)
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Howard Becker’s Outsiders
Marijuana users go through process of becoming a marijuana user,
which is a differential association process.
1. Be around it.
2. Try it
3. Recognize effect
4. Enjoy effect
5. Rationalize behavior
6. Adopt
7. Get into subculture
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
The IRC Community Game Model
• It’s leisure: relaxation, social, intellectual, fun,
challenging.
• It’s accessible to anyone with a computer and internet
access (and software)
• Sub-culture forms from dominant culture.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
IRC Community
A sample of a game being played through RobBot's is shown below:
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<RobBot> Current category: Footwear. Question Value: 800.
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<RobBot> Question 5 of 30: Low cut woman's shoe or a device to pass gasoline
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<BrandEx> rob pump
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<Texmex> rob pump
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<RobBot> brandex: That is CORRECT! You win 800. Your total is -300.
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<RobBot> Please wait while preparing the next Gullivers Travels question...
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<jennew> brand rocks!
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<RobBot> Current category: Gullivers Travels. Question Value: 400.
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<RobBot> Category Comment: Trivia about Gullivers Travels
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<RobBot> Question 6 of 30: The only thing the Laputian king wanted to learn about the outside world
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<Texmex> oh this one sux
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<Mach> what food do you like rob
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<RobBot> Pass the ho-ho's!
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* MastrLion passes out (much to the relief of the channel no doubt)
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<Mach> rob mathematics
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<MastrLion> rob flug
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<RobBot> mastrlion: Bzzt! That is incorrect. You lose 400. Your total is -500.
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<RobBot> mach: That is CORRECT! You win 400. Your total is 400.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Lessons of IRC
• Deviance: The Internet is just like physical space only
different.
– Deviance forms:
• Traditional: swearing, profanity, bullying.
• Technological: flooding (vandalism), bots (cheating), spoofing
(fraud).
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For Anomie
Is there a class bias in this theory? Or, how can Anomie
explain deviance by the wealthy?
If there’s an imbalance between norms, how can policy try
to restore/create balance?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Durkheim’s Anomie
Moral and social constraints exist on person’s drives “moral discipline”
If these constraints lose their power, then people end up unhappy, or
out of control.
Because access to achievement is not equal, some will not follow
prescribed paths of behavior to achieve goals.
Or they get hopeless and commit suicide.
Social upheaval causes disequilibrium and hence leads to an increase
in deviance.
Over time, some luxuries become necessities.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Merton’s Anomie I.
Social structure exerts pressure to non-conform (p.142), because given
the situation, a normal person would deviate.
Goals are exalted, even if they are generally unreachable.
“Money has been consecrated as value in itself”
Merton’s myths:
Anyone can succeed
Lower class therefore deserves it
Only those who act like the dominant class have full membership.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Merton’s Anomie II.
Types of Deviance
I.
Conformity: Being just like you were told.
II.
Innovation: Thieves and cheats.
III.
Ritualism: Scaling down. Ascetics, fatalists, blamers. (Or just
practical??)
IV.
Retreatism: Drug addicts, alcoholics, bums, hoboes.
V.
Rebellion. Genuine ‘transvaluation’. Rejects old status quo and
seeks to bring about new one
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Cloward
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Thesis:
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Begins by summarizing Durkheim
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There’s also differential access to illegitimate means
The patterns of access and barriers follows that of legitimate means
People need to fulfill their social needs
Moral constraints keep them on the straight & narrow (a foreshadowing of control theory)
In times of rapid social change, values shift, become unattainable, leading to anomie, control
institutions lose power, allowed unbridled greed to cause deviance (rebellion or crime), or
despair to ensue (suicide).
Then summarizes Merton
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Goals and norms may vary independently, When norms can’t lead to goals, goals gain in
importance, and because social structure closes off access, deviance results.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Cloward continued
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So Durkheim explains how the ends justifies the means through social change.
Merton adds that social structure attenuates access to normative paths toward goals.
So then Cloward asks, But what about access to illegitimate means, is that universally
accessible?
Applies it to forms of deviance
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Innovation (crime)
Retreatism (failure at ‘failing’)
Rebellion???
Ritualism??
And the answer is…no, it’s not.
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It has to be part of the cultural script
There’s a meritocracy to it…you have to have the skills.
Need to be in the social network.
Social class structures opportunities
It’s subject to discrimination in ‘hiring’ practices
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Ethnicity, race, gender, social class
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Very Brief Summary
Functionalism. Deviance is so common, it’s normal. Serves a purpose.
Whose purpose, that’s the question, though.
Social disorganization: I live in a neighborhood where we don’t know
how to behave yet.
Differential Association: Who you know, therefore how you learn.
Need to rationalize.
Anomie. The means is necessary to achieve the society’s exalted
ends. Also need to rationalize.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Questions for Social Control
Social Control
• What do control theorists see as a major difference
between those who commit crimes and those who do
not? What do they see as the main cause of conformity?
• How well does control theory explain upper class
deviance?
• How does it complement anomie?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Social Control Theory
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Without a controlling force (or set of forces) people behave selfishly.
In some sense, it’s a flip side of the other theories (not why people deviate, but why
they don’t). Is delinquency caused or prevented?
These theories emerged to explain lower class boys and young men.
Note the beginning of divergence from a singular theory for deviance.
Social control is ‘correctionalist’ (to be discussed)
Containment Theory
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Inner containment (internalized commitment)
External containment (social order)
Begins with family, continued by community and society.
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Social Control Theory
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Hirschi: (Tip: Look for what he says it is not what it’s not)
It’s ‘correctionalist’ in nature.
Explains how social control is internalized.
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Attachment. Begins with family, instills trust and empathy.
Commitment. Varies with attachment, there is a routine and a structure to support conformity, that is, there’s
social cost to deviating.
Involvement. “Time and energy are inherently limited.”
Belief. A moral structure of right and wrong. Is conforming part of the belief system?
Process. Internal controls; external controls; availability of opportunities; beliefs, actions.
Alternatively
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Direct control: Restrictions, punishments – parents, police
Internalized: conscience – “I’m a good person”
Indirect control: shaming, exclusions - “Pleases Mom”
Other indirect means (need satisficing): aspirations - “This good behavior gets me…”
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Social Control Theory
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Gottfredson and Hirschi (not assigned)
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Societal control structure is balanced toward conformity, because society needs social trust.
So even if external control lacks, internal control can still function.
Deviance lumping – if you do one, you do lots.
Empey
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A major contribution of control is the idea that external forces are part of the equation
Social delinquency threatens social order (conservative)
Children need to learn social bond
It has policy implications
See limits of theory pg 347.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Social Control Theory
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Post-Katrina New Orleans
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Things to fix
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Infrastructure
Jobs
Housing
Security
Crime
Social
Disorganization
Anomie
CRIME
Differential
Association
Social
Control
SCHOOL
FAMILY POLICE
SOCIETY
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Individuals in Society - Stigma
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Stigma (relevant points. See Goffman, Stigma)
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Stigma is the discrediting of someone, that is, the defining someone’s non-conforming
behavior or condition as ‘negative’ and making this quality negate any ‘positive’.
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It highlights the negative over the positive.
Stigma is a social definition with social consequences
Leads to a stigmatizing person to adapt to the role, with
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Consequences for not conforming to stigmatized role
May require social movement to change definition
Takes a lot of work for the stigmatized person to be recognized fully as a human being
Once stigmatized, may seek out other discredited people
Assigning stigma is a way to remove a group from the mainstream.
For both achieved and ascribed characteristics.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Labeling Theory
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A structurally caused process, not individually-driven
Put people in categories, stigmatized them.
Can create self-fulfilling prophecy, but ‘the less said the better’.
Labels force one down a deviant career path
Labels are social roles.
Deviance-defining events are ‘dramas’, or rather, power plays. Hence
labeling is an extension of social control theory.
– Why do people say ‘women doctors’ and ‘male nurses’?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Labeling Theory
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Some labels are ‘big’. They stick and don’t wash off. Some are ‘small’ and
can be redeemed.
Ascribed deviance (like self-concepts) – label foisted on by dominant
society
vs Achieved deviance – label acquired through actions.
Who labels? (these are social control agents)
How big are these institutions’ labels. In all places/times?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Labeling Theory
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Howard Becker (same Becker from Differential Assoc)
– In order to build deviance career, depends on “whether they enforce the rule he
has violated’
– Individual might apply label herself based on specific and GO info
– Individual subconsciously wants to get caught.
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Master traits – certain status with connoted descriptors known as ‘auxiliary
traits’.
Subordinate: overridden by master when inconsistent.
See pg 394 “It’s not about the deviant act per se”
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Labeling Theory
Scheff: The mentally ill and labeling
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Mental illness starts with residual deviance – uncategorized by not ‘normal’ behaviors.
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Properties of residual deviance
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Consequences of recognition is societal reaction
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Typecasted and expected to behave a certain way
Further behaviors interpreted in this light.
Others will look back to support current label
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Crisis from diverse sources
Not usually treated
Usually transitory
Labeled deviants get rewarded for ‘conforming’ to their deviance and punished for trying to reject it.
When a crisis ‘outs’ a deviant he will seek a ‘stable deviance role’ explanation.
All these lead up to …Single most important cause of ‘careers’ of residual deviance.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Labeling Theory
Critique by Mankoff
• Is it necessary and/or sufficient?
• Labeling not randomly applied
• Not all labeled go on to careers
• Not all careerists were labeled.
• Mankoff feels it works better for ascribed rather than achieved deviance.
(when you looked at property crime and violent crime criminals).
• Labeling theorists focused on underdog.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Questions for Labeling
Labeling
• Labeling theory is sometimes criticized for having a monolithic view of social
control institutions. Comment on this criticism, using examples from the
course reading and from your own experience.
• Labeling theorists lent a sympathetic ear to deviant groups. To what extent
did they selectively choose deviant groups who were not very dangerous or
not universally condemnable. Is it acceptable to be so selective in choosing
a study population?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Recap of Theory
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Study question: Can you *really* explain/understand the first paragraph on
pg 449?
Sometimes society benefits from defining deviance and sometimes the net
benefits are outnumbered by net detriments.
– Functionalism
• Who benefits from deviance defining (not just who benefits from having the deviance)?
• How does the definition of deviance reinforce boundaries?
– Social disorganization:
• Why is it that many people are ignorant of dominant society’s norms/values?
• How did these subcultures get disorganized?
– Differential Association
• What’s the importance of learning a behavior counter to prevailing social norms? And
what are their neutralizations?
– Social control
• Importance of family and community and other social structures
• Importance of external social control
– Labeling
• A method of external social control to stigmatize and de-legitimize challenges to the
macro-social power hierarchies.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Labeling Limitations
• Deviants are just like us…only they aren’t always.
• They ignored violent, less empathetic deviants at a time
when crime rates were beginning to increase.
• They ignored white collar and elite deviants
• And once there’s a falsehood/weakness, the whole thing
can be tossed with an effective marketing campaign.
• And yet it’s odd that only after the labeling theory period
did these criticisms get so much attention, since C.
Wright Mills raised them earlier (see Chapter 2.9).
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
A macro-view of deviance
• We will need to examine:
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Political landscape
Economy
Cultural values
Changes in
• SES,
• Labor force,
• Technology
– Demographic Processes (Population structure):
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Migration,
Fertility,
Mortality,
Morbidity
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Liazos’ Nuts, Sluts and ‘Preverts’
• If you don’t label, it doesn’t seem to be studied.
• Focus on the macro-picture, not just the ‘small’ deviance.
• Elite deviants/actors are not discredited people. They
may even be following legal means. You can’t ‘deviance
lump’ them, so they tend to get ‘conformist lumped’.
• Agents of social control are not just the individual police,
courts, etc., but the system that encourages and
facilitates an exploitative system.
• Therefore: Talk about ‘oppression, conflict, persecution,
suffering’ (p. 490).
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Politics of Deviance
• There’s a relationship between personal and political
deviance
• Deviance-defining is politically charged, and so is ‘undefining’
• Deviance-defining is a process: identify, apply stigma,
contain, justify. Can result in exacerbating inequality.
• Power is a process, not just an object and so can have
cause and effect.
• Who defines the situation controls the situation, and
same thing for deviance, so you need to dissect who are
the political actors and what do they gain/lose from the
definition?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Politics and Deviance (cont)
• Labeling is a political act
• Containment is a goal (extant), a method/technique
(extant), an outcome/consequence (latent) and
sometimes all three.
– Maintains social order or restructures it.
– Can manage social discontents (containing the disquieted or
containing the disquieteds’ scapegoat).
– Protects state from serious threat.
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Modes of Containments
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Social psychological – interpersonal
Economic
Geographical
Visual
Pharmacological
Electronic
Physical
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Economic Structure & Deviance
• Review of Marxism: The problematic consequences of capitalism
Propertied class in control of production and social capital.
Proletariat – working class – without capital, does not share in full
benefits of its production.
Industrialists try to minimize labor costs with technology, leads to
surplus labor, aka, unemployment, and the unemployed surplus labor
needs to be controlled.
Marxist solution:
A. Overthrow capitalism (or, B, C)
Democratic solution:
A. What’s good for business is good for America. Corporation > labor.
Control surplus labor
B. Regulate business so it doesn’t cause harmful exploitation.
C. Unionize. Individual > corporation.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Economic Structure & Deviance 2
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Labor needs to be controlled
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Shifts in economy introduce disequilibria
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Farming to industrialism
Manufacturing to service
Globalization
Low tech to high tech
Oil economy to ???
Control means creating deviant forms to be regulated
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New labor force entries trigger control responses
Unskilled labor is useful temporarily
When that utility ends, high unemployment occurs (social junk)
Labor that wants to change system is social dynamite
Drug laws are one of the ‘best’
Blame the unemployed
Incarceration and asylums
Define those who reject ‘progress’ as immoral, then ‘contain’ (see slide 42)
Put in military
Educate/indoctrinate
Investing in workers mitigates need for control
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Educate, retrain, develop
OR, convert problem members into agents of state
Form uneasy partnership with criminal (alternate criminal economy) enterprises.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Economic Structure & Deviance 3
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Economic changes in US and growth of populations to control.
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Rise of industrialism and middle class (Dollars & Dreams)
People owned homes with GI Bills.
Productivity increased, like ‘walking up an up escalator’
Union jobs in mfg lifted many.
Blacks also benefited, especially following civil rights movement.
Experienced of crime was relatively low.
Then…things changed.
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Boon in consumer electronics increased consumerism
Yet at the same time, mfg took advantage of automation, outsourcing and offshoring.
And then more offshoring.
Low-skilled jobs for those with HS education seemed to evaporate.
Hit white males growing up on ‘wife stay at home’ model.
Then women entered labor force.
And Blacks saw loss of employment centers and opportunities.
See WJW: Declining Significance of Race
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Black inner city issues not as much about race (he said) but more about economic structure changes
and the loss of opportunity.
So while Marxism says conflict is about class, in the US it was about race, and then, began to be
about competition for wage-earning jobs, that is, among the working class.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Economic Structure & Deviance
• So what does this have to do with deviance?
– When jobs disappear, people seek blame, and blaming large
economic processes is not satisfactory or easy to understand, so
they
• Scapegoat
• Do symbolic crusades and moral panics
• Punish the victims and further remove opportunities.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Cultural Wars: Symbolic Crusades
• Conflict Theory – Status Conflicts
– Class = socioeconomic
– Prestige – value, having more cultural worth and being able to
define what is valuable
– Often has economic power, but not necessarily.
– So when threats to status occur, there are reactions
– Status politics – hostility to others, ultra-dogmatism, extremist
attacks on democratic process. (more common in growth)
– Class politics – arguing about allocation and access to resources
(more common in recession)
– When values become challenged, then the dominant class may
lash out by deviantizing the challengers, and do so by
symbolizing their fears in something the challengers does, says,
or professes.
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Symbolic Crusades
• Gusfield’s argument is useful in many contexts.
– Immigration in late 1800s and early 1900s introduced many eastern
european and mediterranean peoples, who tended to be Catholic (or
Jewish) and were more liberal with drinking.
– This influx of labor occurred also during the emancipation, and also
during a solidification of the ‘old middle class’ around temperance,
which was seen as a symbol of prestige. Eventually, because these
movements go extreme, became Prohibition. (see the note on status
politics previous slide). However, Prohibition, Abolition and Nativism
were all part of the Republican Party ideas in the earlier 1800s.
– And Alcohol is a socially controlled substance, with problematic
properties (addictive, drunkenness) and thus an ideal symbol for
deviance.
– With Temperance movement, US sought to redefine itself as a moral
Christian climate. (even though both teetotalling and heavy drinking
behavior is more common in Protestant groups than in Catholics).
– Lyman Beecher ‘activist preacher’ stated that upper classes needed to
impose moral restraint on themselves, and on the lower classes as well.
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Symbolic Crusades
• But values have economic links…(Rumbarger’s Power, Politics and
Prohibition)
• Remember we also have the movement from farming to
industrialization (and from beer to coffee).
• Industrialists wanted to control Labor.
• Disgruntled labor sat in saloons and schemed unionization, hence
the anti-saloon movement espoused by industrialists. (“misery is
caused by strong drink, strikes and communism.”) Henry Ford
wanted workers to dream the American dream as he dreamed it.
• Industry had few safeguards for workers, so focusing on the drinking
problem was a way to avoid focusing on the high rate of death and
injury in the workplace.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Wayward Puritans:
A study in the sociology of deviance
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Deviance isn’t a property inherent in any behavior, it’s conferred upon a
behavior.
Why does a community assign this behavior to the deviance category?
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Deviance exists to define boundaries.
Deviants ‘patrol’ these borders, and policing agents monitor the deviants.
Statutes are often informal, if ever articulated.
“Morality and immorality meet at the public scaffold…”
Expectations constrain and also shape behavior.
Both variety and similarity are products of the same society: it’s a division of
labor.
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“The deviant and the conformist, then, are creatures of the same culture,
inventions of the same imagination” (p. 21)
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Boundaries are never fixed, and as borders ‘expand’ new forms of deviance
and conformity need to be defined.
– These definitions occur in public formal ceremonies.
– There are few rites of passage that denote leaving a deviant status, and some of
those are equally suspect.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
The Puritans
• Part of the US mythic heritage.
• The Puritans emerged in the English battle for theocratic power
between the Catholic Church (pomp & circumstance, connection to
deity via intermediaries) and the Church of England (less pomp,
more informal connection).
• Saw only one way to the true word, they knew it, and needed
therefore to go where they could just be their own austere,
humorless, intolerant selves.
• When they left England, they uprooted themselves from the known
world of social control – away from familiar norms and values.
• ‘Reality originated in the imagination of Gd’ (but there was no more
revelation): so it would be even harder to know what is.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Puritan Paradoxes
Identifying causes of deviance-definitions may mean looking for cultural
paradoxes.
• Puritans were both austere as medievalists, and rejecting of pomp
as the newer forms.
• Were both prideful and humble. Had the only ‘way’ and yet very
worried about sin.
• Doubt their own perception but be darn sure about their fundamental
precepts. .
– “if a persuasive argument should jar a Puritan’s certitude…he had every
right to suspect devilish mischief”
Their challenge was to bring it all together. But it also set up the
American paradoxical identity of individualism and suspicion of
differences.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Law and Order
• They had no clear legal code.
• Magistrates (clergy) settled legal disputes.
• Non-magistrates (business and shareholders) wanted
stable definitions: more than a power play but a core
understanding of the Puritan experience.
• Codifying a law revealed the inner inconsistencies.
– One of the surest ways to confirm an identify for communities as
well as individuals is to find some way of measuring what one is
not.
– And so, we had the ‘crime waves’ of New England…the seeds
were already sown.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Antinomianism The crisis of “Hutchinsonism”
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Individualism versus conformity to established leadership hierarchy.
– Who had authority to determine ‘true conversion’ and ‘state of grace’?
– They needed to create their society, they weren’t English anymore, but what
were they? Who could define if they were a community of saints in the howling
wilderness, or individual entrepreneurs in the pursuit of spirituality?
– The followers pushed too many buttons though, and provoked censure.
– Plus, Mrs Hutchinson was a woman.
– But the theological case against her was largely political (another American
tradition):
• How do you do the right thing if you know it’s not what the authority tells you is right,
and if enough reject this authority, then you need a new authority, or a new
social/political structure.
• Or, if rejection and individualism earns sainthood, how can the same things earn the
opposite? (Covenant of grace was an individual experience, but it was seen through
conformist behavior).
– Logic doesn’t work in these kinds of crime waves.
– In the end, Mrs. H. provoked the magistrates so much that they had no room to
move except to censure her.
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The Quaker Crisis
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Quakers came in and challenged the Puritans by minor differences.
Hats, ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, their own style of ‘meetings’. Also, they were
missionizing, although it’s not clear to what.
These differences were enough to provoke fear and then violent outrage.
Quakers asked for ‘subjective’ freedom, and tolerance.
The Quakers symbolized change and leaving behind the past and it freaked
out the Puritan colonists (after all, the Puritans came to be themselves, and
so did the Quakers).
“…they indicate very clearly how small tokens and insignia can come to
mean a great deal when a community begins to label its deviant members.”
(p.127).
In the end, the ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ reference changed for the Puritans. It wasn’t
Us vs ‘England’ it was ‘Us, whatever we are’ against ‘Other Americans,
whoever they are’.
(p.128) seeking “inner reliance” can turn into seeking ‘inner possession”
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All hell breaks loose:
the Witches of Salem
•
•
•
•
Occurred in a time of political uncertainty … future of the colony and its rule
was at stake, and the certainty of earlier years was now eroded by societal
change and relative diversity.
Their ‘city on the hill’ in the howling wilderness was replaced by a city in
civilization with everyone else, and so the best enemies were those of their
imagination.
With their moral universe and its definition preoccupying their minds, the
appearance of evil spirits flew out of their nightmarish concerns.
Thus…
– Girls acting weird (collective hysteria)
– Beyond medical understanding so it must be of religious cause (what would it be
now?)
– Black slave from the Caribbean with voodoo roots?
– Girls got power from the reactions, and were rewarded for it.
– Got out of hand, accused so many that finally, the evidence had to be evaluated
by those still standing, and the evidence was found to be faulty, and that was
that.
– No one who confessed was executed.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Deviance by those with social capital
Review Slide #34: ‘oppression, conflict, persecution,
suffering’ or ‘harm’.
Forms:
• White collar – crimes committed by individuals in the capacity
of their job
• Political – similar to white collar, except for political
advantage.
• Corporate – crimes or unethical behavior committed as part of
company strategy
• Organizational – similar to corporate
• Governmental – crimes and unethical behavior committed by
political and government actors in order to advance the power
of the government and its rulers.
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Cohen
•
Summary
–
–
–
–
–
•
•
Cultural and structural conditions permeate society and
Support corporate/high status deviance
Using the same mechanisms as in lower class deviance
But with different set of ‘resources’ and hence outcomes.
Cohen points out you can draw from a number of theories to explain deviance AND that
theories for explaining other social forms also can be applied to deviance (e.g., mechanical
and organic solidarity; or functionalism).
So Cohen sets the stage for a complex set of theories to explain deviance at different
levels and in different contexts.
He concludes that, just as deviant responses take several forms to strain, so can
controlling responses:
–
–
–
Open up legitimate opportunities (there weren’t enough)
Open up illegitimate (legalize or cease to prosecute)
Close up illegitimate (better control, longer imprisonment)
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Passas
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Show shows unnoticed upper class deviance has been
Values: bottom line, corporate success…
Society and economy structure goals into “capitalist race”.
Culture is differential association, too.
Strain should increase deviance in struggling companies
But it can become part of the fabric of corporate life if it’s very common.
Corporate deviance is rationalized, assigned to subordinates, and
legitimated through political pressure.
In other words, it takes money to make money, it also takes big money to
steal big money.
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Background
• Biblical: e.g., Don’t have unequal weights and measures (Deut
25:14-15)
• Roman: Caveat Emptor – let the buyer beware
• Modern: “The purpose of the state is to settle upper class disputes
peacefully, control lower class rebellion and adopt policies that
would further long-term stability” (Zinn).
• In the early 20th century, the combination of worker treatment and
unrest, prices from monopoly and oligopolistic behavior, duplicative
municipal services, consumer uprising and eventually political
pressure led to regulation.
• But you can’t easily ‘inspect’ all products, services, organizations
and politicians.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Motivations
How do these fit into our previous theories?
• Greed
• Arrogance
• Hatred
CW Mills: Businesses “obey these laws, when they do, not because
they think it’s morally right, but because they are afraid of getting
caught…[L]aws exist without the support of firm, moral conviction. If
it is merely illegal to cheat, it is considered smart to get away with it”
Given that, then we should expect (a) widespread abuse (b) execs are
aware (c) They don’t think they’ve done anything wrong even when
caught.
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Controlling Elite and White Collar Deviance
•
•
•
•
•
•
Deterrence – regulation that bites
Punishment – fines that hurt, prison terms
Consciousness-raising – education, leading by example
Publicity –negative and positive
Clarifying gray areas
Intelligent law-making
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The Overall Context for Elite Deviance
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Loss of faith in government post-Watergate
“Me” generation of greed
Lack of job stability : erosion of commitments
Urbanization leads to less personal connection and erosion of
external social control
Family instability – erosion of internal control.
Income disparities – more entitlement
Business/TV/Media promoting consumption at any cost
Mass incarceration of large % of racial/ethnic groups creates an ‘us
–do no harm’ versus ‘them – do all the crime’ mentality.
All this in the face of our contemporary paradoxes:
– Stress on winning and success without adequate opportunity
– Winning and success defined as ‘making money’.
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Those American Values
•
•
•
•
Achievement orientation
Individualism
Universalism
Fetishism of money
• Attempts to limit massive accumulations of wealth, etc.
are labeled as ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’ plots.
• Gov’t in the US and other advanced nations are part of
the economy so business expends considerable effort to
control government.
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Set and Setting of ED
•
Organizational Structures
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
Authority
Specialized vocabulary and ideologies
Denial of responsibility
Denial of humanity of victim
Higher loyalties (hence Simon’s ‘higher immoralities’)
Condemning condemers
Fragmentation
– Just my job
– Not my decision
•
Individual Pathologies
– Personality disorders: narcissism, attachment disorders, etc.
•
Interaction of Organizational Structure, Culture and Personality
– Structure can create a permissible non-controlled/forced context
– Culture provides neutralizations
– Personalities run with it.
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The context of elite deviance
• Pay attention to individual-level deviance versus systemiclevel (organization-wide) deviance.
• Scandals and their impact:
• More apparent – modern telecommunications, diversity in the
press corp.
• ‘Everyone does it’ – when everyone does and there’s no risk –
implicitly means it’s okay.
• Scandals lead to disillusionment and non-involvement by the
electorate in the democratic process.
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Other costs of ED
• Financial
– Loss of assets, resources and economic security
– Taxpayer costs disproportionately hurt lower and middle income levels
– Lower salaries, unemployment
• Socioeconomic
–
–
–
–
Long term set-backs in certain communities and groups.
Negligence of infrastructure
Avoidance of social responsibilities
Growing disparity between poor/working class/middle and wealthy
• Physical/health
– Damage to environment –pollution, species loss, air, water and soil
quality
– Unsafe products
– Disease, disability and disfigurement
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Results of ED
•
Results of ED Behavior
–
–
–
–
–
•
More deaths and injuries than by street crime
Undermines public confidence in democratic system
Shape criminal law to focus on street crime
Huge monetary costs to society and individuals
Supports corruptive organized crime which permeates government institutions
Summary of ED Characteristics (p.12)
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
Acts are by upper class
Some violate criminal codes, some civic, some immoral
Some for personal gain, others for organizational gain
Low risk of apprehension and punishment
Imposed dangers on others
Able to conceal behavior for years
ED is often part of business plan
Discussion Question (see p.36)
– ED includes 3 acts: economic domination, control of government, denial of basic
human rights) Agree or Disagree??
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Theoretical Underpinnings:
Karl Mannheim
• Bureaucratic conservativism – Don’t rock the boat
• Traditional conservatism – We’re in power, so it must be right and
good
• Bourgeois liberalism – ‘rational’ discourse by all the people – allows
approval of folly by majority.
• Socialist thought: there are real conflicts of interest
• Fascism – When socialism and liberalism appear as relativist fronts
for an ideology, the other side of the conflict seeks to define an
alternate, absolute truth. “Fascism is the ideology of the marginal
politician…It finds its followers among those who want to return to
dogmatic certainties; in a time of chaos, there are many who would
sacrifice everything for law and order”. (Conrad & Makowsky). It
always has a coercive component. “My way or the highway – or
prison”
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Mannheim to Mills
For Mannheim
• (a) all governments are run by bureaucracies
• (b) Bureaucratic operations become interdependent
• (c) Question is will it be an intelligent and humanistic elite or a shortsighted, irrational and foolish elite? *
C Wright Mills
• Picked up on Weber’s and Mannheim’s theories of bureaucracy in
modern society by combining the notion of bureaucracy
interdependence and elite rule.
• Noted declining significance of middle class
• Noted the limited access social institution of the economic elite.
– The inner core of those who hold key roles in multiple spheres.
– The fact that these core roles are not equal opportunity positions.
© 2008 Leora Lawton
65
Mills and the MIC
• Industry benefits from the military; and industry seeks to
control government decision-making.
• The same players appear in all three spheres.
• Eisenhower coined the phrase ‘military-industrial complex’
and warned of its inherent threats.
• Mills felt that there’s no checks & balances against MIC.
• Mills points out that it’s not that there aren’t valid military
threats, but that the MIC takes control of governmental
strategy to work in to the favor of the Elite’s and not to the
nation as a whole.
• And, every state needs an enemy: if it’s not communism, or
capitalism, or terrorism (and the more vague the better), then
it’s drugs, heretics, morality, or someone else’s culture.
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Functionalism View of Elite Deviance
• Defining and controlling of deviance is a technique for
invoking social control forces
• Power is not distributed equally across society
– Power is desirable
– Lots of power enables control over others
– Those with a lot of power can choose to deprive others of their
own rights (including access to knowledge & info)
• Power Elite is not individual behavior, it’s a group relationship.
– Application of socially-controlling deviance must have societal
buy-in for it to work.
– Claims-making becomes a required marketing method to get
widespread acceptance
– Claims are not always true but will lead to ED’s desired outcome.
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Michels’ Law of Oligarchy
Organizations become oligarchical through the following
process:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A rather small number of people carry out the bulk of the decisions because
it’s more expeditious
This delegated set of leaders takes on more power, seeking to extend their
authority, and new leaders are selected by old.
Decisions are carried out behind-the-scenes.
Leaders become more ‘conservative’ in that they oppose change, as they
begin to re-interpret the organization’s mission to serve them.
Members expect that the organization will fulfill their needs; but leaders look
to fulfill their own needs.
It usually takes a crisis for anything to get fixed.
Members don’t oppose because
– They don’t know what’s going on
– They’re too spread out to have power
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Michels - 2
“Who says ‘organization’ really means ‘oligarchy’”.
• It may not be so much evil as delinquent, but it can be grossly
irresponsible.
What is the cure?
• Crisis to catalyze change (but not always)
• Regular, detailed communications to members
• Accountability, e.g., outside audits, with separation from board
members.
• Adherence to by-laws
• Competent leadership
– Start with a core, or toss out the old bunch.
– Activist leadership – people seeking and knowing how to bring about
change that is in line with what’s needed and wanted.
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Claims-Making
Claims-making:
– Defining deviance in a way that it will benefit someone through latent functions.
– It’s therefore a technique in the arsenal of social control.
– To get the word about the ‘new’ deviance it requires marketing. That’s what
claims making is.
•
•
•
It may be a real problem now recognized (e.g., child abuse)
Or a condition blown completely out of proportion (e.g., ‘stranger-abducted
missing children’).
It doesn’t matter if the condition exists, just that a claim is being made about
it.
Claims-makers shape our sense of what the problem is – for their own
benefit.
Words are important (teen pregnancy versus teen promiscuity)
•
As with other marketing efforts, claims become fads.
•
•
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Claims-making -2
• Consequences
–
–
–
–
Punish or socially control violators
Enhance certain socio-political actors or institutions
Make money
Rationalize problematic behavior (medicalization)
• How to make claims
–
–
–
–
–
Evoke negative emotionality – horror, fear, outrage
Separate context from condition and make atypical seem typical
Use attention grabber
Rely on official sources
Make all responsibility the individuals’ not the system
• Stigmatize them
• Typify the trouble-makers
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Statistics can be a tool for claims-making
Use big numbers
Use official sources
Use big numbers from official sources
Trust the media to repeat it over again.
You don’t need statistics for the last point, any ‘fact’ will do,
especially if ‘experts said…’
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Process of Claims-Making
• Process
– Cite Evidence
– Use rhetoric
– Assert solution
• Who makes claims?
– Victims – grass roots
– Professionals – PR Firms
– Actors and organizations that will profit in one way or another.
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Medical Sociology - Introduction
• Health and illness are socially defined using
– Science; religious experience, insanity, witchcraft, evil
– Associated with stigma or sin
– Vary by culture (takes on different meanings) and across time.
• ‘Dis-ease’ and ‘dis-ability’ and ‘dys-function’ – implying lack of
productivity, activity
– Some diseases are obvious (e.g., cancer)
– Others, not:
– Health levels and health behavior are linked
•
•
•
•
•
•
Per capital wealth, economic development, industrialization
Age, sex
Education and income, social class
Form of government
Payment system form of health care
Race, ethnicity, religion (culturally defined)
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Medical Sociology
– Physicians and their world
•
Physicians were healers of spiritual ills.
– Shamans, priests, priestesses, ‘wise women’, midwives.
•
Several developments changed that.
–
–
–
–
Sanitation
Germs, vaccines and antibiotics
Painkillers
Quackery arose and the need for some oversight and overhaul needed
• 2+ yrs of biology and physical sciences,
• School affiliated with university
• Rigorous licensing
•
Result: better quality but also a trade guild.
– Exclusion of Jews, blacks, women.
– Pecking order of medical providers
– Physician-patient status hierarchy.
•
Since the 70s, more physicians are women and minorities, patients are
better educated and better informed (Internet!), HMOs are the boss, so
there’s less hierarchy.
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Medical Sociology – Health differentials
•
Reasons
–
–
–
•
Differences
–
–
–
–
–
•
Biological – gender, race, age.
Social and cultural – lifestyle, dietary behaviors
Economic – access to medical care, nutrition, exercise, safe environments, safe occupations.
Gender – men have brute strength but women are healthier.
Age – age-related diseases for childhood through old age from genetics or exposure
Race – some genetic (e.g., sickle cell, Tay-Sachs).
Social – smoking, diets, meaning of fitness & health, alcoholic consumption, interaction of
gender and social behavior.
Economic – Adequate food, health care & insurance
Theorists:
–
–
–
Weber: Health and healthy lifestyles are status symbols
Marx: unhealthy working and living conditions signify exploitation.
Consumerism – wealthy ‘consumers as patients’ negotiate better deals.
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Medical Sociology
– Forms of Medical Deviance
• Physician-level (white collar)
– Negligent behavior, assault while patient is sedated.
• Unsafe staffing & practices at hospitals
– Using lower paid assistants instead of RNs.
• Treating health issues as criminality
– Criminalizing unhealthy behavior (e.g., drug addiction)
• Focusing on individual aspects of illness rather than the
environmentally or socially constructed or configured causes.
– Infertility as a women’s problem and ‘their decisions to delay
childbearing’
– Fetal health and women
• Harmful experiments
– CIA conducted experiments with LSD in the 1950s on unsuspecting
agents and civilians.
– Using inmates in prisons and mental hospitals.
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Medical Sociology – Forms of Social Control
• “Medicalization … seeks to eliminate, modify, isolate, or
regulate socially defined behavior as deviant, with
medical means, in the name of health.” (p. 564).
– Phrases like ‘disease-management’ or ‘pain management’ –
treating symptoms instead of disease, lent itself to treating social
behavior as symptoms to be managed and controlled.
– Medical information can be used to deny health insurance,
employment, marriages…
– Medical conditions can be used to excuse behavior
– Medicalization confers status to physicians,
– Gives patients a role and an excuse.
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Medical Sociology - Medicalization
• Pluses:
–
–
–
–
–
Removes stigma
Offers sick role as a way to reconcile problematic self-image.
Optimistic outcome – a disease to be treated and maybe cured.
Expands authority of medicine (debatable plus)
More flexible than judicial control
• Minuses
– Absolves person of responsibility
– Allows ‘moral neutrality’ of medicine to run unchecked.
– Conferred social control (power) to medical world without due
process
– Excuses evil instead of confronting it for what it is.
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Medical Sociology
Discussion Questions for Bad Blood
1.
2.
3.
4.
In the Tuskegee experiment, the research question itself had much to do with the
outcome of the research process. Discuss how this is so, and think of how similar
problems might occur with other research (not just medical).
It seems that the medical establishment in general had few or no problems with the
Tuskegee experiment. Why would this be so? To what extent is this because
medical professionals bear the same social values as others in the society? To what
extent is it the result of something specific to medical power relationships?
Many people and organizations concerned with AIDS and with public health in
general believe that the federal (and now internationally in Africa, many
governments) acted slowly on research and prevention. These critics argue that
such inaction or slow action was due to a belief that AIDS victims were somehow
unworthy or at fault. How do you evaluate this criticism? Do you have an alternative
explanation(s)?
How could Nurse Rivers have continued to participate the way she did? Explain this
behavior based on race, class, gender. Then GOOGLE ‘Nurse Rivers’ Tuskegee
obituary and see what explanations you find.
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
• Corporate crime is big money.
• Victims are consumers, taxpayers and stockholders
• Small percentage of felonies serve prison. Fines are
usually small enough to incorporate into Cost of Goods
Sold (COGS) calculations.
• It goes on till it gets caught, and it’s hard to uncover.
• Once uncovered, corporate lawyers know how to stall to
jack up the costs of investigation and prosecution,
leading to deals and low penalties.
• Bad management is immoral?
• Don’t forget to review slides 60-66.
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Anti-competitive behavior
Fraud (advertising, product content, bait&switch)
Tax Fraud
Stock market manipulations
Discriminatory practices in hiring and promotion.
Deals with organized crime.
Illegal contracts
CEO benefits
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
• Fraud:
– Misrepresenting a business or deal as having certain features
while masking the unequal nature of it.
• Profits through deception
–
–
–
–
Product content
Advertising
Securities violations
Tax fraud
•
•
•
•
•
Not reporting all income
Reporting exaggerations or overstating of expenses.
Money laundering
Off shoring corporate headquarters
Nauru
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
Backdating Executive Stock Options (ESO).
– Stating the date stock options were ‘purchased’ is at the trough value of
the stock. So if you buy x stock for y dollars, and then want to sell them
at a peak price for, say, 5y, then you have just made 500%.
– It’s not illegal if…
•
•
•
•
No documents forged
It’s communicated to stockholders
It’s reflected in tax statements
It’s reflected in earnings
as an expense (which affects profit)
http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/elie/backdating.htm
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
Running a company down the tubes and taking what’s left
•
When Coca-Cola CEO Douglas Ivester announced his retirement, Bloomberg
compensation analyst Graef Crystal observed, "Here is a man who is resigning after
a two-year tenure as CEO that produced a return for shareholders of a negative 7.3
percent. For that, he is walking away with stock, options and other goodies worth at
least $120 million." Meanwhile, as the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch reports, CocaCola is laying off thousands of workers and facing a lawsuit alleging the company
discriminated against black employees in promotions, pay and performance
evaluations.
•
Many CEOs make more in a year than their employees will make in a lifetime. Last
year, the average CEO of a major corporation earned $12.4 million, including salary,
bonus and other compensation such as exercised stock options, according to
Business Week's latest survey of executive pay. That's $34,000 a day including
Saturdays and Sundays.
•
In 1980, CEOs made 42 times the pay of average factory workers. In 1990, they
made 85 times as much. By 1999, CEOs made 475 times as much as workers.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/041700-101.htm, Holly Sklar
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
•
McKinnell [CEO of Pfizer], who is also head of the Business Roundtable, was even more
assertive, dismissing critics who point to his $83 million lump-sum pension, his $16 million in total
comp last year, and his stock's 42% decline (emphasis added) since he took charge in 2001 as
proof of pay for nonperformance.
•
While calling the overall debate "healthy," McKinnell questions the "agenda" of many "executivecompensation activists who try to inflame the issue of CEO pay."
•
Says he: "There's a much larger issue here; compensation is being used as part of a battle over
control of the corporation itself."
•
In McKinnell's view, "an unholy alliance" of special interests - environmentalists, animal-rights
activists, hedge funds - want to wrest decision-making control from boards and CEOs in pursuit of
"their narrow interests," even though most shareholders "are pretty happy with the way companies
today are being run."
•
McKinnell also says a scrubbing of pay numbers that the Roundtable commissioned found that "a
lot of those big ratios everyone points to are just not supported by the data. CEOs are still very
well paid, but they're not that well paid."
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/07/10/8380799/ Rik Kirkland, Fortune
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Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
• Employment discrimination
Forms
– Hiring and promotions discrimination by race, gender, religion, etc.
(although not all limitations are discrimination).
– Preference for ‘people like us’
– Glass ceilings, dead-ends.
Mechanism
– Not providing opportunities through training, mentoring, being included
in formal and informal meetings with clients and higher-ups.
– Not having defined criteria for promotions, or criteria being biased to
represent one kind of person.
Results
– Salaries
– Benefits
– Job Satisfaction
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Corporate Deviance
– Financial Crime for Profiteering
• Go through several examples and think about the causes of this
form of deviance, and therefore, the possible controls necessary to
avoid it.
Example:
CEOs excessive compensation and/or backdating of stocks.
First, what theories explain these behaviors?
Second, given the sources, what is needed to counteract either the
motivations, neutralizations or external control structure?
Third, what barriers are there to enforcement, either currently or for the
suggested policies?
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© 2008 Leora Lawton
Government Policing of Workplace Safety
•
In the current Bush administration, the budgets Bush proposes request a decrease in funding for
OSHA but Congress has rejected it. Still, according to AFL/CIO and UAW estimates (which are to
be taken with a grain of salt) FTE for monitoring has dropped, even as needs have increased.
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OSHA Statistics
Note: Injuries and fatalities may have dropped as a result of the recession following 2000.
Workplace Injuries and Illness Rate (per
100 workers)
Number of Workplace Injuries and
Illnesses
Fatalities per 100k workers
Number of fataliaties
2000
2002
2003
2004
6.1
5.3
5
4.8
5,650,100 4,700,600 4,365,200 4,257,300
4.3
5,920
4
5,534
4
5,575
4.1
5,703
From the AFL/CIO, citing data from Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.aflcio.org/issues/factsstats/factsstats.cfm
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Corporate Crime
– Physical Harm
•
Factors instrumental in making it difficult to identify and prosecute corporate
behavior that results in death, disfigurement and illness:
– Corporations as non-entities with multiple chains of authority make either
everyone responsible, but since everyone can pass the buck or claim ignorance,
no one becomes responsible.
– It is rare to see criminal prosecutions, let alone convictions, which ‘educates’
correctionalist institutions to not seek that route.
– Individual cases can be silenced through settlements.
– Criminality requires intent, and it is rare to see actual intent. Rather, decisions
are made that emphasize profits or public image (and good will is a financial
concept).
– Even when someone in a corporation is tasked to identifying problematic
products or processes, they can be blinded to unusual patterns because the
language used to describe events doesn’t cover the situation.
In other words, organizational structure, power hierarchies and social construction of
reality create a situation where corporate malfeasance can go so unnoticed as to
make it seem untouchable. Not okay, just untouchable.
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Facilitators of Corporate Violence
Corporations consistently try to avoid reaching conclusions that their
products are harmful, even when evidence is compelling. Why is
this?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Organizational structure
Profit-motive
Culture and personality
Punishments mild
Corporate-government connections
Public opinion
Perpetrators removed from victim
Often no law is actually violated.
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No responsibility
The Challenger
Corporation structure and organization means no one’s responsible
Managers who identify problems become the problem:
“Adversarial truth” therefore gets suppressed.
Escalation to upper levels therefore is to be avoided.
Senior management therefore can claim ignorance, and blame lower-level folks, who
say:
“This isn’t my reporting channel”
“He is not in the launch decision chain”
Thus loss of individual-level moral responsibility due to corporate structure could lead one
to conclude that no one felt responsible and therefore, no one was responsible.
It’s hard to prosecute for bad-decisions. No one at Thiokol was fired, let alone indicted or
convicted.
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Culture
BF Goodrich
• Culture of derision and disrespect directed the ability to
accept conclusions.
– Senior designer’s plans were faulty
– Junior ‘fresh out of college’ engineer made observation
– Senior manager without college degree wouldn’t escalate and
instead attacked junior.
– Allegiances along political lines emerged.
– Profit motivation for executives pressured lower level to deny
adversarial truth and to write the qualifying report no matter what
the evidence showed.
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The Language of Avoidance
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ford and Pinto
– Profit motive is dominant value
– Organizational scripts limit interpretation.
Market motive circumvented normal quality processes
Tests showed Pinto would suffer tank rupture.
Cost benefit analysis led to conclusion that ‘Consumer Homicide’ was worth it.
Race & class: Who would buy Pintos?
Neutralization: Cars don’t kill people, bad roads and drivers kill people.
Recall – to remember, to become aware of issues, to call back.
Why did Dennis Gioia, Recall Coordinator and Analyst, not recommend a recall?
Things didn’t fit into organizational script and interpretive process.
– Strong Ford culture and indoctrination
– Intimidated to ‘heel’ to Ford company preferences
– His own career cost-benefit analysis
– Good person who made bad choices
95
– Moral failure – weak internalization of values
© 2008 Leora Lawton
Public Opinion and Corporate Crime
Recent convictions carry much more weight:
• Worldcom:
– Ebbers 25 years,
– VP Finance, 5 years.
• Enron:
– Richard Causey: 7 years
– Kenneth Lay: convicted on all counts.
– Skilling: 24 years plus $26 out-of-pocket fines.
• Tyco
– 2 executives got 8.33 years to 25 for looting hundreds of millions
of dollars
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Political Deviance Forms
Kinds of political deviance (see Ch. 6: 208, ED)
Money: Kick-backs, bribes, illegal contributions, funneling contracts
without bidding, utilizing tax dollars for personal benefit. Enacting (or
blocking opposing) legislation to protect wealth distribution to at
expense of taxpayers (e.g., ‘pork’)
Power: Election fraud, ‘stacking the court’,
Gross mismanagement from accepting a job (political position) for
which
(a) you are not qualified ; or
(b) you have no intentions of actually fulfilling its requirements.
Irresponsible sexual liaisons and harassment
Being partisan for the sake of being partisan
Character assassination
People involved in political deviance: politicians (elected and
appointed), police, regulatory agents, bureaucrats.
97
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Political Deviance
Why is there political deviance?
Each one of the theories of deviance contributes a portion to our
understanding.
– Anomie
– Social Control
– Differential Association
– Social Disorganization
– Symbolic crusades
– Control Theory
– Functionalism
But is that all there is?
98
© 2008 Leora Lawton
Political Deviance
A suggested overall process: where does it all start?
External control of
rules, laws.
No
Internal
control:
sense of
entitlement
Protect
power,
Feed
greed
No
Learn
from
others
Understand
one’s status
in society
Neutralizations
Take
action
© 2008 Leora Lawton
99
Political Deviance
Cultural Origins – See Simon, ch 6.
‘What you see is where I’ve been’
• “Founding Fathers” were the most wealthy and powerful, and
designed the new government to protect their interests.
• Slaves were ¾ person – not total, because of racism, but given
personhood so that slave-owning states had access to more power.
Indians were given personhood only if they paid taxes, which
benefited eastern states over frontier.
• Women had no rights.
• Fundamental protection of property rights.
• Electoral college delegation process designed to prevent voice of
people.
100
© 2008 Leora Lawton
Political Deviance
Look at the pattern…
• Leaders are powerful people
• Powerful people tend to have wealth.
• So the purpose of the power tends to be to preserve and
enhance wealth, rather than using the money for public
good. See ED, Ch 6: pg 231
• Examine Simon’s ‘myths’ (pg 247-248)
• The antidote:
– Making political power as accessible as possible to people.
– Structural control to minimize risk for political deviance.
• ‘Let them eat cake’ example.
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Political Deviance
The importance of structure
1. Checks and balances for power and its institutions
2. Regulatory bodies
3. Authority with responsibility
The importance of a free press
1. Investigates improprieties (no one else does unless
there’s a charge of a crime, and there almost never is).
2. But is increasingly run by profit-making goals more so
than the desire to put out a quality newspaper with
quality journalism.
3. Dumbing down of American media.
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Political Deviance – 9/11 Symposium
How did the mission of ‘not assigning
individual blame’ have an impact on the
report’s conclusions?
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Political Deviance – 9/11 Symposium
Perrow
By ignoring individual contributions from non-governmental actors, or
low-level actors, the Report diminishes potential for local control and
instead seeks massive centralized organizational control.
Differences between Clinton and Bush Administrations:
A. Clinton, even though distracted by sex scandal, still acted to prevent
terrorism.
Despite ‘wall’ between FBI and CIA, Clinton managed to get
cooperation.
But he let the organizational challenges unaddressed.
B. Bush, did not address org issues either, and also did not stray from
his preconceived notions despite far more credible info regarding
imminent terrorism threats.
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Political Deviance – 9/11 Symposium
Tierney
The conclusions of the Report relied on a current theme of ‘controlling
the people’ rather than ‘empowering the people’.
Therefore, wants a militaristic solution, meaning that the way to protect
our freedom is to remove it.
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Governmental Deviance
• Historical Sociology
– Understanding deviance, and especially governmental deviance,
requires methods of historical sociology, where historical events,
facts and conditions, value systems, etc. become data.
– The value of this form of research is to avoid being doomed to
repeat history.
– Remember to read history from different sides of the conflicts.
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Governmental Deviance
• Often overlaps with political deviance forms (see slide 100)
• Difficult to control
– Legal definitions lacking
– Citizens of world have limited court/police with which to pursue
justice.
• UN and other similar bodies lack adequate legitimacy.
– Legitimacy: when the people give a leader authority to rule.
•
•
•
•
Coercive (sometimes part of Legal-Rational or others)
Legal-Rational
Traditional
Charismatic
– Hegemony – sphere of influence or control
• Ideological hegemony – control of ideas and values, and therefore
dominant parties seek control of information.
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Governmental Deviance
• Key elements from our theory which are definitional
criteria:
– GDev is dysfunctional – it benefits one group at expense of
others.
– It utilizes symbolic crusades as a way to get societal buy-in
– Needs physical control practice to enforce
– Utilizes an ideology that scapegoats and feeds off fear, with the
Big Lie.
– Uses labeling
– Organized deviance – political leaders collude with those they
know, based on their own experiences. (diff. assoc).
– Requires support of military-industry (or economic leaders)
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Governmental Deviance
Possible Forms of Government Deviance
• Government mistreatment of its own population
– Fails to perform because of corruption (security, public health, economy,
human/civil rights)
– Scapegoats minority group and causes harm for power consolidation.
– Bankrupts country’s assets for personal benefit.
• Government oppression with respect to other populations
–
–
–
–
–
–
Non-defensive wars for conquest
Genocide and mass murder
Probably colonialism and imperialism and certainly in its consequences
Slavery and slave trade.
Assassinations and other manipulations of other governments.
Standing by – or creating a context for others to commit acts of
violence.
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US Involvement in Iraq
– is it Governmental Deviance?
• First, let’s look at the criteria and evidence indicators (#111-112).
• Second, evaluate:
– Saddam-Al Qaida link: Hussein had coercive legitimacy with a
hegemonic platform that was secular. The country was modern to a
large degree and progressive in many ways. Al Qaida is populist, and
religious-based. Their power bases are at odds with each other.
– No history of democratic process
– Nation-building doesn’t ‘just happen’.
– Influence of colonialism endures (French and British)
– Ethnicity plays a central role in Middle East, and does so differently than
it does in the West.
• Thus, even excluding the WMD arguments, the war effort was likely
to cause exactly the outcome we see. And, as for the WMD claims,
which are now shown to be false, and with Libby’s conviction, we
can see the anomie ‘ends justify means’ neutralizations, where the
end itself is problematic: blind support for the Administration,
regardless of conflicting facts.
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Gov Deviance – War in Iraq?
•
Yes
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
The Big Lie: (5 mistruths about war justification)
Labeling of opposition
Political assassination of opposition.
Caused massive death and destruction.
Created instability with long-term dangerous consequences.
Redirected finite resources to a no-win situation instead of taking care of domestic population
Ignored credible warnings re: 9/11 and then pursues non-9/11 country.
Invokes symbolic crusades and demonizes enemies.
Led to loss of civil liberties and abuses of power domestically.
Tremendous profit going to limited companies, all associates of the Administration’s power
base.
Created outside of legitimate processes by limited set of long-term associates.
No
–
–
–
–
–
Hussein was a ruthless dictator.
Oil critical to national well-being.
Hussein wanted to trade in another currency, not dollars.
Hussein was a proven aggressor in the region.
The Democrats almost all voted for it, too (which could mean they too are guilty of this
deviance).
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Governmental Deviance
– Pol Pot & Cambodia
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_pot)
•
•
•
•
Cambodia was French Colony. After independence in 1954, run by King
Norodom Sihanouk, who played the parties against each other while using
the police and army to suppress extreme political groups. Corrupt elections
in 1955 led many leftists in Cambodia to abandon hope of taking power by
legal means. The communist movement, while ideologically committed to
armed struggle in these circumstances, did not launch a rebellion because
of the weakness of the party.
Pol Pot became leader when competition was arrested by Sihanouk. He
then got support from Vietnamese communist party, and the movement took
hold after another round of repression by Sihanouk in 1965. Vietnamese
began utilizing Cambodian territory.
By summer of 1968, Pol Pot’s power base was considerably larger and
more influential. With more help from Vietnamese, mobilized Khmer Rouge
into solid force of irregulars (read: not trained).
The theme used by Pol Pot was one of a combination of leftist politics, antiintellectualism.
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GDev- Pol Pot continued
• The city people were considered almost a disease that needed to be
contained so that it not infect the areas run by the Khmer Rouge.
• He also ordered a series of general purges. Former government
officials and anyone with an education was singled out in the
purges.
• A set of new prisons was constructed in Khmer Rouge run areas.
• The Cham minority attempted an uprising around this time against
attempts to destroy their culture. While the uprising was quickly
crushed, Pol Pot ordered that harsh physical torture be used against
most of those involved in the revolt.
• Pol Pot tested out harsh new policies against the Cham minority
before extending them to the general population of the country.
• Internationally, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were able to gain the
recognition of 63 countries as the true government of Cambodia. A
move was made at the United Nations to give the seat for Cambodia
to the Khmer Rouge. The government prevailed by two votes.
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GDev- Pol Pot continued
• Out of a population of approximately 8 million, Pol Pot's
regime exterminated one quarter, or almost 2 million
people.
• The Khmer Rouge targeted Buddhist monks, Westerneducated intellectuals, educated people in general,
people who had contact with Western countries, people
who appeared to be intelligent (for example, individuals
with glasses), the crippled and lame, and ethnic
minorities like ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese.
• Some were thrown into the infamous S-21 camp for
interrogation involving torture in cases where a
confession was useful to the government. Many others
were subject to summary execution.
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Governmental Deviance
• Relating this to your final paper:
– Look at the morality essays: essentially each one is a more
involved version of what I expect in the final paper. Note their
outline: Discusses importance, highlights interesting aspects of
book (summarizes), and then explains them sociologically
(usually through framing and labeling). Then the essayist adds
his/her own perspective about the implications of the book and
the subject matter in question.
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War on Drugs - Background
• Drug Wars designers take advantage of racism and xenophobia,
frame them in Christian morality, and employ them for personal and
political profit.
• Drug Wars both cause and encompass all forms of deviance: street
crime, addicts, prostitutes to organized crime, political and
organizational corruption, government assassination plots and
corporate profiteering.
• Drug laws can turn a law-abiding person into a criminal with the
stroke of a pen.
• The Drug War is the direct cause of the quadrupling of the US prison
population and has led to a mass imprisonment society.
• What Drug Wars rarely do is prevent or reduce drug addiction or
use.
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War on Drugs
• Punishment for non-prescribed drug use is not correlated with health
risk.
– Consider alcohol: causes numerous health and social problems but it
was seen that Prohibition was a disaster (although extreme
consumption was reduced as a result, although a powerful education
program might have been also effective). Also now legal but controlled,
although there are some ‘dry’ counties. It is not illegal to be an alcoholic,
although it can have serious consequences.
– Consider tobacco: about 400,000/yr die in the US from diseases
caused or exacerbated by tobacco. It is not illegal but it is controlled.
Why do people smoke? What would happen if it were suddenly made
illegal?
– Consider marijuana: no fatalities or illness-related deaths. May
aggravate (or relieve) depression, reduce motivation and drive.
Appears to cause a higher risk of throat/esophageal cancer.
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War on Drugs
• Substances for altering one’s state of consciousness are found in all
cultures.
– Even in the animal kingdom.
– Even children.
– These substances include natural substances such as: tobacco,
chocolate, coffee, marijuana, coca, opium, certain kinds of mushrooms,
peyote, and many others found in local ecologies.
– Don’t forget alcohol.
• Development of more powerful and sophisticated substances flow
from military need as well as pharmacological research.
• Hypothesis: drug use can become a drug problem when substance
‘migrates’ to a new culture with no cultural role.
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War on Drugs
Our goal: To explain the existence, process and outcomes
of Drug Wars, both in the US and internationally.
• We’ll use primarily differential association (learning
theory), functionalism (extant and latent), social control
and conflict theory (symbolic crusades), and social
psychology.
• In addition, we’ll explore the impact of the development
of the medical profession, government regulatory
agencies (FDA), migration impacts, labor conditions and
the economy, political power struggles. and US Foreign
policy.
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War on Drugs
Basic premises:
– One purposes of identifying a ‘social problem’ is to deflect
criticism/attention away from structural problems in the
distribution of economic and political power.
– US society constructed a drug use mentality for both legal and
illegal substances.
– Value contested: wrong’s wrong with getting high versus getting
high is immoral.
– All use is abuse versus recreational use can be responsible.
– Drug war laws came into being to serve political and career
purposes, then became part of the ‘way it’s done’ even in the
face of expert opinion and empirical evidence to the contrary.
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War on Drugs
Migration and Drug Wars
– Drug problems are associated with problematic populations that
‘need’ to be controlled: immigrants, blacks, Mexicans, other
Spanish-speaking cultures, Chinese.
– Drug wars are implemented when there are no other ‘enemies’
(end of wars, times of economic stability, but also useful in times
of economic destabilization, too).
– Migration directly causes a mixing (and hence, confrontation) of
cultures, class structure, etc.
– Migration also supplies labor, may depress wages and displace
native workers, or at least, be perceived as such, and therefore a
desire to lash out at immigrants becomes more popular.
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War on Drugs
Social psychology of drug use.
•
Compare prescribed and over-the-counter messages to illicit
substance message.
–
–
–
•
If you don’t feel good, or optimal, take a pill.
So illicit use is, as we’ve seen elsewhere in differential association
and also in anomie, utilizing society’s techniques but not in dominant
normative fashion.
Reinforced continuously by advertising.
Messages about what illegal substances do, about users of illegal
substances then inform users about their roles.
–
–
–
Actual and perceived drug effects – from experience, lore, friends,
books, tv, movies…
Culture (learned from above)
Drug War proponents often circulate false messages as scare tactics.
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War on Drugs
Labor, the Economy and Political Landscape
• With 80s, as the nature of the economy changed (loss of manufacturing,
flow to service) and jobs left cities, working class families were left
economically stranded. With the arrival of the Reagan administration, there
was a need to deflect attention away from the massive redistribution of
wealth undertaken in the Reagan era, the erosion of public services, and
the official message of ‘states rights’ which really meant ‘loss of federal
revenue for states’.
• The results were:
– Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign, the rise of D.A.R.E and other anti-drug
programs which are actually associated with an increase in drug use.
– The emphasis on the deserving achieving people versus the undeserving poor
parasites.
– Renewed vilification of the Black urban communities.
– Dramatic increase in federal, state and local resources for policing and
imprisoning of drug users.
– The beginning of the mass imprisonment era
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Domestic WOD
How Policy Could be Handled
• Clear, accurate information about the substance’s effects – both
positive and negative.
• Understanding of motivations to take mind-altering substances: set
and setting; self-destructive reasons versus self-explorative; ritual;
social settings.
• Andrew Weil and ‘stoned thinking’ (from The Natural Mind)
– Straight
– Tendency to trust intellect
– Perceiving differences
versus similarities
– Focus on outward structure
– A tendency to pessimism
– Technician
Artist
Stoned
Tendency to trust intuition
Acceptance of ambivalence
Inner content
Anything and everything is possible
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Domestic WOD
•
Drug Law Addiction
– Both drugs and drug laws make people feel good
– Both drugs and drug laws can be abused.
– Both drugs and drug laws have externalities (side effects)
•
Policy History
– Drug use and abuse was not really recognized as a social issue until after the
Civil War
–
Morphine
–
Cocaine
– But to understand domestic drug policy, you need to incorporate some aspects of
international policy.
– Opium on two fronts: US (post-civil war experience) and British-Chinese-US
trade in the Far East and Southeast Pacific. The US saw British-run and
Chinese crime-supported opium traffic as an obstacle to commercial and military
ties in the Far East and pushes the first international policy against drug use and
trafficking. The State Policy attitude becomes part of domestic policy, too.
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Domestic WOD
Beginning of US Policy:
• Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906 – correct labeling of patent
medicines.
• Foster Bill: to restrict non-medical use of opium, cocaine, marijuana
and chloral hydrate (depressant), engineered by Dr. Wright, whose
anti-black and anti-Chinese attitudes resonated to the recently
southern democrat congress.
• Drug Use became associated with ‘unamerican and unpatriotic’
behavior.
• Foster Bill became the Harrison Act, signed into law in 1915, whose
purpose was to establish government regulation of substances.
• The attitudes behind these acts also motivated the Prohibition,
which was ratified in 1919, became law in 1920, repealed in 1933.
• Colonel Levi Nutt created precedent for prosecuting addicts and
imprisoning them, despite protests from physicians and other
groups. But then Nutt was ousted due to improprieties.
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Domestic WOD
The Harry Anslinger Effect: Became commissioner of FBN (federal bureau of
narcotics). A bureaucrat, cultivated political connections, drew support from
pharmaceutical lobby, utilized conservative newspapers.
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
•
•
•
When threatened with efforts to reorganize (and end his position) he sought out reasons to
keep his post in existence.
Popularized MJ as associated with blacks in New Orleans, and Mexicans in the southwest,
racializing it.
Made erroneous claims about effects
Added the danger of the nation’s children
Inflated statistics, or made them up, about its ubiquity.
Aided by the sensationalist Hearst papers, he became aware of the need for an antimarijuana statue..
Made leaps of logic regarding causal effects
Ridiculed experts pointing out that none of these claims were true.
And so, Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 came into being, and so did a new class of
criminals.
In 1950s, Anslinger then associated drug use with communism, and the link of MJ to
harder drugs.
Thus, get tougher on drug users: Boggs Act.
When that was protested by professional organizations, the Daniel Commission then
recommended more control (i.e., punishment instead of treatment), hence the
Narcotic Control Act of 1956.
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Domestic WOD
The Nixon Years: Connected drug use with anti-government (read: anti-war and antiNixon) behavior.
• Justified breaking of law for surveillance and other purposes.
• Militarized war on drugs more so than previously. See pg 23 of Walker.
• Carter: wanted to decriminalize.
• Reagan just said no to criminalization, and signed a series of increasingly severe
laws against users and sellers.
• Also, co-opted opposition so that no one could be politically safe and be opposed to
drug laws.
• Greatly emphasized control over education: Omnibus Antidrug Act of 1986. ‘zerotolerance’ policies.
• By politicizing drug users again, he was able to stigmatize (discredit) political
opposition.
Bush I years continued the drug war, expanding it, imprisoning more and more,
• Drug Czar Bennett continued use of misleading facts and falsehoods of drug use and
users for his own political purposes.
During Clinton years, imprisonment continued, with some saying it is credited with the
lower unemployment rates, but those were also boom years. Names Army General
Barry McCaffrey as drug czar. Pardons a number of non-violent drug users in prison.
Bush II: more of the same.
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Domestic WOD
LSD as an example
• Developed by Sandoz initially as a military tool, and then with ideas for a
new area of psychotherapeutic drugs by Albert Hoffman.
• Military wanted it as a weapon or alternately, truth serum.
• Medical establishment saw substances as medicine.
• CIA: elite deviance (anomie) in justifying any behavior (cold war mentality).
Differential association of cloak&dagger methodology applied to this
context.
Enter the ‘psychedelic pioneers’ – therapeutic value and spiritual exploration
• Never saw bummers initially
• Needed new language since pathology couldn’t carry the concepts
• Non-drug factors play an important role in LSD’s effect. ‘set and setting’
• Used very successfully in treatment of a number of emotional conditions.
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Domestic WOD
Conflicts:
• Different intentions behind use of drug between
military/medical and pioneers.
• Different schools of thought (paradigm shift) regarding
outcomes.
• Medical model couldn’t handle this treatment, fell outside
its framework of understanding.
• FDA couldn’t properly regulate its use.
• Fell on heels of 1950s conformism, cold war mentalities
• It couldn’t be used by corporate America, although to
some extent they tried.
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Domestic WOD
Drug-testing entrepreneurs
• Robert DuPont Jr – headed NIDA somewhat sporadically from 1971
to 1978 but through the Reagan administration was able to make his
EMIT test flourish.
• Robert Willette – former NIDA, head of Clinical Research. Claimed
100% accuracy, left to run ? diagnostics lab.
• Peter Bensinger: former DEA director. Left to form Partnership for a
Drug-Free America. And to counsel corporations on drug-testing.
• Robert Angarola: former counsel to ODAP left to serve as counsel to
corporations regarding drug-testing lawsuits from disgruntled
employees
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Domestic WOD
Drug-testing (in-)Accuracy
• The earlier drug-testing methodologies were notoriously inaccurate. A
poppyseed bagel would trigger a positive test for opium.
• Alcoholism was much harder to catch.
• Whereas testing for substances had been either a tool for medicine, it
became a tool for catching – and firing – employees.
• Could be misused (and sometimes was) for other detections (e.g.,
pregnancy, prescribed medications that would trigger health insurers’
concerns for high-risk customers).
• Marketed as being good for employees well-being for treatment facilitation.
• Steal This Urine Test – by Abbie Hoffman: ‘bladder cops’
• Drug testing is used widely for anyone in transportation, as well as those in
companies with military contracts, and of course, athletes.
• No clearly established connection between productivity and recreational
drug use.
• Consequences: loss of pay, termination, stigmatization, loss of benefits
including pension and insurance, denial of disability insurance, emotional
distress, possible criminal charges.
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International WOD
The first drug war: opium
• Cultivated in early biblical times, eventually made its way to India as a
medicine and potion.
• When Great Britain colonized India for exploitation of its resources and a
market for the products of its industrialization, it also discovered the
marketability of opium.
• Begin East-India Trading company, and in 1700s began marketing to China.
• Opium use in China grows, begins to cause misery; Chinese-British
relations get testy.
• In 1839 Lin Tse-Hsu writes to Queen Victoria, requests cessation of opium
trafficking.
• England refused. War begins. China loses. British now have free rein of all
trade into China, and control of legal system as it pertains to the British.
• Christian missionaries also given free rein by British, and ironically, see
opium as barrier to Christianity.
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International WOD
The second chapter in the War on Drugs involves US relations with China
and resulted in the Hague Treaty of 1912.
• The US had acquired the Philippines in the Spanish-American War.
• First T. Roosevelt, then Taft wanted control of it, ostensibly to finance social
programs in the Philippines. But American missionaries wanted to end the
opium addiction problem.
• Plus China was displeased with the US treatment of its expatriates, and still
over the opium trafficking.
• Since the US wanted access to the Chinese market, it agreed to phase out
legal access to opiates, starting in 1905.
• It also converged the Shanghai commission, which led to the Hague
Conference and the treaty in 1912.
• Never ratified by participants in part due to the lack of agreement (different
interests) and in part due to WWI.
– The manufacturing countries of pharmaceuticals wanted to stop illegal traffic.
– The distributing countries didn’t want this business lost.
– The others wanted to appease anyone necessary (e.g., China or the US) for their
own benefit.
– Countries with an abuse problem felt that stopping the trafficking was key.
– No one thought about treating the addicts.
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International WOD
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Now, with production, manufacturing and distributing interests at
odds with the Stop the Addiction interests, it boiled down to who had
more clout to determine international drug policies.
The purpose of the drug treaties was to promote economic,
geopolitical, cultural, religious and social interests.
So in 1931 the Geneva Treaty was signed to limited and regulated
production and manufacture for medical purposes.
But now demand didn’t vanish, despite England’s pull-out of
trafficking.
So criminal elements, seeing a market opportunity, jumped in.
And there was plenty of money to be made.
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But the Geneva Treaty of 1931 was never ratified. McAlliaster
defines 5 ‘interest-groups’ among countries, so that consensus
couldn’t be reached.
• Strict Regime: Non-producing and non-manufacturing (victim
states)
• Neutral States: No drug (only medical) interest, just need
appropriate political blocs
• Organic: Producer states: Controls hurt their economy and had daily
experience with substance for centuries so it wasn’t their health
problem.
• Manufacturing: With pharmaceutical interest. Drug abused
countries, but with plenty of opportunities for profit. Tried to shift
costs of regulation to producer countries.
• Weak controls. Led by Soviets and its client states in Europe,
Americas and Africa.
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As the world becomes more globally inter-linked, these are typical
interest blocks for all products – the manufacturers, importers
and exporters. But this is not a typical product because there
are so many cultural and religious overtones to use.
• All these issues had to filter through complex cultural and
social responses as well.
• Thus the logic for control can get VERY irrational and
hypocritical.
• For example, even though China was suffering from a Britishcaused opium problem, the upstart revolutionary Mao was involved
in the opium trade to fund his army and at the same time, accused
the Japanese of forcing Chinese peasants to grow opium.
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International WOD
So the now established MO for dealing with drugs is this:
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Forbid legal trafficking except for drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical
companies.
Illegal substances’ medical value is removed by non-scientific process.
Force producing countries to alter their cultural fabric.
Relinquish production and distribution to non-legitimate organizations
Corrupt legitimate organizations through temptation of profit and the means
to act in the supply chain.
Since the producing countries were also the less developed countries, the
ability for them to establish stable democratic governments and
socioeconomic structures became severely challenged.
Counter-government forces grow or traffic in drugs in order to fund
themselves and control farmers through organized crime ‘protection’
schemes. They then alliance themselves with governments or forces
opposed to the legitimate government.
In sum, anti-drug campaigns as currently formulated all but guarantee
instability and violence.
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Example:
• During WWII, US gov’t contracted with Charlies ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who was
active in drug smuggling in the far east, to work with Chinese gangsters and
drug smugglers, Tu Yueh-sheng and Tai Li; which also took advantage of
Li’s and Tu’s positive relationship with Chiang Kai Shek (US ally).
• This provided the US with valuable intelligence about Japanese activities,
and the Italians, too.
• Tu’s own army conducted a ‘successful’ massacre against Red Forces.
• So opium became the chief source of revenue for Chiang Kai Shek.
• CKS then started an ‘opium suppression effort’ which would appease the
US and also make sure that all opium business was under his control (a
monopoly), featuring Tai Li.
• So with the help of Tai, Tu traded in opium to the Japanese and Tungsten to
the US, and kept the Japanese in business and active in the Yangtze
region, which was also Tu’s base.
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International WOD
Example - Panama
• General Omar Torrijos had been a populist leader of Panama and wanted
the people of Panama to share more in the benefits of its canal.
• The CIA wanted to assassinate him but Watergate got in the way.
• He died in a plane crash in 1981 which was somewhat mysterious.
• Manuel Norriega, on the CIA payroll, was installed in his place.
• Norriega made money trafficking in drugs, and the CIA knew it but
supported him because he was anti-communist.
• But he didn’t seem to support the US war against the contras in Nicaragua,
and now became a problem for the US, preferring to strengthen his own
interests.
• The US invaded, removed Norriega from power, tried him as a tyrant and
drug trafficker, and installed a more supportive government.
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International WOD
Other consequences of the War on Drugs
• Corruption of DEA in international efforts to become traffickers
instead of interceptors.
• Corruption of CIA in fighting communism with drug money.
• Justification of assassinations and more
• Environmental degradation:
– Through eradication methods
– Through practice of non-sustainable methods of agriculture for shorter
profit frames.
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WOD – Impact
Consequences of Prohibition Mindset
• User is labeled as a criminal
• With deviance-lumping, all behavior is suspect.
• Drug use is equated with drug abuse.
• Abuse is bad, or evil, or sinful. Immoral, hence the setup for a symbolic crusade to stamp out the evil.
• Leading to the WOD being essentially a War on Certain
Elements of Society.
• It’s “data-resistant”, and avoids a public health
responsibility, even though the existence, maintenance
and promotion of drugs of abuse is the result of larger
societal, governmental, political and corporate actions.
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WOD – Impact
Areas of Impact
• Health
• Economy
• Communities
• Families, Children, Women, Marriage
• Education
• As well as other areas covered previously, such as
police corruption
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WOD – Impact
Health
• Loss of treatments to portfolio of medical treatment choices.
• Problems from drug purity and strength
• Disease transmission: HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C and B, Tuberculosis,
STDs
• Lack of emphasis on treatment of the abuse (unequal access);
Proposition 36 and Drug Courts.
• Lack of preventive medical care.
• Fear of calling 911 in event of drug overdose or complication.
• IV Needle programs
– Needle-exchange program (185 programs in 36 states; educ opps)
– Physician prescribed (contact with physician, too)
– Pharmacy sold (educ opps)
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WOD – Impact
Impact on Children – ‘Saving’ the children
With the emphasis on prohibition instead of treatment:
• Parents identified as abusive or neglectful parents.
• Children removed from parents and/or home.
• Funds for education redirected, loss of fine arts, music, after-school
programs, libraries, even though….
• Children most likely to be using drugs between 3-6 PM (also prime
times for kids’ shoplifting, etc.)
• Lack of attention given to legally available substances, e.g.,
inhalants, the parents’ medicine cabinet.
• White House Office of National Drug Policy wants to start testing
high school students without suspicion and even when not in sports.
Allows identifying – and tracking – of children right into the penal
system.
• Kids with priors denied college financial aid since 1998 (Souder
amendment). 43,000 students in 2001-2002 lost aid.
Disproportionate to minority students.
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WOD – Impact
Impact on Women
• Testing while pregnant: warrant-less search and seizure.
• If detected, can be prosecuted as child abuser.
• Felony to smoke pot while pregnant in Texas.
• Public benefits (e.g., housing) denied with drug prior (which affects
kids, marriage).
• Crack-babies exaggerated (yes, there is an impact, but…). Women
demonized.
• Women, especially black women, fastest growing population
arrested for drug offenses (8x instead of 4x increase)
• Women get higher sentences than men because they are less
powerful in the trafficking business, and so have little information
with which to plea.
• Men sell out their women more frequently than women sell out men
in order to reduce sentence.
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WOD – Impact
Economy and community
• Huge black market of untouched revenue, plus it funds
organized crime, corruption, etc.
• Incarcerations have removed prime producers from
economy and artificially improved unemployment rates.
• Inner city economy based on black market because of
structural changes in the economy and the business
structure of drug manufacturing and trafficking.
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Violence
Not sustainable
No role models
Depresses likelihood of economic investment
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WOD – Impact
Recap: Forms of deviance seen in the WOD
• The user (responsible versus abuser) or perhaps, the
non-user.
• Individual seller or distributor
• Criminal business and organized crime
• White collar
• Political
• Corporate
Military-industrial complex
• Governmental
Yet, even if a psychoactive substance were totally legal we’d still have a number,
perhaps all, of these forms of deviance. Discuss.
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WOD – Impact
Policy strategies
• Based on values
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Libertarian
Cost-benefit analysis
Moral relativism and morality
Public health – demand reduction, behavioral approach
Economic development
Prohibition – more of the same
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WOD – Impact
Policy strategies
• Based on research
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Economic development
Treatment for abuse
Truth in advertising for prevention and responsible use
Youth investment programs
Keep mind-altering and addictive substances out of the free market
Mutually supportive programs in foreign relations recognizing cultural
and other socioeconomic and political differences.
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WOD – Incarceration
Incarceration
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Perhaps the biggest impact of the Prohibition policy is increased rates of
incarceration, and increased length of sentences due to the WOD.
In 1983, 1 in 10 was incarcerated for a drug offense, 1 in 4 in 2002.
55% of federal prison inmates are sentence for drug offenses: 2001, 20% in state
prisons.
One in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is under state control or
supervision.
At yearend 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000
black males in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per
100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.
80% of women incarcerated for drug offenses in 1999, compared to 26% in 1983.
In 1998, 3.2 million women were arrested and that women accounted for 17% of all
drug felony convictions.
In 1999, 2.1% of children in the U.S. had a parent in State or Federal prison. Black
children were nearly 9 times more likely to have a parent in prison than White
children. Latino children were 3 times as likely as White children to have an inmate
parent.(12)
References: See www.drugpolicyalliance.org, and www.sentencingproject.org.
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Mass Imprisonment
800
700
600
500
Rate per
100,000
400
300
200
100
0
1980
2005
Source: US Dept of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/
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Mass Imprisonment
Source: US Dept of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corr2.htm
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Mass Imprisonment
Source: US Dept of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corr2.htm
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Mass Imprisonment
Mass imprisonment is sheer numbers, and the “social
concentration of imprisonment’s effects” Garland (ed), p. 1).
• Creates systematic social, economic and political exclusion by race
(social marginality)
• Develops and supports criminal underclass through criminogenic
nature of incarceration and parole/probation rules
• Understates unemployment rate by removing ‘unemployable’ from
society.
• Alters norms and values of communities across generations.
• Creates a gulag system of economy, where prisoners are increasingly
perform work for government and private business without pay.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Garland sought to understand how it is that the US and the UK trended
toward Mass Imprisonment (MI), using historical sociological
methods.
He found:
A shift from ‘penal welfare’ to ‘retributive’ model…
Prompted by social and tech. changes.
Enabled by a shift to political conservatism.
Resulting in a marginalization of subgroups.
Who were blamed for the problems in society, as was the liberal penal
welfare model.
6. This shift resulted from a desire for security, order and control missing
following (2).
7. And led to a combination of ‘market and moral discipline’ with more
controls on the poor and fewer on everyone else.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Market and moral discipline
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Tax cuts for wealthy and decreased social services for others.
Deregulation of financial and credit industries.
Privatization of government enterprises.
Reduced regulation of other corporate entities.
An end to welfare ‘as we know it.’
“What is missing today... is …the old welfarist notion that individual
decisions and choices are socially structured, as are the capacities
and opportunities for realizing them.” (p. 198).
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Prisons became a means to segregate undesirable subgroups, typically
young urban minority males, while leaving those with social capital
unconstrained.
And because it is a labor problem, the prisons have become labor
camps.
Why?
• It’s easier for governments to punish than provide security.
• Affluent support prisons
• Criminal control became a commodity and product.
• Suffering victim affects sentencing.
• Drug war enhanced view of undeserving felon.
• Prison policies share same philosophy as welfare policies.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (ch 1): How did MI Happen?
Historical trends – looking at one area not enough. These developments are
interlinked.
A. Decline of rehabilitative ideal
B. Re-emergence of punitive sanctions and ‘expressive’ justice.
C. Changes in emotional tone of crime policy
D. Re-invention of prison
E. Transformation of criminological thought.
F. Expanding infrastructure of control
G. Commercialization of control
H. Promoting sense of perpetual state of crisis.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (ch 2): end of penal welfarism: a loss in faith.
Penal welfarism: the idea that you can rehabilitate
criminals and ‘correct’ the problem in their environment
and background.
• Had been understood that affluence and social reform would either
eradicate crime or keep it at bay.
• The State would address crime and control.
• Penal welfare requires stable communities and available
opportunities.
• Perceived effectiveness
• Authority of social expertise
• Support of social elites
• Absence of political opposition.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch.3): but political opposition happened.
A.
Results in
1.
2.
3.
B.
Mandatory instead of individualized sentencing.
Expansion of prison as ‘solution’.
Academic and political discourse got disenchanted and therefore silenced.
Nothing works…
A. Futility – doesn’t work and costs money.
B. Perversity – worsens situation
C. Jeopardy – people are at risk.
C.
Critique of correctionalism/penal welfarism
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Individual sentences disproportionately affected minorities.
Stated glossed over discrepancies paternalistically.
Treatments were problematic, too.
Deviance considered a free choice.
Press latched on to ‘what works in penalism’ to ‘nothing works’.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch. 4): Macro-social change adds distance to PW
• Socioeconomic
• Welfare institutions
• Abandonment of progressive ideals.
• The Reagan era
– Hostility toward ‘tax & spend’ democrats, ‘underserving welfare
recipients’, ‘soft on crime’, ‘break-up of the family’ ‘unions
running/ruining the country’
• Neo-conservatism shapes policy – liberals caused all the problems.
• Prison becomes the solution
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch. 5): Different conclusions from same phenomena.
A. High crime rates become social fact.
B. Criminal justice system was limited to handle it.
C. Criminals seen as incorrigible wicked people who act rationally.
D. Market power enters
A.
B.
C.
D.
Community-focused without resources or authority.
Privatization
Success measured financially.
Private security firms for affluent (individuals and groups).
E. The need to adapt led to
1. Professionalization of criminal justice workers.
2. Redefining success as ‘incapacitation’ rather than rehabilitation.
3. Fear of crime reduction as a goal
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
The solution – (a) address problems caused by elite
deviance and (b) break chains of criminality.
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Let people know and support free non-oligopolistic press.
Support localized community building.
End drug war as we know it.
Spread corrrectional power out.
Rebuild rehab programs, including post-prison support.
Get rid of 3-strikes except for sexual violence.
Rewrite mandatory sentencing.
Regulate and oversee parole/probation policy and techniques.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch.6): The policy is punitive segregation.
A.
B.
C.
D.
The public must be protected.
The policy is populist and publicized.
Victims are privileged.
Social elites (liberals with money) became affected by crime
whereas before it wasn’t their problem.
E. Academics become balkanized. In many criminology
schools/departments the instructors are former police officers.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Consequences and Implications
Reference: Crime Control as Industry, by Nils Christie
• Upon noting the trend toward MI and many of the contributing
factors that Garland assembled and organized, Christie observed
the following:
• Danger of crime is not the crime per se but the response to it leading
to a totalitarian regime.
• But western gulags won’t be death camps, but they will remove a
significant minority from a culture of free life to a culture of prison.
• Prisons have become a means to handle excess labor.
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People are supposed to be productive
Those unable (not necessarily of their own fault, Mills) are a problem.
A global economy may exacerbate the problem/’solution’.
Crime is viewed as a war – and the enemy is a select group of citizens.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Consequences and Implications
Profitable Prisons
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For builders and suppliers of security
Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut may (do) influence penal
policy as Lockheed, Boeing influence defense.
Prison guards and correctional officers union – powerful lobbies
Private financing for prisons – avoids scrutiny of voters.
Bed brokers work to allocate space efficiently. For a price.
Allows military to refocus energies following end of cold war.
Productive Prisons
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Inmate labor as product to be sold on the open market.
Inmate labor allows self-regeneration of prison system.
Taiwan case: harvesting organs from executed prisoners.
Rural prison locations are employment boons to depressed economies.
Conclusions: the new challenges as seen by the prison industry is not crime
or recidivism, but prison and prisoner management (Malcolm Feeley). After
all, it’s a business.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Consequences and Implications
On Democracy
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A for-profit prison labor system, that self-replicates, will seek to acquire
more labor to profit from. There is a large ‘supply’ of low capital AfricanAmericans (25% in poverty in 2005) in the US, and an almost unlimited
‘supply’ of Hispanic-origin.
The average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2005 was $19,971; for
a family of three, $15,577; for a family of two, $12,755; and for unrelated
individuals, $9,973.
In seven states, 1 of 4 black males are permanently deprived of vote. 13%
overall in US of black men (1998 figures), and in some states, 40% of AA
men expected to be permanently disenfranchised.
Impact:
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More Democrats than Republicans.
Loss of census-allocated revenues to local communities
Loss of determinism in election outcomes
Fewer citizens voting is, in itself, a threat to democracy.
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Mass Imprisonment –
Consequences and Implications
On Families
• Married persons, with children, are far less likely to be involved in
crime.
• Or, people engaged in crime are less likely to get or stay married.
• Incarceration also reduces marriage chances, and increases
divorce.
• Thus incarceration has negative impacts on the ex-convicts, the
spouses, and the children.
• Especially African-American women, are adversely affected in their
marriage market.
• When the entire community experiences a high rate of incarceration
the effect dominates the cultural norms and values and can become
self-perpetuating.
Conclusions: the sociological outcome of mass incarceration policies
results in the continued trend toward mass incarceration.
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Upcoming Attractions
For May 2
• Consequences of Mass Imprisonment
– Incarceration impacts on inmates and ex-convicts, families,
communities, democracy.
– Prisons as labor resource
– Guest speaker, followed by Q&A
For May 7
• Review session – study guide and your questions.
• Talk and Q&A about careers in sociology following review.
For May 9
• No class but turn in papers to 478 Barrows (my office) from 3 to 5
PM.
• NOTE: You can always turn in papers sooner!
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