McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

8DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROLDEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Chapter Outline

• Social Control• Deviance• Crime• Social Policy and Social Control: The De

ath Penalty in the United States and Worldwide

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Control

•Social Control refers to the techniques and strategies for preventing deviant human behavior in any society.

•Sanctions are penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social norm.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Control

•Conformity is defined as going along with peers who have no special right to direct our behavior.

•Obedience is defined as compliance with higher authorities in an hierarchical structure.

Conformity and Obedience

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Control

•Conformity to Prejudice

--Research demonstrates that people may conform to attitudes and behavior of peers even when it means expressing intolerance towards others.

Conformity and Obedience

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Control

•Informal Social Control

--Informal social control is used casually to enforce norms.

--Informal social control includes:

smiles laughter

ridicule raising an eyebrow

Informal and Formal Social Control

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Control

•Some norms are so important to a society that they are formalized into laws controlling people’s behaviors.

•Laws are governmental social control and are created in response to perceived social needs for formal social control.

Law and Society

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Control

Control Theory

--Our bonds to members of society lead us to conform to society’s norms.

--We are bonded through:

family

friends

peers

Law and Society

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

•Deviance

--Deviance is behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society.

--Examples of deviants:

alcoholics

gamblers

mentally ill

What is Deviance?

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

•Sociologically, we are all deviant from time to

time.

•Each of us violates common social norms in certain

situations.

•Deviance involves the violation of group norms

which may or may not be formalized into law.

What is Deviance?

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

•Standards of deviance vary from one group (subculture) to another.•Deviance varies over time.

•Deviance is subjective, subject to social definitions.

What is Deviance?

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

What is Deviance?

•Deviance and Social Stigma

--The term stigma describes the labels society uses to devalue members of certain social groups.

--Once members are assigned deviant roles, they have trouble presenting positive images to others.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

What is Deviance?

•Deviance and Technology

--Technological innovations can redefine social interactions and standards of behavior related to them. These innovations include:

pagers

voice mail

internet

cell phones

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

Explaining Deviance

•Functionalist Perspective

--Deviance is a part of human existence and has positive and negative consequences for society.

--Durkheim introduced the term anomie, defined as a state of normlessness that occurs during periods of profound social change.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

Explaining Deviance

•Functionalist Perspective (continued)

--Merton examined how people adapted to the acceptance or rejection of a society’s goals. Merton’s Anomie Theory of Deviance examines how people conform to or deviate from cultural expectations.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

Explaining Deviance

Interactionist Perspective

--Focuses on everyday behavior and why or how a person comes to commit a deviant act. The cultural transmission theory holds that one learns criminal behavior through interactions with others.

--The routine activities theory holds that criminal victimization is increased when motivated offenders and suitable targets converge.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

Explaining Deviance

Interactionist Perspective (continued)

--Labeling theory attempts to explain why certain people are viewed as deviants while others are not and emphasizes how a person comes to be labeled as deviant and to accept this label.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

Explaining Deviance

Interactionist Perspective (continued)

--Conflict theory holds that people with power protect their own interests and define deviance to suit their own needs.

--Conflict theory contends the criminal justice system of the U.S. treats people differently on the basis of their racial, ethnic, or social class background.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deviance

Explaining Deviance

Feminist Perspective

--Feminist perspective contends that when it comes to crime and to deviance in general, society tends to treat women in stereotypical fashion.

--Feminist perspective emphasizes that deviance, including crime, tends to flow from economic relationships.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Crime

•Crime is defined as a violation of criminal law for which some governmental authority applies formal penalties.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Crime

Types of Crime

•Professional Crime: Crime pursued as a person’s day-to-day occupation.

•Organized Crime: The work of a group that regulates relations between various criminal enterprises.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Crime

Types of Crime

•White Collar and Technology-Based Crime: Illegal acts committed in the course of business activities, often by affluent people.

•Victimless Crimes: The willing exchange among adults of widely desired, but illegal, goods and services.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Crime

Crime Statistics

•Crime statistics are not as accurate as social scientists would like.

•Reported crime is very high in the United States and is regarded as a major social problem.

•Violent crimes have declined significantly nationwide following many years of increases.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Policy and Socialization

The Death Penalty in the United States and Worldwide

The Issue

--Historically, execution has served as a significant form of punishment for deviance.

--Capital punishment was once assumed to be morally and religiously justified.

--People in the United States and other countries that have the death penalty criticize capital punishment, especially when it might apply to young people convicted of murders.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Policy and Socialization

The Death Penalty in the United States and Worldwide

The Setting

--Death penalties are not unusual anywhere in the world.

--In the decade of the 1990s, more than 30 nations abolished the death penalty.

--Only three nations have introduced the death penalty since 1985.

--It the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment was constitutional.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Policy and Socialization

The Death Penalty in the United States and Worldwide

Sociological Insights

--Functionalists hold that the death penalty will prevent at least some criminals from committing serious offenses.

--Even if the death penalty is not a deterrent, such criminals deserve to die for their crimes.

--The alternative to capital punishment—life in prison—is a dysfunction because it is unnecessarily expensive.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Policy and Socialization

The Death Penalty in the United States and Worldwide

Sociological Insights

--Conflict theorists emphasize the persistence of social inequality in society today.

--Poor people cannot afford the best lawyers and this unequal treatment may mean the difference between life and death.

--Race discrimination may also be a factor because defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death if their victims were White rather than Black.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Policy and Socialization

The Death Penalty in the United States and Worldwide

Policy Initiatives

--How can the death sentence be handed out in a judicially fair manner?

--Federal and state lawmakers continue to make more crimes punishable by death.

--There is increasing international pressure on the United States to abolish the death penalty.

--Capital punishment remains popular with both the general public and lawmakers in the United States.