CJ 100 - Chapter 4: Theories of Deviance and Social Control

Deviance

Behaviors that violate society’s expectations, beliefs, standards, or values. As such, deviance refers to any departure from behaviors that are typical, acceptable, or accepted.

Social norms

Societal judgments about what individuals should or should not do. Norms are based on widely shared values about what are good or bad, correct or incorrect, behaviors.

Prescriptive norms

The norms that tell us what we ought to do.

Proscriptive norms

The norms that tell us what we ought not to do.

Subcultures

A group that shares a set of norms that are different from those of the larger society.

Socialization

The process by which individuals learn a society’s or culture’s norms and also learn to conform to them.

True or false, deviance and crime are interchangeable terms.

False

Social control

The processes by which society controls individual and group behaviors. The term is now often used to refer to the ways deviant behaviors are controlled, both informally and formally.

Informal social controls

Tools used to control behavior in everyday social life, including social control exercised by peers, communities, families, and groups.

Formal social controls

Mechanisms exercised by the government to control human behavior and to cause persons to conform to norms and obey laws. Criminal justice and criminal law are the most important tools of formal social control.

What concept is akin to one's conscience?

Self-control

Social constructionism

In criminological theory, the idea that criminal activity is best understood by studying the processes through which behaviors are defined as deviant or acceptable.

True or false, norms and laws are static.

False

True or false, Durkheim argued that crime is normal.

True

Smith and Pollack (1994) argued that there are three categories of deviance: _____, _____, and _____.

Crime, sin, and poor taste

Through his presentation of scientifically unsupported beliefs and racist ideology, _____ was an early criminal justice reformer helped create moral panic and shaped marijuana laws.

Harry Anslinger

Stratification

Differences between members of a society that occur when persons and groups are divided in a hierarchical manner. This results in levels of inequality from which persons at the top of the hierarchy benefit, whereas those at the bottom suffer.

Penal social control

Views the violator of a social norm that has been codified into criminal law as an offender who is deserving of official condemnation and punishment. This is accomplished through the criminal justice system.

Compensatory social control

Focuses on providing restitution to the victim of a harmful act. This is typically accomplished through the civil justice system.

Conciliatory social control

Attempts to create and preserve social harmony via dispute resolution. This is accomplished through practices such as mediation.

Therapeutic social control

Views the deviant person as someone who needs help to become nondeviant or “normal.” This is often accomplished through science and medicine.

True or false, Donald Black argued that there is an inverse relationship between law and informal social control.

True

The four styles of formal social control outlined by Donald Black are: _____, _____, _____, and _____.

Penal, compensatory, therapeutic, and conciliatory

True or false, stratification occurs solely because of differences between people, such as race, age, gender, or ethnicity.

False

Medical model of deviance

A way of explaining deviance that underlies therapeutic social control. Under the model, deviance is defined objectively as a disease, and treatment of the disease is sought in accordance with the therapeutic social control.

Medicalization of deviance

Defining a deviant behavior as an illness or a symptom of an illness and then providing medical intervention to treat the illness. Incorporates elements of the medical model of deviance and therapeutic social control.

Insanity

A legal defense that refers to the defendant’s state of mind at the time a criminal offense is committed. Definitions of insanity vary by jurisdiction.

True or false, the insanity defense has a high success rate.

False

Deinstitutionalization

A movement in the 1960s and 1970s in which persons were released from mental hospitals in favor of community-based, often therapeutic, social control.

Mental health courts

A specialized type of problem-solving court for offenders with mental illnesses. Mental health courts focus on therapeutic social control.

True or false, CITs are comprised of officers who receive special training on mental illness and de-escalation.

True

True or false, research has generally found mental health courts to be effective at reducing recidivism.

True

True or false, mental health courts have very little variation in how they operate across jurisdiction.

False