Deviance, Crime, and Social Control

Module Overview

1
 Acknowledgments
This presentation is based on and includes content derived from the
following OER resource:
Introduction to Sociology, 2e
An OpenStax book used for this course may be downloaded for free at:
https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-sociology-2e

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 Defining Deviance
Deviance describes violations of established norms. Individuals can
transgress folkways, mores, or laws with deviant behavior.
Forms of deviance could include:
• facing the wrong way in an elevator (folkway)
• honking at a mother pushing a baby carriage at a crosswalk (more)
• stealing a car (law)

Change is constant to human relations, so society’s response to an act

ultimately determines whether it is deviant or not.

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 Deviant Behavior
Deviant behavior is not in itself morally wrong. While deviance may
offend the sensibilities of its culture, context, or society, sociologists can
attribute purpose to otherwise irrational conduct.
Indeed, deviance is instrumental to social change. Neither Mahatma
Gandhi’s liberation of India, nor the American Civil Rights Movement,
nor even the American Revolution would have been possible without
sustained deviant behavior.
On an individual basis, deviance may serve as a vehicle for attracting
attention.

4
 Methods of Social Control
The regulation and enforcement of norms, known as social control,
ensures the maintenance of social order. Much like culture, social order
forms an arrangement of practices, behaviors, and probabilities upon
which people base their lives. Collectively, norms constitute and
support the social order.
Members of society exercise sanctions to validate social norms (which
in turn augment social order). Sanctions, either positive or negative,
exert a normalizing influence upon participant behavior. Checks to
violation of norms may take formal or informal form.

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 Examples of Social Control
In business, managers may apply formal and informal sanctions to entice
their teams to produce desired results. Whereas promotion or demotion
represent formal sanctioning powers, informal sanctioning via ignoring
comments or issuing public praise could have comparable power.
School systems may reward students’ good grades (positive) with strong
relationships to faculty and admission into national honor societies or
punish disruptive behavior (negative) with verbal warnings and detention.

form of sanction informal formal

positive smiling and showing affection contractual raise in salary

negative sending an angry email or text court-ordered probation

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 Functionalist View of Deviance: Strain Theory
The functionalist paradigm in sociology assumes that social phenomena
serve a purpose in sustaining the larger whole. Deviance has thus provided
a stimulating paradox for structural functionalist sociologists.
Émile Durkheim theorized that deviance both challenges people’s views
and, when punished, reaffirms social norms.
Robert Merton expanded upon this view and proposed strain theory,
which holds that the accessibility of acceptable behavior largely determines
the roles participants play within society.
Merton furthermore characterized five alternative attitudes participants
adopt to meet the gap between acceptable norms and acceptable means:
conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion.

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 Social Disorganization Theory
Early in the twentieth century, University of Chicago researchers
developed the theory that weak social order contributes to criminal
activity. Social disorganization theory links circumstantial disadvantages
to an individual’s inclination to deviance. Under this hypothesis,
communities with strong civic bonds and role models will tend towards
success. Crime arises, on the other hand, where norms lack enforcement.
In other words, poor social environments tend to produce poor people—
lack of cohesion facilitates deviance.

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 Cultural Deviance Theory
Cultural deviance theory takes exception to universal norms and instead
postulates that para-societies promulgate sub-optimal norms and thus
deviance. Shaw and McKay (1942) proposed that mixed value systems in
poor, ethnically diverse communities results in higher crime rates.
Sampson and Groves (1989) linked social disorganization and crime to
poverty, ethnic diversity, and family disruption. In short, research in this
tradition suggests that parallel cultures—rather than the absence of
socialization—produce deviant behavior.

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 How Conflict Theory Understands Deviance
To conflict theorists, deviance and crime testify to inequality in the
system. By definition, those with more power will shape social norms and
therefore determine the boundaries of deviance. C. Wright Mills
introduced the concept of a power elite (1956), or a group at the apex of
society that wields enough power to influence the lives of everyone else.
For example, in the 1980s, inexpensive drugs carried penalties 100 times
more severe (by some measures) than comparable drugs popular with the
upper classes.
Karl Marx focused on bourgeois society and its capacity to turn even the
masses’ deviance against the masses themselves. For instance, the poor
fight landlords and managers rather than CEOs.

10
 Symbolic Interactionist Approaches
• Labeling theory emphasizes the reaction of others to deviants.
Primary deviation, or common violations, does not implicate social
identity. When others start labeling behavior as deviant, however,
secondary deviance encourages role fulfillment and comes to inhabit
members’ self-concept.
• Differential association asserts that primary group socialization shapes
deviant tendencies, predicting, for instance, that parents who commit
crimes are more likely to have children who grow up to commit crimes.
• Control theory proposes that deviance arises from weak ligations to
society. Attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief all augment
the bonds participants experience to society and hence their tendency
to adhere to its norms.

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 Types of Crime
Crime violates explicit law and is punishable through formal
sanction. Though often viewed as morally wrong, not all violations
implicate moral features.
crime definition example
violent against a person murder or rape

non-violent against property burglary

street in public pickpocketing or drive-by shooting

corporate in business embezzling funds or blackmail

victimless potentially harmless jaywalking, prostitution

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 Crime Statistics
Many branches of government collect data on criminal activity. Certain
crimes, however, are under-represented in statistics because few victims
report to authorities. Rape and hate crime victims are especially unlikely
to report, with the FBI estimating that fewer than 5% of hate crime
victims report their crimes.
Survey approaches naturally reveal higher rates of crime than official
tabulations, but may be subject to self-reporting biases. The U.S. Bureau
of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Report (NCVR) is
nevertheless highly regarded for its in-depth examination of crime’s
repercussions.
Mass media steer citizen perceptions of crime: though rates have
steadily fallen in the U.S., citizens estimate that crime rates are
worsening.

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 Criminal Justice Institutions
In the United States, the police, courts, and corrections system constitute
the criminal justice system. All enforcement agencies have narrow and
overlapping spheres of authority, which theoretically limits their capacity
for abuse of power.
• Police enforce laws at federal, state, and municipal levels.
• Courts apply the law in a procedurally just manner, where the
criminally accused has recourse to a jury of citizen peers and appeal.
• The corrections system supervises the sentences of convicted
criminals.

The United States has the largest number of prisoners in the world, five
times the average rate per capita.

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