Download A. What is deviance?

I.
Deviance
A. What is deviance?
1. Deviance is defined as the recognized violation of cultural norms
a. Occur when there are normative violations in our society – life is less
orderly and predictable.
b. Deviance: Any violation of a widely held norm.
• Prescriptive Norms: Dictate what is expected ("thou shalt").
• Proscriptive Norms: Govern forbidden conduct ("though shalt
not").
• Most deviance is ignored, mildly punished, amusing, or supported
by the larger society (ex. The US Constitution protects many
deviant acts through the first amendment).
• Serious violations versus social blunders.
• Judgements about what is and what is not deviant are relative to
the society in which the deviant act occurs.
c. Deviance may exist in behavior or simply in a person's very existence
d. It may be positive or negative
2. The social foundations of deviance
a. Deviance varies according to cultural norms
b. People become deviant as others define them that way
c. Both rule-making and rile-breaking involve social power
B. The Functions of Deviance: Structural Functional Analysis
1. Emile Durkheim: The functions of deviance
a. Durkheim identified four distinct functions of deviance
• It affirms cultural values and norms
• Clarifies moral boundaries
• Deviance as boundary setting
• It occurs when shared norms set the limits of acceptable
behavior.
• Confrontations test the limits of acceptable behavior
• Promotes social unity
• Deviance can be used as a unifying force by reaffirming the
strength of societal norms as well as our commitment to them.
• A common temper or anger can be brought to bear against
another group, reinforcing identity and consensus.
• Deviance as Safety Valve
• It allows controlled expression of deviance to stop any large
scale deviance (ex. prostitution, Woodstock, etc.)
•
Encourages social change
C. Deviance calls forth social control -- attempts by society to regulate the
behavior of individuals
1. Because deviance may appear disruptive to social life, all societies
develop some means of controlling it.
a. Mechanisms that monitor behavior and penalize the violation of norms
are known as social controls (from weak kinds to death).
• Sociologists divide them into two kinds:
• Internal Social Controls: Seated within the individual and are
learned through socialization.
• We are taught that certain behaviors are normal and others
are not.
• This socialization runs so deep we learn to really want to
conform and not be deviant. Ensures conformity and
predictability.
• External Controls: rely on social mechanisms to prevent
deviance (ex. police, law, gov, family, and peers).
• They are societal mechanisms that monitor our behavior:
they reward conformity and punish non-conformity.
• They are used when our internal controls are not reliable, or
a social situation is too important to be left up to individual
responsibility. (ex. speeding).
•
Informal Controls: Expressions of Approval and affection
by significant others -- but it also includes expression of
disapproval.
• Formal Agents of Control: These are agents that occupy
statuses specifically charged with norm enforcement.
II. What is Criminology?
A. Criminology is the scientific approach to studying criminal behavior.
1.
Body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon
2.
Development of criminal law and its use to define crime
3.
The cause of law violation
4.
Methods used to control criminal behavior
5.
An interdisciplinary science
B.
Criminology and Criminal Justice
1.
Criminology explains the etiology (origin), extent, and nature of
crime in society.
2.
Criminal justice refers to the study of the agencies of social
control: police, courts, and corrections.
C.
Criminology and Deviance
1.
Deviant behavior is behavior that departs from social norms.
2.
Not all crimes are deviant; not all deviant acts are illegal.
D.
Becoming Deviant
1.
Criminologists study the process by which deviant acts are
criminalized and how criminal acts are decriminalized and/or
legalized.
III. A Brief History of Criminology
A.
The study of crime and criminality is relatively recent.
1.
During the Middle Ages (1200-1600), superstition and fear of
satanic possession dominated thinking.
B.
Classical Criminology
1.
During the eighteenth century, social philosophers began to
embrace the view that human behavior was a result of rational
thought process.
a.
Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism: people choose to act after
weighing costs and benefits, pleasure and pain.
b.
Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) applied Bentham’s principles
to crime
i.
To deter crime, the pain of punishment must be
administered in a fair, balanced, and proportionate
amount to counterbalance the pleasure obtained
from crime.
C.
Nineteenth-Century Positivism
1. Emergence of scientific method
a.
People began using observation and analysis of natural
phenomena to understand the world.
b.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) applied scientific methods to
the study of society.
i.
Primitive societies consider inanimate objects as
having life; in later social stages, people embrace a
rational, scientific view. Comte called this final
stage the positive stage and those who followed his
writings became known as positivists.
c.
Two elements of positivism
i.
Belief that human behavior is a function of forces beyond a
person’s control
ii.
The use of scientific method to conduct research
2. Biological Positivism
a.
Physiognomists and phrenologists studied facial features,
shape of the skull and bumps on the head to determine
criminal behavior.
b.
Psychopatic personality in its early form suggested that
abnormality in the human mind linked to criminal behavior.
i.
Early research efforts shifted attention to brain
functioning and personality as the keys to criminal
behavior.
ii.
Freud’s (1856-1939) work established the
psychological basis of behavior.
c.
Ceseare Lombroso (1835-1909) believed that serious
offenders inherited criminal traits.
i.
Concepts of “born criminal” and biological
determinants
ii.
Criminals suffer atavistic anomalies – physically,
they are throwbacks to more primitive times.
iii.
Indirect heredity: criminogenic traits acquired from
degenerate family whose members suffered such ills
as insanity, syphilis, and alcoholism
iv.
Direct heredity: being related to a family of
criminals
3. Social Positivism
a.
Scientific study of major social changes taking place in
nineteenth-century society
D.
The Foundations of Sociological Criminology
1.
Adolphe Quetelet
a.
Instigated the use of data and statistics in performing
criminological research
b.
Helped develop the cartographic school of criminology
c.
Found strong influences of age and sex on crime and
uncovered evidence that season, climate, population
composition, and poverty were related to criminality.
d.
Quetelet’s findings directly challenged Lombrosian
biological determinism.
2.
Emile Durkheim
a.
Founder of sociology who defined crime as a normal and
necessary event.
i.
Crime is normal and a part of human nature because
it exists during periods of both poverty and
prosperity.
ii.
The inevitability of crime is linked to the
differences (heterogeneity) within society.
b.
Crime can be useful and even healthy for society.
i.
Crime paves the way for social change.
ii.
Crime calls attention to social ills.
c.
Described the consequences of the shift from a
“mechanical” society to the more modern “organic society
i.
From this shift flowed anomie, or norm and role
confusion that maintained high suicide rates and, by
implication, other forms of deviance.
E.
The Development of Sociological Criminology
1.
Chicago School – University of Chicago – Ezra Park (1864-1944),
Ernest Burgess (1886-1966), Louis Wirth (1897-1952)
2.
Research on the social ecology of the city
3.
Social forces operating in urban areas create criminal interactions;
some neighborhoods become “natural areas” for crime.
4.
Crime is a function of where one lives rather than individual
pathologies.
F.
The Development of Social Process Theories
1.
During the 1930s and 1940s, a group of sociologists concluded that
the individual’s relationship to important social processes – such as
education, family life, and peer relations – was the key to
understanding human behavior.
2.
Two views, learning and control, linked criminality to the failure
of socialization.
a.
Edwin Sutherland: Crime is a learned behavior.
b.
Walter Reckless: Crime occurs when children develop an
inadequate self-image that renders them incapable of
controlling their own misbehavior.
3.
By mid-century most American criminologists had embraced
either the ecological view or the socialization view of crime.
G.
The Roots of Conflict Criminology
1.
Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) Communist Manifesto
a.
The character of every civilization is determined by its
mode of production.
b.
Described the oppressive labor conditions during the rise of
industrial capitalism and the relationship between the
owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and
the laborers (the proletariat).
c.
Marx’s writings laid the foundation for a Marxist
criminology developed by young sociologists who began to
analyze the social conditions in the United States that
promoted class conflict and crime.
H.
Contemporary Criminology
1.
The various schools of criminology have evolved and continue to
have impact on the field.
a.
Classical theory has evolved into choice and deterrence
theories.
b.
Biological positivism has evolved into biological and
psychological trait theories.
c.
Quetelet and Durkheim’s sociological criminology has
evolved into contemporary social ecological theory.
d.
Marxist writings have evolved into critical criminology.
e.
Criminologists are now integrating theories linking
personal, situational, and social forces. These are termed
developmental theories.
IV. What Criminologist Do: The Criminological Enterprise
A.
Criminologists are devoted to the study of crime and criminal behavior.
Several subareas of criminology comprise the criminological enterprise.
B.
Criminal Statistics
1.
Criminologists interested in criminal statistics try to create valid
and reliable measurements of criminal behavior.
2.
Criminal statistics can also be used to make international
comparisons.
C.
The Sociology of Law
1.
Criminologists interested in the sociology of law are concerned
with the role social forces play in shaping criminal law, and
concomitantly, the role of criminal law in shaping society.
D.
Theory Construction
1.
Criminologists who engage in theory construction view social
theory as a systematic set of interrelated statements or principles
that explain some aspect of social life.
a.
Constructed theories are based on social fact and tested by
constructing hypotheses and then assessing the hypotheses
using empirical research.
E.
Criminal Behavior Systems
1.
The criminal behavior systems subarea involves research on
specific criminal types and patterns: violent crime, theft crime,
public order crime, and organized crime.
2.
The criminal behavior systems subarea also involves research on
the links between different types of crime and criminals; this is
known as crime typology.
F.
Penology
1.
Penology involves the correction and control of known criminal
offenders; it is the subarea of criminology that most resembles
criminal justice.
G.
Victimology
1.
Victimology is the study of victims and victimization.
a.
Measuring the extent of criminal victimization
b.
Calculating the costs of victimization
c.
Measuring the factors that increase the likelihood of
becoming a victim
d.
Studying the victim’s role in precipitating crime
e.
Designing services for victims of crime
V. How Criminologists View Crime
A.
The Consensus View of Crime
1.
According to the consensus view, crimes are behaviors believed to
be repugnant to all elements of society.
a.
Social harm is what sets strange, unusual, or deviant
behavior – or any action that departs from the social norms
– apart from criminal behaviors.
B.
The Conflict View of Crime
1.
The conflict view depicts society as a collection of diverse groups
who are in constant and continuing conflict.
a.
Groups able to assert their political power use the law and
criminal justice system to advance their economic and
social position.
b.
Criminal laws are viewed as acts created to protect the
haves from the have-nots.
c.
Crime is a political concept designed to protect the power
and position of the upper classes at the expense of the poor.
C.
The Interactionist View of Crime
1.
The Interactionist view holds that people, institutions, and events
are viewed subjectively and labeled either good or evil according
to the interpretation of the evaluator.
a.
Crime definitions reflect the preferences and opinions of
people who hold social power in a particular legal
jurisdiction.
b.
Criminals are individuals society has stigmatized, or chosen
to label as outcasts or deviants, because they have violated
social rules.
c.
Criminal law is seen as conforming to the beliefs of moral
crusaders or moral entrepreneurs who use their influence to
shape the legal process in the way they see fit.
D.
Defining Crime
1.
Integrated definition: Crime is a violation of societal rules of
behavior as interpreted and expressed by a criminal legal code
created by people holding social and political power. Individuals
who violate these rules are subject to sanctions by state authority,
social stigma, and loss of status.
VI. Crime and the Criminal Law
A.
The concept of criminal law has been recognized for more than 3,000
years.
1.
The Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest, established a system of
crime and punishment based on physical retaliation (“an eye for an
eye”).
2.
The Mosaic Code was the foundation for Judeo-Christian moral
teachings and the U. S. legal system.
3.
German and Anglo-Saxon legal codes
a.
Compurgation: the accused person swore an oath of
innocence with the backing of twelve to twenty-five “oathhelpers,” who could attest to his or her character and claims
of innocence.
b.
Trial by ordeal: based on the principle that divine forces
would not allow an innocent person to be harmed.
B.
Common Law
1.
Judge-made law that emerged after the Norman conquest of
England in 1066, that was based on precedents commonly applied
in all similar cases.
a.
Mala in se – inherently evil and depraved
b.
Mala prohibitum – defined by Parliament
C.
Contemporary Criminal Law
1.
Crimes divided into felonies and misdemeanors based on
seriousness.
2.
Acts prohibited by the criminal law constitute behaviors
considered unacceptable and impermissible by those in power.
3.
Social goals the government expects to achieve:
a.
Enforcing social control
b.
Discouraging revenge
c.
Expressing public opinion and morality
d.
Deterring criminal behavior
e.
Punishing wrongdoing
f.
Maintaining social order
D.
The Evolution of Criminal Law
1.
Criminal law is constantly evolving in an effort to reflect social
and economic conditions.
a.
Change may be prompted by highly publicized criminal
cases.
b.
Change may be prompted by shifts in culture and social
conventions.
c.
The future direction of criminal law remains unclear.
VII. Ethical Issues in Criminology
A.
Involves recognizing criminology’s political and social consequences
B.
Major ethical issues include:
1.
What is to be studied?
a.
Criminologists select subject for study guided by their
scholarly interests, social needs, or availability of data.
b.
More recently, the great influx of governmental funding
has spurred criminological inquiry and has influenced the
direction of research.
i.
Funded research has focused on criminal careers.
ii.
Conflict of interests emerge.
iii.
Even when criminologists maintain discretion of
choice, the direction of their research efforts may
not be truly objective.
2.
Who is to be studied?
a.
Tendency of criminologists to focus on one element of the
community while ignoring others: attention focused on
poor and minorities while ignoring the middle-class
criminal
3.
How are studies to be conducted?
a.
Should subjects be told the true purpose of a survey?
b.
It may be unethical to provide a special treatment program
for one group while depriving others of the same
opportunity.
c.
Criminologists must protect subjects from experiments that
may actually cause them harm.