Erickson’s Functionalist Perspective
• Deviance helps maintain boundaries of
acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
• Deviance bolsters cohesion and solidarity of
a community.
• Deviance promotes the stability of social
life.
• Deviance provides employment.
Erickson Continued.
• A deviant is someone whose actions/identities
have moved outside the margins of the groupwhen society holds him/her accountable for it, it
reinforces boundaries.
• Every time society reacts to deviance it sharpens
its authority and power.
• Agencies designed to curtail deviance often
perpetuate it.
Durkheim
• Crime and deviance are normal, provided
they don’t exceed a certain level.
• Deviance and Crime free societies are
impossible to attain (see example with drug
use and legalization debate).
• The authority the moral conscience enjoys
must not be excessive. Individual
originality must be able to express itself.
Durkheim and Anomie
• Anomie= absence of social ties that bind people to society,
state of where norms about good and bad have little
salience in people’s lives. Outcome of advanced
Capitalism and ideology of individualism (latter 20th
century U.S.)
– Who are you responsible to? Example of deviance and
responsibility.
– Weakening of social ties destabilizes society and leads to chaos.
– Collective good versus individual self-interest? Did Durkheim
believe functional society’s had to chose between these two things
or did he advocate balance between them? Why?
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• As Becker relates, "Social groups create
deviance [crime] by making the rules whose
infraction constitutes deviance [crime], and
by applying those rules to particular people
and labeling them as outsiders
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• Note that labeling theorists attempt to
explain only what Lemert called "secondary
deviance”
• Secondary deviance = the commission of
crime after the first criminal act, with the
acceptance of a criminal label
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• Secondary deviance begins with an initial
criminal act, or what Lemert called
"primary deviance"
• The causes of initial criminal acts are
unspecified
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• If society, especially official agents of the
state, reacts negatively to an initial criminal
act, the offender will likely be stigmatized,
or negatively labeled
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• It is possible, even likely, that an initial
criminal act will not be reacted to at all, or
that the offender will not accept or
internalize the negative label
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• However, if the negative label is
successfully applied to the offender, the
label may produce a self-fulfilling prophecy
in which the offender's self-image is defined
by the label
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• Secondary deviance is the prophecy
fulfilled
• The crime prevention implication of
labeling theory is simply not to label or to
employ "radical nonintervention”
• This might be accomplished by:
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• Decriminalization (the elimination of many
behaviors from the scope of the criminal
law)
• Diversion (removing offenders from
involvement in the criminal justice process)
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• Greater due process protections (replacing
discretion with the rule of law
• Deinstitutionalization (a policy of reducing
jail and prison populations and
construction)
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• Once a person is labeled and stereotyped as
"criminal," he or she probably will be
shunned by law-abiding society, have
difficulty finding a good job, lose some civil
rights (if convicted of a felony), etc.
Interactionism and Labeling
Theory (cont.)
• The criminal (and delinquent) label is
conferred by all agencies of criminal
justice-- police, courts, and corrections--as
well as the media, the schools, churches,
and other social institutions
Conflict Theory
• Deviance is caused by economic and political
forces in society.
• Criminal law and the criminal justice system are
viewed as vehicles for controlling the poor
members of society.
• The criminal justice system serves the rich and
powerful.
• Deviance and Crime are defined in ways that meet
the needs of those who control society.
Unit 2 - 16
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• Crime is a function of the extent of conflict
generated by stratification, hierarchical
relationships, power differentials, or the
ability of some groups to dominate other
groups in that society
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• Crime, in short, is caused by relative
powerlessness
• Conflict theory has two principal crime
prevention implications:
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• On the one hand, dominant groups could
cede some of their power to subordinate
groups, making subordinate groups more
powerful and reducing conflict
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• Increasing equality in that way might be
accomplished by redistributing wealth
through a more progressive taxation
scheme, for example
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• On the other hand, dominant group
members could become more effective
rulers and subordinate group members
better subjects
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• To do so, dominant groups would have to
do a better job of convincing subordinate
groups that the current inequitable
distribution of power in society is legitimate
and in their mutual interests
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• Members of subordinate groups, in turn,
must either believe it or resign themselves
to their inferior status
Conflict Theory (cont.)
• Either way, dominant group members hope
that over time subordinate group members
will learn to follow those who dominate
them