Deviance, Crime, and Social Control

Deviance - behavior that violates standards of conduct or expectations in group or society (not always bad, wrong, or illegal)

Stigma - labels society uses to devalues members of certain social groups

Social Control - techniques and strategies for preventing deviant behavior

Informal Social Control - casually enforced norms by family and peer groups

Formal Social Control - norms enforced by authorized agents such as police officers

Sanction - reward or punishment for conduct concerning social norm (stop/prevent behavior or rewarding it)

Functionalist - rules/laws are needed for conformity and survival

Conflict Theorists - functioning of society will benefit powerful and disadvantage other groups

Conformity - going along with peers who have no special right to direct behavior

Obedience - compliance with higher authorities in a hierarchical structure

Control Theory - suggests our connection to members of society leads us to systematically conform to society’s norms

Anomie - state of normlessness typically during social change and disorder

Conformist - nondeviant, accepts both the means and the goal

Retreatist - withdraws from the means and the goal

Innovationist - goes for the goal with unacceptable means (criminals)

Ritualist - goes through the means but abandons the goals

Rebel - feels alienated from both the goal and the means

Cultural transmission theory - learned behavior based on social institutions (can be deviance or proper behavior)

Differential association - describes process through which exposure to attitudes favorable to criminal acts leads to violation of rules

Social disorganization theory - increases in crime can be attributed to communal relationship and social institutions and the absence/breakdown of it

Labeling theory - attempts to explain why some people are labeled

Differential justice - difference in way social control is exercised over different groups

Crime - violation of criminal law for which some governmental authority applies formal penalties (deviance)

Victimless crime - willing exchange among adults of widely desired but illegal goods and services

Professional criminal - person pursing crime as a day-to-day occupation (burglary, safecracking, etc.)

Organized Crime - crime in a business like a bureaucratization

White Collar Crime - illegal acts committed in a business by respectable people

Cybercrime - illegal activity conducted through computer soft/hardware

Corporate crime - act by corporation punishable by the government

Hate crime - crimes motivated by race, religion, ethnic group, sexuality, etc

Transnational crime - crime across borders (ex: smugling)