Deviance
What is it?
• Behavior that departs from societal or group
norms
• Ranges from criminal behavior to wearing
heavy make-up
• Deviance is a matter of social definition and
can vary from group to group and society to
society
2 types
• Negative deviance
– Involves behavior that fails to meet accepted
norms
• Positive deviance
– Involves over conformity to norms leading to
imbalance and extremes of perfectionism
• anorexia
Who is a deviant?
• Someone who has violated one or more of
society’s most highly valued norms
Social Control
• All societies have ways to promote order,
stability, and predictability in social life
• Def: ways to promote conformity to norms
• If it were absent, there would be chaos
• 2 types:
– Internal
– external
Internal Social Control
• Lies within the individual
• Developed during the socialization process
• When you know its wrong to steal, you have
internalized this social norm
External Social Control
• Socialization does not ensure that all people
will conform to social norms
• External social control is based on social
sanctions
– Rewards and punishments
• Negative sanctions
– Intended to stop socially unacceptable behavior
– Criticism, fines and imprisonment
• Positive sanctions
– Encourage conformity
– Allowances, promotions and smiles of approval
Functionalism and Deviance
• Functionalists believe that some deviance can
contribute to the smooth operation of society
• Deviance has both positive and negative
consequences for society
Negative Effects
• Erodes trust
• A society with widespread suspicion and
distrust cannot function smoothly
• If not punished or corrected, deviance can
also cause nonconforming behavior in others
• Stimulates more deviance in others
• Expensive both in human resources and
monetary resources
Positive Effects
• Clarifies norms by exercising social control to
defend its values
• Temporary safety valve
• Increases unity within a society or group
• Strengthens their commitment to that value
• Promotes needed social change
Strain Theory
• Deviance is more likely to occur when a gap
exists between cultural goals and the ability
to achieve these goals by legitimate means
• Anomie social condition in which norms are
weak, conflicting or absent
• Conformity- when people accept the goal and
the means to achieve it
4 responses to Strain considered
deviant
• Innovation
– Accepts the goal of success but uses illegal means to achieve
it
• Ritualism
– Rejects the goal (success) but continues to use the legitimate
means
• Retreatism
– Deviant response in which both the legitimate means and
approved goals are rejected
• Rebellion
– People reject both success and the approved means for
achieving it
Control Theory
• Conformity to social norms depends on the
presence of strong bonds between individuals
and society
• If the bonds are weak (anomie) deviance
occurs
• Social bonds control the behavior of people
4 basic elements of social bonds
• Attachment
– The stronger your attachment to groups or
individuals, the more likely you are to conform
• Commitment
– The greater your commitment to social goals, the
more likely you are to conform
• Involvement
– Participation in approved social activities increase the
probability of conformity
• Belief
– Belief in the norms and values promotes conformity
Symbolic Interactionism
• Deviance is transmitted through socialization
in the same way that non-deviant behavior is
learned
Differential Association Theory
• Emphasizes the role of primary groups in
transmitting deviance
• i.e., the more people one is exposed to who
break the law, the more apt they are to be
criminals
3 characteristics
• The ratio of deviant to non-deviant
individuals
• Whether the deviant behavior is practiced by
significant others
• The age of exposure
Labeling Theory
• Theory that society creates deviance by
identifying particular members as deviant
**Deviant behavior is always a matter of social
definition
• Exists when some members of a group or
society label others as deviants
** girls receive more stigma to teen pregnancy
than boys
** lower-class youths are “expected” to be
criminals while middle class youths are not
Degrees of Deviance?
• 2 types
– Primary deviance
• Person engages only in isolated acts of deviance
– Secondary deviance
• Deviance as a lifestyle and a personal identity
**Person’s who life and identity are organized around
deviance
• This status overshadows all other status’
Consequences of Labeling
• Can cause pain and suffering
• Stigma- undesirable characteristic or label
used by others
Conflict Theory and Deviance
• Deviance in an industrial society is behavior
that those in control see as threatening to
their interests
• Supporters of this theory believe that
minorities receive unequal treatment in the
American criminal justice system
**Basic ways the culture defends itself
• Look on page 218
Why are minorities & whites treated
differently?
• Minorities generally do not have the economic
resources to buy good legal services
• Crimes against whites tend to be punished
more severely than crimes against minorities
• Victim discounting reduces the seriousness of
crimes directed at members of lower social
classes
• Therefore, if the victim is less valuable, the
crime is less serious and the penalty less
severe
White Collar Crime
• Any crime committed by respectable and high
status people in the course of their
occupations
• Economic crimes
** price fixing, insider trading, illegal rebates,
embezzlement, bribery of a corporate customer,
manufacture of hazardous products, toxic
pollution and tax evasion
Costs of white collar crime
• 18x higher than street crime
• That being said, white collar criminals are
treated more leniently than other criminals
• Convicted white collar criminals are less likely
to be imprisoned
Crime
• Acts in violation of statue law
• ** 2,800 acts are classified as federal crimes and
many more violate state and local statutes
• FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports is a major source of
crime stats
– This is voluntary
**UCS tracks 9 types of crimes: murder, forcible
rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary,
larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson and hate
crimes
How reliable are the stats?
• Major strength: reporting system of
experienced police officers
• Major limitations:
– See page 226
• Another source: NCVS (National Crime
Victimization Survey
• 2 advantages:
– Helps make up for underreporting of crime
– Surveys are more scientifically sound
Juvenile Crime
• Juvenile delinquent behavior includes deviance that
only the young can commit
– i.e., failing to attend school, underage drinking and
smoking
• Reached its lowest level in 1999
• why?
– Decline in the demand for crack cocaine
– Crack gangs that provided guns to juv. have reached
truces
– Repeat violent juv. Offenders have been given stiffer
sentences
– Police are cracking down on illegal guns on the street
Criminal Justice System
• Made up of the institutions and processes
responsible for enforcing criminal statues
*includes police, courts and correctional system
• Draws on4 approaches to control and punish
lawbreakers:
–
–
–
–
Deterrence
Retribution
Incarceration
Rehabilitation
Deterrence
• Uses the threat of punishment to discourage
criminal actions
• Does work if potential lawbreakers know 2
things
– They are likely to get caught
– Punishment will be severe
• This is difficult in the US so punishment does
not have the deterrent effect it could have
**Death Penalty??
• 66% of all Americans favor the death penalty
• ¾ of all white Americans favor the death
penalty
• 40% of black Americans favor the death
penalty
• 52% of hispanic Americans favor the death
penalty
Retribution
• Type of punishment intended to make
criminals pay compensation for their acts
– Eye for an eye
Incarceration
• Keeping criminals in prisons
Rehabilitation
• Attempt to re-socialize criminals
• 30-60% of those released from prisons are
sent back in 2-5 years
• Recidivism- repetition of or return to criminal
behavior
Alternatives to prisons
• Combination of prison and probation
– Serve part of their sentence in prison and the rest
on probation
• Community based programs
– Reintroduce criminals into society
– *get out of prison for part of the day
• Diversion strategy
– Aimed at preventing or reducing the offender’s
involvement in the criminal justice system
– Community based treatment program rather than
a prison or probationary program
**Do they work?
• They haven’t been evaluated enough to
evaluate their effectiveness