1. Chapter 6: Deviance, Crime and Social Control
Melanie Hatfield
Soc 100

2. The Difference between Deviance and Crime
Deviance involves breaking a norm and evoking a negative reaction from others.
Societies establish some norms as laws.
Crime is deviance that breaks a law, which is a norm stipulated and enforced by government bodies.
Just as deviance is relative, so is crime.

3. Sanctions
Many otherwise deviant acts go unnoticed or are considered too trivial to warrant negative sanctions, or actions indicating disapproval of deviance.
People who are observed committing more serious acts of deviance are typically punished, either informally or formally.
Informal punishment is mild.
Formal punishment results from people breaking laws.

4. Classifying Deviance: John Hagan
Three dimensions:
Severity of the social response.
Perceived harmfulness of the act.
Degree of public agreement about whether an act should be considered deviant.

5. Hagan: Types of Deviance
Social diversions are minor, harmless acts.
Social deviations are more serious, somewhat harmful acts.
Conflict crimes are deviant acts defined by the state as illegal, but the definition is controversial in the wider society.
Consensus crimes are widely recognized to be bad in themselves.

6. Crimes against Women
Until recently, many types of crimes against women – including rape – were largely ignored in the US and most other parts of the world.
Today the situation has improved.
This change has come partly because women’s position in the economy, the family, and other social institutions has improved over the past half century.

7. White-Collar Crime
White-Collar Crime: An illegal act committed by a respectable, high-status person in the course of work.
White-collar crime is underreported, underdetected, undeprosecuted, and underconvicted because it is the crime of the powerful and the well-to-do.

8. Crime Rates Every hour during 2006: Between 1960 and 1992 in the US
2 murders, 11 rapes, 50 robberies, 98 aggravated assaults, 136 motor vehicle thefts, 249 burglaries, and 750 larceny-thefts.
Between 1960 and 1992 in the US
500 percent increase in the rate of violent crime.
150 percent increase in major property crimes rate.

9. Violent Crime, US. Rate per 100,000 Population

10. Property Crime, US. Rate per 100,000 Population

12. Explaining Deviance and Crime
Motivational theories identify the social factors that drive people to deviance and crime.
Constraint theories identify the social factors that impose deviance and crime (or conventional behavior) on people.

13. Learning the Deviant Role
Habitual deviant behavior is a learned process.
Howard S. Becker analyzed this learning process in a classic study of marijuana users where he found that his fellow musicians had to pass through a three-stage learning process before becoming a regular marijuana user.
Learning to smoke in a way that produces real effects.
Learning to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use.
Learning to enjoy the perceived sensations.

14. Durkheim’s Functional Approach (Motivational Theory)
According to Durkheim, deviance gives people the opportunity to define what is moral and what is not.
Our reactions to deviance clarify moral boundaries, allowing us to draw the line between right and wrong.
This promotes the unity of society and encourages healthy social change.

15. Strain Theory: Merton (Motivational Theory)
Argued that cultures often teach people to value material success.
However, societies do not provide enough legitimate opportunities for everyone to succeed.
Therefore, some people experience strain.
Most will adhere to social norms.
The rest adapt.

16. Subcultural Theory (Motivational Theory)
Argues that gangs are a collective adaptation to social conditions.
Distinct norms and values that reject the legitimate world crystallize in gangs.
Three features of criminal subcultures:
Delinquent youths may turn to different types of crime.
Members justify their criminal activities.
Members are conformists to the norms of their own group.

17. Theory of Differential Association (Motivational Theory)
A person learns to favor one adaptation over another as a result of life experiences or socialization.
Everyone is exposed to deviant and nondeviant values and behaviors as they grow up.
If you are exposed to more deviant than nondeviant experiences, chances are you will learn to become a deviant.

18. Labeling Theory (Constraint Theory)
Deviance results not so much from the actions of the deviant as from the response of others, who label the rule breaker a deviant.
These labels often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

19. Control Theory (Constraint Theory)
The rewards of deviance and crime are many.
Nearly everyone would engage in deviance and crime if they could get away with it.

20. Conflict Theory (Constraint Theory)
The powerful impose deviant and criminal labels on less powerful members of society.
Meanwhile, they are usually able to use their money and influence to escape punishment for their own misdeeds.

21. The Medicalization of Deviance
The medicalization of deviance refers to the fact that medical definitions of deviant behavior are becoming more prevalent.
Today we respond to many deviant behaviors with a medical treatment.

22. The Medicalization of Deviance

23. The Spread of Mental Disorders
Many mental disorders have obvious organic causes, such as chemical imbalances in the brain.
Other disorders are unclear, having more social and political value in considering whether or not they should be considered a mental disorder.
As the number of mental disorders has grown, so has the proportion of Americans presumably affected by them.

24. Prisons Prisons are agents of socialization.
New inmates often become more serious offenders as they adapt to the culture of the most hardened, long-term prisoners.

25. Goals of Incarceration
Rehabilitation - prisoners can be taught how to become productive citizens.
Deterrence - People will be less inclined to commit crimes if they know they are likely to serve long and unpleasant prison terms.
Revenge - Depriving criminals of their freedom is fair retribution for their acts.
Incapacitation - The chief function is to keep criminals out of society to ensure that they can do no more harm.

26. Moral Panic
Between the early 1970s and the present the U.S. was gripped by moral panic.
The government declared a war on drugs, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders.
Many states passed a law to put three-time violent offenders in prison for life.

27. Belief in Capital Punishment

28. Death Penalty

29. Capital Punishment
Whether capital punishment serves as a deterrent is questionable for 2 reasons:
Murder is often committed in a rage, when the perpetrator is not thinking entirely rationally. In such cases the murderer is unlikely to coolly consider the costs and consequences of his or her actions.
If rational calculation of consequences does enter in to the picture, the perpetrator is likely to know that very few murders result in the death sentence.

30. Incarcerating Less serious Offenders
Most of the increase in the prison population over the past 20 years is because of the conviction of nonviolent criminals.
The main rationale for imprisoning these offenders is that incarceration presumably deters them from repeating their offense.
Data shows a weak relationship between imprisonment and the crime rate.
Prison teaches inmates to behave more violently.

31. Rehabilitation and Reintegration
Evidence suggests that institutions designed to rehabilitate and reintegrate prisoners into society can work, especially for less serious offenders.
A cost-effective and workable alternative may exist, but it is not likely to be tried anytime soon because of the current climate of public opinion.