2.1

What is Deviance?-

  • Any violation of norms

    • traffic violation to homicide

    • going against expected behavior

  • Howard Becker

    • It is not the act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant

    • not labeled as deviant til somebody says that it is

  • Deviance relative

    • different groups different norms

    • deviant to one isn’t deviant to others

    • deviance in different cultures

    • differences across a country

      • in group differences

    • deviances can be positive and negative

      • going against the norms

      • going against the norms in a positive way

      • Martin Luther King

      • civil disobedience

  • All of us are deviants

  • No human group can exist without norms

    • norms make social life possible by making behavior predictable

    • deviances undermine predictability

    • develop a system of social control

    • forcing norms

    • in-formal parents family

    • formal the criminal justice system

Sociobiologist-

  • trying to explain deviances from a sociobiologist perspective

  • answers within individuals

  • genetics

  • some genes make people more likely to commit crime

  • 1- Low intelligence leads to crime

    • some criminals are not very smart others are very smart

    • most people of low intelligence don’t commit crime

  • 2- XYY theory

    • the idea of the extra y chromosome

    • rare within men

    • not all extra y males commit crimes

    • excludes female criminality

  • 3 Body type-

    • somatotypes

    • offenders are of a certain body type

    • idea that more muscular people commit crime

    • psychical body type would intimidate a victim

    • most muscular people don’t commit crime

    • studies done on looking at people and telling if they’re a criminal or not and what crime they committed

    • offenders don’t stick to one type of crime

Psychologists-

  • Focus on abnormalities within the individual

  • personality disorders

    • this is the reason people deviant from the norm

    • not all offenders had a personality disorder

Sociologists-

  • Search for factors outside the individual

  • what outside causes them to deviant

  • Apply-

    • Symbolic interactions

    • Functionalism

    • Conflict theory

Differential Association-

  • symbolic interactionism- we are rational individuals who act according to our interpretation of the situation

  • Edwin Sutherland

    • against biology and psychology

    • our experiences within groups

    • join a street gang vs joining girl scouts or boy scouts

    • From the different groups we associate with we learn to deviate from or conform to society’s norms

    • 9 different types

    • we learn from groups that are important to us

    • a group that wants to follow the law; associating with that groups will make to want to follow the law

    • we can learn to conform

    • mixed messages which ones are more promient to conform or deviant

  • Families-

  • Freinds, neighborhoods, and subcultures

    • teaches us attitudes and behaviors

    • inmates in different prisons, about half have a relative who has also served time in prison

    • does this push the children towards breaking the law because of family

    • learning its right along with the motives and techniques

    • growing up in a bad neighborhood more likely to commit crime

Control Theory-

  • symbolic interactionists

  • Walter Reckless

  • Thought about doing something you shouldn’t do

    • fighting the temptation to do something we shouldn’t

  • 2 different control systems

    • that keep us from deviating

  • Inner Controls

    • Conscience, religious principles, ideas of right and wrong

    • punishments

    • the desire to be a good person

    • doing something wrong and knowing ill feel guilty so I dont’ do it

  • Outer Controls

    • Family, friends, police,

    • authority figures

    • strong inner controls the outer don’t matter