Sociology of
Deviance and crime
deviance
• Deviant behavior is any behavior that is contrary to the
dominant norms of society. There are many different theories
on what causes a person to perform deviant behavior,
including biological explanations, psychological explanations,
and sociological explanations.
Examples of Deviance
• Trespassing moral and religious norms: the seven deadly sins
• Crime: robbery, theft, rape, murder, and assault
• Formal deviance: breaking the rules of the campus
• Informal deviance: picking one’s nose, graffiti, political
opposition,
• Conditions or diseases: HIV, dwarfism, obesity, mental state,
• Negative deviance: prostitution, alcoholism, suicide, drugaddiction.
• Positive deviance: art, innovation, abolitionism.
Taboo
Taboo is a strong social form of behavior considered deviant by
a majority. To speak of it publicly is condemned, and therefore,
almost entirely avoided.
The term “taboo” comes from the Tongan word “tapu”
meaning "under prohibition", "not allowed", or "forbidden".
Some forms of taboo are prohibited under law and
transgressions may lead to severe penalties. Other forms of
taboo result in shame, disrespect and humiliation.
There are no taboo considered to be universal. However, some
of the examples include cannibalism, murder, rape, incest, or
infanticide.
Biological theories
Criminals represented a reversion
to a primitive or subhuman type
of man characterized by physical
features reminiscent of apes,
lower primates, and early man
and to some extent preserved, he
said, in modern "savages". The
behavior of these biological
"throwbacks" will inevitably be
contrary to the rules and
expectations of modern civilized
society
Cesare lombroso
Criminality was inherited, and that someone
"born criminal" could be anatomically
identified by such items as a sloping forehead,
ears of unusual size, asymmetry of the face,
prognathism, excessive length of arms,
asymmetry of the cranium, and other "physical
stigmata".
Critique: pseudoscience
Lombroso's research methods were clinical and descriptive, with
precise details of skull dimension and other measurements. He did
not engage in rigorous statistical comparisons of criminals and
non-criminals. Although he gave some recognition in his later years
to psychological and sociological factors in the etiology of crime,
he remained convinced of, and identified with, criminal
anthropometry.
Lombroso's theories were disapproved throughout Europe,
especially in schools of medicine, but not in the United States,
where sociological studies of crime and the criminal predominated.
His notions of physical differentiation between criminals and noncriminals were seriously challenged by Charles Goring (The
English Convict, 1913), who made elaborate comparisons and
found insignificant statistical differences.
Psychological
theories
• First, individual human beings are solely responsible for their
criminal or deviant acts.
• Second, an individual’s personality is the major motivational
element that derives behavior within individuals.
• Third, criminals and deviants are seen as suffering from
personality deficiencies.
Thus, crimes result from abnormal, dysfunctional, or inappropriate
mental processes within the personality of the individual.
sociopathy
• Psychopathy (or sociopathy) is defined as either an aspect of
personality or as a personality disorder, characterized by
enduring dissocial or antisocial behavior, a diminished capacity
for empathy or remorse, and poor behavioral controls or fearless
dominance.
• No psychiatric or psychological organization has sanctioned a
diagnosis titled "psychopathy” (rather referred to as dissocial
personality disorder, ASPD). However, term is widely used in
public media, general public discourse, fictional portrayals.
• The concept is being criticized on the basis that research was
predominantly carried out within settings of the penal system
among prisoners, which have inevitably lead to negative
descriptions of the convicts.
Sociological
theories
• Deviance, in a sociological context, describes actions or behaviors that
violate social norms, including formally-enacted rules (e.g., crime), as
well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting folkways
and mores).
• Deviance is a failure to conform to the norms of society. Social norms
differ from culture to culture. For example, a deviant act can be
committed in one society that breaks a social norm there, but may be
normal for another society.
• Deviance can be observed by the negative, or a stigmatizing social
reaction of others towards these phenomena.
• Sociology should be free from value judgments. Thus, there is no
"good" or "bad" social deviation. For example, since the deviation is
defined in sociology as a deviation from the socially accepted
standards, it can not be qualified as a systematic illness.
“Anomie” concept by
emile durkheim
• Durkheim (1858–1917) claimed that deviance was in fact a
normal and necessary part of social organization.
• Deviance affirms cultural values and norms. Any definition of
virtue rests on an opposing idea of vice: There can be no good
without evil and no justice without crime.
• Deviance defines moral boundaries, people learn right from
wrong by defining people as deviant.
• A serious form of deviance forces people to come together and
react in the same way against it.
• Deviance pushes society's moral boundaries which, in turn leads
to social change.
Social strains
theory
• Anomie is the state in which social goals and the
legitimate means to achieve them do not correspond.
• .The individual will strive to attain the common goals
of a specific society, yet would not be able to reach
those goals legitimately because of the limitations in
the social structure of their society. This leads to strain,
stress, or frustration and, as a result, the individual
would exhibit deviant behavior ranging from rebellion,
delinquency, crime, and ultimately to suicide.
Social strain theory
4 types of anomic
deviance
• The innovator adopts means deemed unacceptable by society
some of which may be criminal (for example, theft) to realize
success.
• The ritualist follows the rules obsessively but loses sight of the
overall goals (for example, the inflexible bureaucrat).
• The retreatist abandons both goals and the means to achieve
them (for example, the alcoholic or drug addict).
• The rebel rejects both the traditional goals and means, but
envisions new ones as the basis for a new social order, an
extreme example would be the terrorist.
Labeling theory
• Labeling is a process of social reaction by the "social
audience,"(stereotyping) the people in society exposed
to, judging and accordingly defining (labeling)
someone's behavior as deviant or otherwise. It has been
characterized as the "invention, selection,
manipulation of beliefs which define conduct in a
negative way and the selection of people into these
categories [....]"
Labeling theory
• Deviance is caused by the deviant's being labeled as morally
inferior,
• the deviant's internalizing the label
• and finally the deviant's acting according to that specific label (in
other words, you label the "deviant" and they act accordingly).
• As time goes by, the "deviant" takes on traits that constitute
deviance by committing such deviations as conform to the label.
• Individual and societal preoccupation with the label leads the
deviant individual to abidance to the ascribed label.
Labelling theory
stigmatization
• “Criminal” (“ex-convict”)
• “Homosexual”
• “Mentally ill” (“psychopath”, “imbecilic”)
• “Disabled” (“handicapped”)
• “Prostitute”
• “Drug-addict”
• “HIV-positive”
medicalization
The medicalization of deviance, the transformation of moral and
legal deviance into a medical condition, is an important shift that
has transformed the way society views deviance.
The labeling theory helps to explain this shift, as behavior that used
to be judged morally are now being transformed into an objective
clinical diagnosis. For example, people with drug addictions are
considered "sick" instead of "bad".
Primary and
secondary deviation
• Primary deviation.
• Social penalties.
• Secondary deviation.
• Stronger penalties.
• Further deviation with resentment and hostility towards punishers.
• Community stigmatizes the deviant as a criminal. Tolerance threshold
passed.
• Strengthening of deviant conduct because of stigmatizing penalties.
• Acceptance as role of deviant or criminal actor.
Conflict theory
Conflict theories of deviance and criminality of course
focus on issues of power and powerlessness. It’s about
who has the power and how they attempt to force their
values and rules upon those who don’t have it. The
wealthier, more educated, and elite of society typically
have the most power. The Power Elite are the political,
corporate, and military leaders of a society are uniquely
positioned to commit Elite Crimes, or crimes of insider
nature that typically are difficult to punish and have
broad social consequences upon the masses.
White-collar crimes
A clear example of how deviance reflects power imbalances is in the reporting
and tracking of crimes. White-collar crimes are typically committed by
individuals in higher social classes. Examples of white-collar crimes include:
• antitrust violations
• computer, credit card, phone, telemarketing, bankruptcy, healthcare,
insurance, mail, and government fraud
• tax evasion
• insider trading
• bribery and public corruption
• counterfeiting
• money laundering
• embezzlement
• economic espionage
• trade secret theft
subcultures
• In criminology, subcultural theory emerged from the
work of the Chicago School on gangs and developed
through the symbolic interactionism school into a set
of theories arguing that certain groups or subcultures
in society have values and attitudes that are conducive
to crime and violence. The primary focus is on
juvenile delinquency because theorists believe that if
this pattern of offending can be understood and
controlled, it will break the transition from teenage
offender into habitual criminal.
subcultures
Subcultural theory
This approach places emphasis on the contents of youth
culture and on the differences produced by class
background. The assumption is that a capitalist society
attempts to achieve hegemony by using the cultural
values of society for their own benefit. The domination
of the adults is enforced through the system of
mortgages, credit cards, and family commitments, and
they are seduced into accepting the relative security of
capitalism. But the youth are relatively free of long term
commitment or responsibility for a family and, with
many unemployed, the youth are the weakest point in the
structure of hegemony.
Discipline and
control
• Michel Foucault believed that the modern state receives praise for
its fairness and dispersion of power. Instead of controlling each
deviant individual, it controls the mass.
• He also theorized that institutions control people through the use
of discipline. For example, the modern prison (more specifically
the panopticon) is a template for these institutions because it
controls its inmates by the perfect use of discipline.
• Foucault theorizes that, in a sense, the postmodern society is
characterized by the lack of free will on the part of individuals.
Institutions of knowledge, norms, and values, are simply in place
to categorize and control humans.
panopticon