In Depth Notes on Deviant Careers and Career Deviance

Introduction to Deviant Careers

  • Definition: Deviant careers are formal or informal careers that are socially or morally disrespected, involving jobs with typical pay structures and retirement possibilities.
  • Examples:
    • Dancers in strip clubs
    • Sex workers in pornography
    • Certain types of prostitutes, drug dealers, smugglers, and professional thieves.

Career Deviance

  • Definition: Career deviance is not just a career but involves sequences of deviant acts over time.
  • Duration: Can vary from short-term (like rebellious youths) to long-term patterns of behavior.

Understanding Deviance Over Time

  • Longitudinal Perspective: Viewing deviance as a career leads to questions about different stages:
    1. Onset of deviance
    2. Continuation or escalation
    3. Desistance from deviance.
  • Specialization vs. Generalization: Deviants may focus on specific forms or engage in multiple types of deviant behaviors based on available opportunities.

Getting Into Deviance: Onset of a Deviant Career

  • Study by P. A. Adler and P. Adler (1983):
    • Sample: Upper-level drug dealers and smugglers of marijuana and cocaine.
    • Routes to Deviance:
    1. Low-level entry
    2. Middle-level entry (75% of cases)
    3. Smuggling (10% solitary entry).

Middle-Level Entry Details

  • Many mid-level drug dealers stem from both conventional and seedy professions (e.g., laundering through real estate).
  • Required skills: establishing connections, organizing transactions, avoiding law enforcement, and managing logistics.

Recruitment and Training in Smuggling

  • Most smugglers are recruited and trained by mentors rather than starting alone.
  • They learn techniques and acquire resources through these mentorships.
  • Stratification occurs within deviant careers similar to conventional businesses, allowing upward mobility but often with challenges.

Desistance from Deviant Careers

  • Traditional Focus:
    • Initial engagement in deviance (why people start).
    • Continued engagement in deviance (why it persists).
  • Theories of Desistance:
    • Social Control Theory: Weak social bonds result in persistently engaging in deviance.
    • Strain Theory: Initial deviance as a response to stress or frustration.
    • Differential Association: Involves definitions favorable to deviance outweighing unfavorable definitions.

Factors Affecting Desistance

  1. Individual Factors:
    • Self-destructive behaviors, mental health issues, trauma, and chronic stress.
  2. Relational Factors:
    • Limited support systems, strained familial relationships, and isolation.
  3. Structural Factors:
    • Job skills, employment options, economic need, education, and criminal records.
  4. Societal Factors:
    • Discrimination and stigma.

Desistance Process Model - Stages of Exit from Deviancy

  1. Immersion: Initial state without awareness of needing change.
  2. Awareness: Recognition that circumstances are unsatisfactory, compounded by barriers to leaving.
  3. Planning and Preparation: Attempts to contact social support and rehabilitation resources.
  4. Exit Period: Active efforts to leave the deviant lifestyle utilizing available support.

Policy and Program Development

  • Consideration of whether programs should be universal (all populations) or targeted (specific subsets based on risk).
  • Importance of utilizing scientific methods to determine effective risk and protective factors.

Future Perspectives and Emerging Theoretical Frameworks

  • Complexity Theory: Emphasizes unpredictability and non-linear changes in social systems.
  • Network Theory: Identifies how behaviors spread through social connections, highlighting peer influence.
  • Posthuman Perspectives: Questions about human enhancement, species boundaries, and cognitive enhancements.

Conclusion: Future of Deviance

  • Calls for awareness and understanding of diverse perspectives, and the role of policy and activism in shaping future responses to deviance.
  • Emphasis on the dynamic nature of social norms and potential for deviance to become normalized over time.