Deviance, Crime and social control

Deviance: the action of recognized violation of cultural norms and has the function to construct and maintain the social groups boundary.

It consists of:
1. Affirmative of positive, member have choice what to be preferred, desired and approved objects or behavior.
2. Affirmative of negative, choice of what to be forbidden objects and behavior.

Deviant behavior is violation of affirmative; Deviant act is the violation of affirmative of negative. Eg, tell you not to do, and you do.

A person becomes a deviant person when non-deviant population fail to understand deviant behavior. They will engage retrospective interpretation, such as looking at a person’s past, genetic make up or environmental influence etc. All assumption is that problem is not in deviant person himself, but something else being responsible.

Crime is one of deviance, the violation of norms a society formally enacts into criminal law.

Explaining crime and deviance

1. The classic school, which suggests that the nature of class a rational choice such as :
1) Maximize their gain
2) Be relatively sure that they will not be punished.
In response to this explanation, they suggest that server punishment, and negative publicity may help to reduce the crime.

2. Function and social foundation of deviance. All deviance as well as conformity is shaped by society.
1) Deviance varies according to cultural norms
2) People become deviant as others define them that way
3) Both rule making and rule breaking involves social power, eg, the law gives more power to a few powerful people to protect their interest;

Owners of GE have legal right to close down one of unprofitable factories, even if by closing so throws thousands of people out of jobs.

3. Function of crime and deviance, crime is normal, inevitable and useful.
1) to affirm cultural value and norms
2) deviance encourages social changes
3) reaction to deviance creates moral boundaries and promotes social unity.
Durkheim suggested that deviance and deviant people push social moral boundaries, suggesting alternatives to the status quo and encouraging changes. Today’s deviance maybe tomorrow’s norm.

How do people become deviant? (Merton’s strain theory)
Robert Merton suggested deviance is related to how well a society makes goals accessible by providing the institutional means to achieve them. By studying North American society in 1930, Robert Merton defined the following:

1. Conformity- the people pursue their goal by approved means. i.e. working hard to reach their goal of being rich.
2. Innovation – the people want to achieve the same goal but without proper means, therefore they may be motivated to use unapproved means like stealing, cheating.
3. Ritualism- for those who have means but no interests in pursuing certain goal in life, but nonetheless may under the expectation of parents or cultural norms, they perform their duty as ritual.
4. Retreatism – the rejection of both cultural goals and means, eg. Drop out, drug addicts.
5. Rebellion- like retreatist, rebels reject both the cultural definition of success and the normative means of achieving it. Rebels however go one step further by advocating radical alternatives to the existing social order, they call for social reformation.

Anomie is the state where individual behavior has not been regulated by moral and cultural norm. There is little social moral guidance and regulation imposed on individuals.

Merton focused on “goal” and “means”. His hypothesis is when there is lack of cultural and social structure, when there is unfit or strain between a culturally defined desirable goals and means, i.e. legitimate channel for people to achieve such goals, the deviance and deviant people will increase.

In modern society, those who fail to achieve such goal often will be punished as a failure, not intelligent or not working hard, cultural expectation mingled with such game. When means become goal, such as money, from a means for success to goal as make money for more money, it lost logical reasoning. Misaligning of social and cultural structure creates tension and deviant behavior.

According to this theory, it is possible to eliminate deviance by creating institutionalized mean. Policies such as welfare, job training, financial aid for education etc are helpful to change and prevent deviance.

Who defines deviance- social reaction and interaction (Becker)

Becker (1963) “Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender.”

Deviant is the individual who has been labeled as such.

Therefore, he said “social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying these rules to particular people and labeling them as outsider.” Thus push them out of their social circle, that they may become embittered, even commit more such action or seek the company of others who condone that behavior.”
The labeling theory- deviance and conformity results not so much from what people do but from how others respond to those actions. i.e. social response defines crime and deviance.

Primary deviance

Edwin Lemert (1971) notes that many types of violation (norm) have little reaction from others and have little effects on a person’s self-concept.

Primary deviance refers to transitional period of norm violations which do not affect individuals’ self concept or performance of role. That is because such behavior is without public knowledge.

Secondary deviance refers to norm violation which is responsible social labeling. It is solely caused by the social reaction to the people who engage the primary deviance. Such labeling or social reaction put him out of social circle. That results that person engages more or begins to take on deviant identity.

The difference of primary and secondary deviance is original and effective cause of deviance. Primary deviance arises from many sources but only has marginal implication for the status and psychic structure of the person concerned; Secondary deviance refers to the way in which stigma and punishment can actually make crime or deviance become central facts of existence for those experiencing them, altering psychic structure, producing specialized organization of social roles and self-attitude.

Lemert argued that rather than seeing crime as leading to control, it may be more fruitful to see the process as one in which control agencies structures and even creates crime.

Stigma is a powerful negative social label that often radically changes a person’s self-concept and social identity.
Retrospective labeling: once people have stigmatized a person, they may engage retrospective labeling, that is the interpretation of someone’s past consistent with present deviance.

Conflict perspective- criminology

Conflict theory demonstrates how deviance reflects inequality and power. This perspective suggests that causes of crimes may be linked to inequalities of class, race and ethnic and gender. The social power decides what or who to be deviance.

1. The norm, especially law of any society generally bolster the interests of the rich and powerful
2. the powerful have more resources to resist deviant labeling
3. The impression of law is always fair and just that often masks its political characters. We may condemn the unequal application of the law but question little whether the law itself is fair or just.