What makes people deviant

The third level of moral reasoning, the post-conventional level, is reached during early adulthood at which point individuals are able to go beyond social conventions. That is, they value the laws of the social system. People who do not progress through these stages may become stuck in their moral development and, as a result, become deviants or criminals.

Individuals thus learn deviant and criminal behavior by observing other people and witnessing the rewards or consequences that their behavior receives. For example, an individual who observes a friend shoplift an item and not get caught sees that the friend is not punished for their actions and they are rewarded by getting to keep the stolen item.

That individual might be more likely to shoplift, then, if he believes that he will be rewarded with the same outcome. According to this theory, if this is how deviant behavior is developed, then taking away the reward value of the behavior can eliminate deviant behavior.

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Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. As a result, what is considered deviant changes over time and can vary significantly across cultures. It is important to note that labelling theory does not address the initial motives or reasons for the rule-breaking behaviour, which might be unknowable, but the importance of its social consequences. It does not attempt to answer the question why people break the rules or why they are deviant so much as why particular acts or particular individuals are labelled deviant while others are not.

How do certain acts get labelled deviant and what are the consequences? Sociologist Edwin Lemert expanded on the concepts of labelling theory, identifying two types of deviance that affect identity formation. Speeding is a deviant act, but receiving a speeding ticket generally does not make others view you as a bad person, nor does it alter your own self-concept. Individuals who engage in primary deviance still maintain a feeling of belonging in society and are likely to continue to conform to norms in the future.

Sometimes, in more extreme cases, primary deviance can morph into secondary deviance. For example, consider a high school student who often cuts class and gets into fights. Secondary deviance can be so strong that it bestows a master status on an individual. A master status is a label that describes the chief characteristic of an individual. Some people see themselves primarily as doctors, artists, or grandfathers.

Others see themselves as beggars, convicts, or addicts. In the second case, being labelled a juvenile delinquent sets up a set of responses to the teenager by police and authorities that lead to criminal charges, more severe penalties, and a process of socialization into the criminal identity. In detention in particular, individuals learn how to assume the identity of serious offenders as they interact with hardened, long-term inmates within the prison culture Wheeler The act of imprisonment itself modifies behaviour, to make individuals more criminal.

Judges were also found to be more likely to impose harsher penalties on teenagers from divorced families. Unsurprisingly, Cicourel noted that subsequent research conducted on the social characteristics of teenagers who were charged and processed as juvenile delinquents found that children from divorced families were more likely to be charged and processed.

Divorced families were seen as a cause of youth crime. This set up a vicious circle in which the research confirmed the prejudices of police and judges who continued to label, arrest, and convict the children of divorced families disproportionately. The labelling process acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy in which police found what they expected to see.

The sociological study of crime, deviance, and social control is especially important with respect to public policy debates. In the Conservative government passed the Safe Streets and Communities Act, a controversial piece of legislation because it introduced mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug and sex-related offences, restricted the use of conditional sentencing i.

The legislation imposes a mandatory six-month sentence for cultivating six marijuana plants, for example. This followed the Tackling Violent Crime Act passed in , which among other provisions, imposed a mandatory three-year sentence for first-time gun-related offences.

This government policy represents a shift toward a punitive approach to crime control and away from preventive strategies such as drug rehabilitation, prison diversion, and social reintegration programs. Despite the evidence that rates of serious and violent crime have been falling in Canada, and while even some of the most conservative politicians in the United States have begun to reject the punitive approach as an expensive failure, the government pushed the legislation through Parliament.

One reason is that violent crime is a form of deviance that lends itself to spectacular media coverage that distorts its actual threat to the public. However, the image of crime presented in the headlines does not accurately represent the types of crime that actually occur. Whereas the news typically reports on the worst sorts of violent crime, violent crime made up only 21 percent of all police-reported crime in down 17 percent from , and homicides made up only one-tenth of 1 percent of all violent crimes in down 16 percent from In , the homicide rate fell to its lowest level since Perreault Moreover, an analysis of television news reporting on murders in showed that while 44 percent of CBC news coverage and 48 percent of CTV news coverage focused on murders committed by strangers, only 12 percent of murders in Canada are committed by strangers.

Similarly, while 24 percent of the CBC reports and 22 percent of the CTV reports referred to murders in which a gun had been used, only 3. In , 71 percent of violent crimes in Canada did not involve any weapon Miljan This distortion creates the conditions for moral panics around crime. As we noted earlier, a moral panic occurs when a relatively minor or atypical situation of deviance arises that is amplified and distorted by the media, police, or members of the public.

It thereby comes to be defined as a general threat to the civility or moral fibre of society Cohen For example, the implementation of mandatory minimum sentences for the cultivation of marijuana is framed in the Safe Streets and Communities legislation as a response to the infiltration of organized crime into Canada.

For years newspapers have uncritically published police messaging on grow-ops and the marijuana trade that characterizes the activities as widespread, gang-related, and linked to the cross-border trade in guns and more serious drugs like heroin and cocaine.

Television news coverage often shows police in white, disposable hazardous-waste outfits removing marijuana plants from suburban houses, and presenting exaggerated estimates of the street value of the drugs. However a Justice Department study in revealed that out of a random sample of grow-ops, only 5 percent had connections to organized crime. While 76 percent of Canadians believe that marijuana should be legally available Stockwell et al. The political controversies that surround the question of how best to respond to crime are difficult to resolve at the level of political rhetoric.

A question framed by these types of moral categories cannot be resolved by using evidence-based procedures. Posing the debate in these moral terms narrows the range of options available and undermines the ability to raise questions about what responses to crime actually work. Although deviance is a violation of social norms, it is not always punishable, and it is not necessarily bad.

Crime , on the other hand, is a behaviour that violates official law and is punishable through formal sanctions. Walking to class backwards is a deviant behaviour. For example, in Viola Desmond refused to sit in the balcony designated for blacks at a cinema in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, where she was unable to see the screen.

She was dragged from the cinema by two men who injured her knee, and she was then arrested, obliged to stay overnight in the male cell block, tried without counsel, and fined. The courts ignored the issue of racial segregation in Canada.

Instead her crime was determined to be tax evasion because she had not paid the 1 cent difference in tax between a balcony ticket and a main floor ticket. She took her case to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia where she lost. In hindsight, and long after her death, she was posthumously pardoned, because the application of the law was clearly in violation of norms of social equality.

As you learned previously, all societies have informal and formal ways of maintaining social control. Within these systems of norms, societies have legal codes that maintain formal social control through laws, which are rules adopted and enforced by a political authority. Those who violate these rules incur negative formal sanctions. Normally, punishments are relative to the degree of the crime and the importance to society of the value underlying the law.

As we will see, however, there are other factors that influence criminal sentencing. Not all crimes are given equal weight. Society generally socializes its members to view certain crimes as more severe than others.

For example, most people would consider murdering someone to be far worse than stealing a wallet and would expect a murderer to be punished more severely than a thief. In modern North American society, crimes are classified as one of two types based on their severity. Rape, murder, and armed robbery fall under this category. Nonviolent crimes involve the destruction or theft of property, but do not use force or the threat of force. If you use a crowbar to break into a car, you are committing a nonviolent crime; if you mug someone with the crowbar, you are committing a violent crime.

As we noted earlier in the section on critical sociological approaches, when we think of crime, we often picture street crime , or offences committed by ordinary people against other people or organizations, usually in public spaces. Embezzlement, insider trading, and identity theft are all types of corporate crime. Although these types of offences rarely receive the same amount of media coverage as street crimes, they can be far more damaging. The current economic recession in the United States is the ultimate result of a financial collapse triggered by corporate crime.

An often-debated third type of crime is victimless crime. These are called victimless because the perpetrator is not explicitly harming another person. As opposed to battery or theft, which clearly has a victim, a crime like drinking a beer at age 17 or selling a sexual act do not result in injury to anyone other than the individual who engages in them, although they are illegal. While some claim acts like these are victimless, others argue that they actually do harm society.

Prostitution may foster abuse toward women by clients or pimps. Drug use may increase the likelihood of employee absences. Such debates highlight how the deviant and criminal nature of actions develops through ongoing public discussion. In the early morning of January 4, , a year-old Sikh caretaker in Surrey, B.

The skinheads were part of a group that called itself White Power. They had been to an all-night drinking party when they decided they were going to vandalize some cars in the temple parking lot.

They encountered the caretaker Nirmal Singh Gill and took turns attacking him. In trial it came out that the eldest of the skinheads had recently been released from the military because of his racist beliefs. Another had a large Nazi flag pinned to the wall of his apartment. Miloszewski The category of hate crimes grew out of the provisions in the Criminal Code that prohibit hate propaganda sections and including advocating genocide, public incitement of hatred, or the willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group.

In , section However, police reported hate crimes totalled only 1, incidents in About one-third of the General Social Survey respondents said they reported the hate-motivated incidents to the police. In police-reported hate crimes had dropped to 1, incidents. The majority of these were racially or ethnically motivated, but many were based on religious especially anti-Semitic prejudice or sexual orientation. A significant portion of the hate-motivated crimes 50 percent involved mischief vandalism, graffiti, and other destruction of property.

This figure increased to 75 percent for religious-motivated hate crimes. Violent hate crimes constituted 39 percent of all hate crimes 22 percent accounted for by violent assault specifically. Sexual-orientation-motivated hate crimes were the most likely to be violent 65 percent Allen and Boyce What crimes are people in Canada most likely to commit, and who is most likely to commit them? To understand criminal statistics, you must first understand how these statistics are collected.

These annual publications contain data from all the police agencies in Canada. The accuracy of the data collected by the UCR also varies greatly. Because police and other authorities decide which criminal acts they are going to focus on, the data reflects the priorities of the police rather than actual levels of crime per se. For example, if police decide to focus on gun-related crimes chances are that more gun-related crimes will be discovered and counted.

Similarly, changes in legislation that introduce new crimes or change the categories under which crimes are recorded will also alter the statistics. The GSS is a self-report study. A self-report study is a collection of data acquired using voluntary response methods, based on telephone interviews. In , for example, survey data were gathered from 79, households across Canada on the frequency and type of crime they experience in their daily lives. The surveys are thorough, providing a wider scope of information than was previously available.

This allows researchers to examine crime from more detailed perspectives and to analyze the data based on factors such as the relationship between victims and offenders, the consequences of the crimes, and substance abuse involved in the crimes. Demographics are also analyzed, such as age, ethnicity, gender, location, and income level. In the GSS on Victimization , only 31 percent of criminal incidents experienced by respondents were reported to police Perreault and Brennan Though the GSS is a critical source of statistical information, disadvantages exist.

Inability to contact important demographics, such as those who do not have access to phones or who frequently relocate, also skews the data. For those who participate, memory issues can be problematic for the data sets. While neither of these publications can take into account all of the crimes committed in the country, some general trends may be noted.

Crime rates were on the rise after , but following an all-time high in the s and s, rates of violent and nonviolent crimes started to decline. In they reached their lowest level since Perreault In , approximately 2 million crimes occurred in Canada. Of those, , were classified as violent crimes, the majority being assault and robbery. The rate of violent crime reached its lowest level since , led by decreases in sexual assault, common assault, and robbery.

The homicide rate fell to its lowest level since An estimated 1. The major contribution to the declining crime rate has been decreases in nonviolent crime, especially decreases in mischief, break-ins, disturbing the peace, theft of a motor vehicle, and possession of stolen property.

As noted above however, only 31 percent of violent and nonviolent crimes were reported to the police. What accounts for the decreases in the crime rate? Opinion polls continue to show that a majority of Canadians believe that crime rates, especially violent crime rates, are rising Edmiston , even though the statistics show a steady decline since Where is the disconnect?

There are three primary reasons for the decline in the crime rate. Firstly, it reflects the demographic changes to the Canadian population. Most crime is committed by people aged 15 to This age cohort has declined in size since Secondly, male unemployment is highly correlated with the crime rate.

Following the recession of —, better economic conditions improved male unemployment. Thirdly, police methods have arguably improved since , including having a more targeted approach to particular sites and types of crime. Whereas reporting on spectacular crime has not diminished, the underlying social and policing conditions have.

It is very difficult to get a feel for statistical realities when you are sitting in front of a TV screen that shows a daily litany of violent and frightening crime. The corrections system , more commonly known as the prison system, is tasked with supervising individuals who have been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for a criminal offence.

At the end of , approximately 38, adults were in prison in Canada, while another , were under community supervision or probation Dauvergne By way of contrast, seven million Americans were behind bars in Bureau of Justice Statistics In the United States in , the incarceration rate was approximately 1, per , population. More than 1 in U. As we noted in Chapter 1, from to , aboriginal Canadians were 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than the non-aboriginal population.

While aboriginal people accounted for about 4 percent of the Canadian population, in , they made up Aboriginal women made up This problem of overrepresentation of aboriginal people in the corrections system continues to grow appreciably despite a Supreme Court ruling in that the social history of aboriginal offenders should be considered in sentencing.

Prison is supposed to be used only as a last resort. Between and , the aboriginal population in prison grew by 44 percent Correctional Investigator Canada Although black Canadians are a smaller minority of the Canadian population than aboriginal people, they experience a similar problem of overrepresentation in the prison system.

Blacks represent approximately 2. A survey revealed that blacks in Toronto are subject to racial profiling by the police, which might partially explain their higher incarceration rate Wortley Racial profiling occurs when police single out a particular racial group for extra policing, including a disproportionate use of stop-and-search practices, undercover sting operations, police patrols in racial minority neighbourhoods, and extra attention at border crossings and airports.

Survey respondents revealed that blacks in Toronto were much more likely to be stopped and searched by police than were whites and Asians. Moreover, in a reverse of the situation for whites, older and more affluent black males were more likely to be stopped and searched than younger, lower-income blacks. There are a number of alternatives to prison sentences used as criminal sanctions in Canada including fines, electronic monitoring, probation, and community service.

These alternatives divert offenders from forms of penal social control, largely on the basis of principles drawn from labelling theory. They emphasize to varying degrees compensatory social control, which obliges an offender to pay a victim to compensate for a harm committed; therapeutic social control, which involves the use of therapy to return individuals to a normal state; and conciliatory social control, which reconciles the parties of a dispute to mutually restore harmony to a social relationship that has been damaged.

Many non-custodial sentences involve community-based sentencing , in which offenders serve a conditional sentence in the community, usually by performing some sort of community service.

The argument for these types of programs is that rehabilitation is more effective if the offender is in the community rather than prison. A version of community-based sentencing is restorative justice conferencing , which focuses on establishing a direct, face-to-face connection between the offender and the victim.

Part of the process of restorative justice is to bring the offender to a position in which he or she can fully acknowledge responsibility for the offence, express remorse, and make a meaningful apology to the victim Department of Justice In special cases where the parties agree, aboriginal sentencing circles involve victims, the aboriginal community, and aboriginal elders in a process of deliberation with aboriginal offenders to determine the best way to find healing for the harm done to victims and communities.

The emphasis is on forms of traditional aboriginal justice , which centre on healing and building community rather than retribution. It is difficult to find data in Canada on the effectiveness of these types of programs.

However, a large meta-analysis study that examined ten studies from Europe, North America, and Australia was able to determine that restorative justice conferencing was effective in reducing rates of recidivism —the likelihood for people to be arrested again after an initial arrest—and in reducing costs to the criminal justice system Strang et al. The authors suggest that recidivism was reduced between 7 and 45 percent from traditional penal sentences by using restorative justice conferencing.

Rehabilitation and recidivism are of course not the only goals of the corrections systems. Many people are skeptical about the capacity of offenders to be rehabilitated and see criminal sanctions more importantly as a means of deterrence to prevent crimes, retribution or revenge to address harms to victims and communities, or incapacitation to remove dangerous individuals from society.

Deviance and Control Deviance is a violation of norms. Society seeks to limit deviance through the use of sanctions that help maintain a system of social control. In modern normalizing societies, disciplinary social control is a primary governmental strategy of social control.

Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance The three major sociological paradigms offer different explanations for the motivation behind deviance and crime. Functionalists point out that deviance is a social necessity since it reinforces norms by reminding people of the consequences of violating them. Critical sociologists argue that crime stems from a system of inequality that keeps those with power at the top and those without power at the bottom. Feminist sociologists emphasize that gender inequalities play an important role in determining what types of acts are actually regarded as criminal.

Symbolic interactionists focus attention on the socially constructed nature of the labels related to deviance. Crime and deviance are learned from the environment and enforced or discouraged by those around us. Crime and the Law Crime is established by legal codes and upheld by the criminal justice system.

The corrections system is the dominant system of criminal punishment but a number of community-based sentencing models offer alternatives that promise more effective outcomes in terms of recidivism.

Although crime rates increased throughout most of the 20th century, they have been dropping since their peak in Deviance and Control 1. Which of the following best describes how deviance is defined? In , Viola Desmond was arrested for refusing to sit in the blacks-only section of the cinema in Nova Scotia. A student has a habit of texting during class. One day, the professor stops his lecture and asks her to respect the other students in the class by turning off her phone.

School discipline obliges students to sit in rows and listen to lessons quietly in order for them to learn.

Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance 6. A student wakes up late and realizes her sociology exam starts in five minutes.

She jumps into her car and speeds down the road, where she is pulled over by a police officer. The student explains that she is running late, and the officer lets her off with a warning. According to critical sociology, which of the following people is most likely to commit a crime of accommodation?

According to the concept of the power elite, why would a celebrity such as Charlie Sheen commit a crime? A convicted sexual offender is released on parole and arrested two weeks later for repeated sexual crimes. How would labelling theory explain this? Crime and the Law Which of the following is an example of corporate crime?

Deviance and Control Although we rarely think of it in this way, deviance can have a positive effect on society. Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance The Vancouver safe injection site is a controversial strategy to address the public health concerns associated with intravenous drug use.

Read about the perspectives that promote and critique the safe injection site model at the following websites. Can you determine how the positions expressed by the different sides of the issue fit within the different sociological perspectives on deviance? What is the best way to deal with the problems of addiction? Crime and the Law How is crime data collected in Canada? Read about the victimization survey used by Statistics Canada and take the survey yourself.

NY: Current. Hare, Robert D. New York: Guilford Press. Rimke, Heidi. Criminology: Critical Canadian Perspectives. Like differential association theory, anomie theory does not lend itself to precise scientific study. As examples, they cite wealthy and powerful businesspeople, politicians, and others who commit crimes.

Critics also argue that conflict theory does little to explain the causes of deviance. Proponents counter, however, by asserting that the theory does not attempt to delve into etiologies. Instead, the theory does what it claims to do: It discusses the relationships between socialization, social controls, and behavior. Powerful individuals within society—politicians, judges, police officers, medical doctors, and so forth—typically impose the most significant labels.

Labeled persons may include drug addicts, alcoholics, criminals, delinquents, prostitutes, sex offenders, retarded people, and psychiatric patients, to mention a few. Unfortunately, people who accept the labeling of others —be it correct or incorrect—have a difficult time changing their opinions of the labeled person, even in light of evidence to the contrary.

William Chambliss in conducted a classic study into the effects of labeling. As a result, the police always took action against the Roughnecks, but never against the Saints. Proponents of labeling theory support the theory's emphasis on the role that the attitudes and reactions of others, not deviant acts per se , have on the development of deviance.