Soc 1 Chapter 6 Crime and Deviance

Summarize the four goals of incarceration and whether they are achieved in the United States or not.

1. RETRIBUTION: People who break rules must be punished; they "owe a debt to society." A problem with the retribution goal is that we believe that the punishment should fit the crime: The greater the degree of social harm, the worse the punishment. However, incarceration can only be extended, not worsened. Also, justice is not blind: Prison terms are longer for minorities than whites, and for men than for women, even when both have been convicted of the same offense. So, if retribution is a goal, it is one we are inequitably applying. 2. DETERRENCE: Children may not understand or agree with the reasoning behind their parents' rules, but the threat of grounding deters them from most rule-breaking in the first place, and the memory of punishment is sufficient to hinder future rule-breaking. In the same way, the threat of prison decreases the likelihood of a first offense, and the memory of prison is assumed to deter people from future crimes. But does it? Between 30 and 50 percent of people released from prison commit new crimes, often of the same sort that got them the prison sentence in the first place.Criminologists have found that fear of prison itself plays virtually no role in the decision-making process of either first-time or repeat offenders. Criminologists refer to this as recidivism. They usually go back after leaving once. 3. PROTECTION: When we "take criminals off the streets," they will not be able to commit further crimes (at least, not on the streets), and society is protected. Nationally, more than half of criminals released are back in prison within 3 years, either for breaking parole or for a new crime.Sociologists have also discovered that prison serves this purpose for many, helping them learn to commit more crimes, and to commit crime more effectively. 4. REHABILITATION: Criminals lack the skills necessary to succeed (or even survive) in mainstream society. But prisons offer few rehabilitation programs, and those available are seriously understaffed and underfunded. Most prisoners do not receive counseling or drug and alcohol therapy, and budget cuts terminated almost all of the prison education programs in 1994. Those prisoners who do take classes often find that they have not acquired the skills for real-world jobs, nor have they received any training on how to find work.

Understand the differences among three separate sociological explanations that tie crime rates to society. What social factors explain our rates of crime? Sociologists have considered three explanations

1. U.S. culture emphasizes individual economic success as the measure of self-worth, at the expense of family, neighborhood, artistic accomplishment, and spiritual well-being (Currie 1985). 2. Not everyone has a high standard of living. The United States has one of the largest income differentials in the world. When the gap begins to shrink, as it did during Clinton-era prosperity, the crime rate declines (Martens 2005). 3. Guns—that is, the easy availability of guns and the lax enforcement of loose gun control measures, coupled with a U.S. value system that places gun ownership as a sacred right—are a contributor to the crime rate. Despite the fact that our overall crime rates are higher than some other advanced countries, such as Ireland and Austria, and our outsize homicide rate distinguishes the United States from all of Western Europe (Wacquant 2006), it is also true that crime rates in the United States have been falling. The National Crime Victimization Survey (2014), which addresses victims of crime (and therefore leaves out murder), reports that the violent crime rate has dropped by nearly 60 percent and the property crime rate has dropped by more than 50 percent since 1973. Healy's analysis illustrates that the level of violence has shifted over time as well. There was a spike in violence in the United States between 1960 and 1980. But deaths due to assault have been steadily declining ever since. Despite that, we are still well above the relative level of assault deaths when compared with these other countries.

Explain why sociologists argue that deviance and crime work in ways that both produce and reproduce systems of inequality.

Alexander Liazos noted that the people commonly labeled deviant are always powerless. Why? The answer is not simply that the rich and powerful make the rules to begin with or that they have the resources to avoid being labeled deviant. The answer lies in the fact that those who have the power can make us believe that the rules are "natural" and "good" to mask their political agenda. They can then label actors and acts "deviant" to justify inequalities in gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and social class. Ironically, the relationship of inequality and crime and deviance often leads us to see and punish the behaviors of the less fortunate and forgive the behavior of the more fortunate. Sometimes, it is more appropriate to say that we are criminalizing groups of people rather than the acts they are committing. From this perspective, it is more likely that a poor person who stole a few dollars from a company would end up in jail than a CEO who steals millions of dollars from millions of shareholders. We may condemn the unequal application of the law, but some sociologists want us to go further than that, to give some thought to whether the laws themselves are inherently unfair. Law becomes an instrument of oppression, designed to maintain the powerful in their privileged position

Explain the conditions that cause a subculture to qualify as "deviant."

Although most subcultures are not deviant, the separation from the dominant culture allows deviant subcultures to develop their own norms and values. For a deviant subculture to develop, the activity, condition, identity, and so on must meet three characteristics: 1. It must be punished but not punished too much. If it is not punished enough, potential recruits have no motivation to seek out the subculture. If it is punished too much, the risks of membership are too great. 2. It must have enough participants but not too many. If it has too few participants, it will be hard to seek them out locally. If it has too many, it would be pointless. 3. It must be complex but not too complex. If it is not complex enough, you could engage in it by yourself. If it is too complex, it could exist only within a counterculture or dominant culture: You would need a college degree.

Stigma

An attribute that changes you "from a whole and usual person to a tainted and discounted one," as sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) defined it. A stigma discredits a person's claim to be normal.

Social Control Theory

As Walter Reckless theorized, people don't commit crimes even if they could probably get away with them due to social controls. There are outer controls—family, friends, teachers, social institutions, and authority figures (like the police)—who influence (cajole, threaten, browbeat) us into obeying social rules; and inner controls—internalized socialization, consciousness, religious principles, ideas of right and wrong, and one's self-conception as a "good person."

Opportunity Theory

Cloward and Ohlin's 1960 theory of crime, which holds that those who have many opportunities— and good ones at that—will be more likely to commit crimes than those with few good opportunities. They agreed with Merton that people who lack access (or easy access) to acceptable means of achieving material success may experience "strain," but that doesn't explain why most poor people are not criminals. In fact, studies show that most qualify as "conformists," with the same values and goals as the dominant society. They revised differential association theory to propose several different types of deviant subcultures based on the opportunities to deviate. 1. In stable neighborhoods where most people know each other throughout their lives, criminal subcultures develop, devoted to such activities as burglary and theft. Young men can rely on social contacts with experienced older men to learn the roles of being a criminal. 2. In unstable neighborhoods where people are constantly moving in and out, there are few opportunities to learn about burglary and theft, and boys who are mostly strangers to each other must find some way to establish dominance. They develop violence subcultures, gaining tough reputations through fighting and assaults. 3. In neighborhoods too disorganized for either crime or violence, people withdraw from society altogether through the use of alcohol and drugs. They develop retreatist subcultures. Also, the theory defines deviance in a way that targets poor people—if we include white-collar crimes like stock fraud, neighborhood dynamics become much less significant.

White Collar crime

Edward Sutherland's term for the illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on its behalf, by using the authority of their position to commit crime.

Differential Association

Edwin H. Sutherland's theory suggesting that deviance occurs when an individual receives more prestige and less punishment by violating norms than by following them. Suggest deviance is a matter of rewards and punishment

Summarize why sociologists are confident that the death penalty does not actually deter people from committing the crimes associated with this sentence.

Fewer than half of the countries in the world (69) currently have death penalties.There is only one in the industrialized West: the United States. The use of the death penalty has steadily dropped in the United States, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s.But the decline was short-lived. In 2009, there were 52 executions, 46 in 2010, 43 in 2011 and 2012, and 39 in 2013.In the United States, it is usually invoked only in cases of murder and treason. The U.S. public generally favors the death penalty for adult offenders—by about two to one, with more support among men than women and more among whites than among minorities. Americans typically cite the death penalty's value in deterring crime. Research has shown, however, that the death penalty does not deter crimes associated with this penalty. For instance, race has been shown to play a major role in death penalty sentences: Blacks convicted of murdering whites are most likely to get the death penalty, and whites convicted of murdering blacks are the least likely. The death penalty, once applied, is irreversible, leading to worries that innocent people might be wrongly executed. In the twentieth century, studies estimate that at least 4 percent of all people who receive the death penalty are innocent. today new techniques of DNA analysis are thinning the ranks of death row. Of course, no one would seriously make the argument that the death penalty causes murders! But neither can anyone make a convincing argument that the death penalty deters murder either.

Distinguish among folkways, mores, and taboos.

Folkway: One of the relatively weak and informal norms that are the result of patterns of action. Many of the behaviors we call "manners" are folkways. Mores: Informally enforced norms based on strong moral values, which are viewed as essential to the proper functioning of a group. Taboos: Address social prohibitions viewed as essential to the well-being of humanity. To break a mos is bad or immoral, but breaking a taboo is unthinkable, beyond comprehension. It is equally true, however, that our understandings of deviance change and shift over time. Behavior that might once have qualified as the norm may later qualify from emergent mores in a society.

Recognize how each of the five elements of the iSoc model can be used to examine crime and deviance sociologically.

Identity: Not everyone we might identify as "deviant" or "criminal" thinks of themselves in this way, but that doesn't mean they aren't seen that way by others. Inequality:Sometimes, the same behavior might be labeled deviant or even criminal when one type of person does it, and a harmless prank if another person does it. Interaction:One becomes enmeshed in networks of people who are similar to you; people who might support your deviance, rationalize it, or encourage it. Institutions: The police represent society's "thin blue line," a first defense against crime. Intersections: We need to consider the ways that different social groups are subject to different types and degrees of social control.

Identify social factors that put racial minorities and the poor at disproportionate risk of being arrested.

If we were to judge solely by arrest and conviction rates, we might conclude that if the gender of crime is masculine, the race of crime is black. Both as offenders and victims they are a huge proportion. Black men are incarcerated at 6 times the rate of white men (Drake 2013), more than 10 percent of all black men ages 25 to 39 are behind bars on any given day, and more than 30 percent of black men ages 25 to 34 without a high school diploma are incarcerated. nd black overrepresentation does not happen only in the United States. In the United Kingdom, blacks are seven times more likely than whites or Asians to be stopped or arrested. In Britain, however, blacks, whites, and Asians are equally likely to be crime victims, and it is those of mixed race who face a significantly higher risk. Although Latinos make up about 16 percent of the U.S. population, they make up almost twice that share of those incarcerated in the federal system. They are also disproportionately charged with nonviolent drug offenses. What is the link between crime and race? Each of the theories we have discussed in this chapter offers a perspective on this issue. Scholars adopting STRAIN THEORY Yet, even within the lower classes, blacks are significantly more likely to be arrested and sentenced than whites. Scholars relying on DIFFERENTIAL OPPORTUNITY THEORY highlight that black children are much more likely to be raised by single mothers than are white children. They receive less supervision, and are more likely turn to crime. suggest that it's really a matter of social class, not race. Blacks are more likely to be poor, and poor people living amid affluence are more likely to perceive society as unjust and turn to crime Yet, it is also true that the vast majority of children raised by single parents (mostly mothers) do not turn to crime. Scholars using LABELING THEORY understand being black is a master status equated with violence and criminality in many societies. So, people (black or white) tend to view black behavior as more threatening and report on it more often, police officers (black or white) tend to arrest blacks more often, and juries (black or white) tend to give them stiffer sentences. While the crime rate goes up as the person's socioeconomic status goes down, this may be caused less by economic deprivation— people stealing because they are hungry or don't have enough money to pay their rent—and more because their crimes are more visible and their "profile" is more likely to fit our understandings of which identities and which groups are likely to commit crimes in the first place. Equally, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be the victim of crime, both property crime and violent crime. The wealthy are more insulated in their neighborhoods, better served by the police, and more likely to press charges against offenders.

Self control theory

In explaining deviance, places the emphasis on inadequate socialization and thus a weakened internal monitoring system.

Sneaky thrills

Jack Katz's concept that crimes like shoplifting, burglary, joyriding, and vandalism are committed by amateurs, mostly adolescents, for the fun of it, not necessarily to acquire money or property. Katz theorized that sneaky thrills offer the adolescent perpetrators an experience similar to sexual experimentation. The shoplifters often tell tales of seduction, using metaphors of flirting and enticement, "a rush of excitement as contact is made with the item and inserted into a private place"

Organized crime

Like corporate or white-collar crime, it is a business operation whose purpose is to supply illegal goods and services to others. ex. during Prohibition, for example, organized crime syndicates provided alcohol to a thirsty public and gambling venues to circumvent prohibitions on gambling. Contemporary organized criminal activities include loan-sharking, prostitution, money laundering, drug trafficking, and warehouse or truck theft. "scarface"

Distinguish between types of crime, and provide examples to illustrate your understanding.

Likewise, you can commit a crime (actually break a law) and not be seen as deviant if other people see your act as acceptable. Sometimes, people commit crimes and are seen as heroes. Other times, people have not committed crimes, but are suspected anyway. There are many types of crime but we go into depth with 4 of them.

Goffman identified three strategies to neutralize stigma and save yourself from having a spoiled identity. He listed them in order of increased social power—the more power you have, the more you can try and redefine the situation.

MINSTRELIZATION= If you're virtually alone and have very little power, you can over-conform to the stereotypes that others have about you. To act like a "minstrel," Goffman says, is to exaggerate the differences between the stigmatized and the dominant group. A contemporary example might be women who act ultra-feminine—helpless and dependent—in potentially harassing situations. Note that minstrels exaggerate difference in the face of those with more power; when they are with other stigmatized people, they may laugh about the fact that the powerful "actually think we're all like this!" That's often the only sort of power that they feel they have. NORMIFICATION=If you have even a small amount of power, you might try to minimize the differences between the stigmatized groups. "Look," you'll say, "We're the same as you are, so there is no reason to discriminate against us." Normification is, for instance, the process that gays and lesbians refer to when they argue for same-sex marriage or that women use when they say they want to be engineers or physicists. Normification involves emphasizing similarities and downplaying differences. MILITANT CHAUVINISM= When your group's level of power and organization is highest, you may decide to again maximize differences with the dominant group. But militant chauvinists don't just say "we're different," they say "we're also better." For example, there are groups of African Americans ("Afrocentrists" or even some of the Nation of Islam) who proclaim black superiority These three responses to stigma depend on the size and strength of the stigmatized group. If you're all alone, minstrelizing may be a lifesaving technique

Tertiary Deviance

Occurs when members of a group formerly labeled deviant attempt to redefine their acts, attributes, or identities as normal—even virtuous.

Organizational crime

Or white collared people might commit organizational crime. Illegal actions committed in accordance with the operative goals of an organization, such as antitrust violations, false advertising, or price fixing. ex. (crimes like stock manipulation, anti-trust violations, false advertising, and price fixing) The cost of white-collar crime is substantial—between $300 and $660 billion a year in the United States alone, which is far more than the "paltry" $15 billion for "regular" street crime. yet most of these crimes go unpunished or have short stays in prison

mandatory sentencing rules

Rules enacted across the United States in the early 1990s that were supposed to be tough on crime and eliminate bias in prosecutions and sentencing. The primary result, however, has been an explosion in the prison population. The primary result, however, has been an explosion in the prison population. Bias related to race, class, gender and more remains in both arrests and prosecutions—yet under mandatory sentencing judges couldn't take dependent-specific circumstances—which could help the poor, minorities, mentally unstable, the sick, or addicted—into account. In early 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges no longer must abide by the guidelines, saying they violated a defendant's right to a fair trial. New York County District Attorney's office found black and Latino defendants more likely to be detained and to be incarcerated for their crimes when compared with white defendants committing the same crimes. They also discovered that black and Latino men in particular were likely to receive especially punitive outcomes for person offenses. racial discrimination in jury selection. The case is primarily about prosecutors using peremptory challenges to systematically remove black jurors while keeping white ones.

Structural Strain Theory

Society itself is an actor in the interaction. Merton argued that excessive deviance is a by-product of inequality. When a society promotes certain goals but provides unequal means of acquiring them, there will always be deviance. Robert K. Merton's concept that excessive deviance is a by-product of inequality within societies that promote certain norms and versions of social reality yet provide unequal means of meeting or attaining them.

Crime and Deviance together

Some crime is deviant and some deviance is criminal, but they are also distinct. Some criminal acts are actually not all that deviant at all. Consider jay walking, underage drinking, downloading music illegally. These are criminal acts (we have laws about each of them), but we also acknowledge that people are not transgressing social norms much if they violate them. And lots of deviance is not criminal. Think of showing up too early for a party you were invited to or reading a newspaper in the back of one of your college classes while the professor is lecturing. It's not illegal, but it certainly feels like a lapse in good judgment, and it would likely merit some type of comment or justification. And there are also acts that are understood as both deviant and criminal, like murder, domestic violence, or sexual assault.

Understand what sociologists mean by "gun culture," and use this to explain why gun crime in the United States is so much higher than other industrialized countries around the world.

The United States has the weakest laws on handgun ownership in the industrialized world. As a result, there are as many guns as there are people, and it shows in crime statistics. Six million Americans carry a gun on a daily basis; about one-third of all U.S. households have a gun at home. Globally, the United States ranks in the middle of all countries' rates of deaths by guns. But no other industrialized country comes close to the United States; indeed, our rate is nearly double that of our nearest "rival." Allowing concealed weapons without a permit, repealing weak scattered laws about guns especially in the South. For example, although criminologists have shown that limiting volume purchases of handguns is effective at stemming illegal gun trafficking, South Carolina abolished a one-per-month purchase rule in 2004 that had been in place for nearly 30 years.

Identify social factors that cause young men and women to engage in different levels of types of criminal activity.

The gender gap is relatively narrow in only two categories of crime—embezzlement and larceny—and women outranked men in embezzlement, prostitution, and runaways. Otherwise, women were significantly less likely to be arrested, less likely to be convicted, and less likely to serve sentences. And yet the United States has the largest arrest and conviction rate of women in the world.And the rate for women is increasing at a rate faster than that for men.) Nonetheless, when we say crime, we might as well say men. But even when we take the chivalry effect into account, men still commit more violent crimes and property crimes than women. Some criminologists argue that, biologically, males are a lot more aggressive and violent, and that explains the high levels of assaults and other violent crimes. However, this biological theory does not explain why men's crime (or at least criminal arrests) occurs primarily in working-class and poor communities. Middle-class men have testosterone, too; shouldn't they be committing assault and murder? Nor can "male aggression" explain the gender gap in property crime. A more sociological explanation is the model of working-class masculinity. In the working-class and poor subcultures where most crimes (or at least most criminal arrests) occur, men are socialized to believe that "defending" themselves, violently if necessary, is appropriate masculine behavior Non-violent crimes can also be gender coded:Men almost always commit stick-up burglary—crimes in which people are robbed face-to-face, usually by threatening them with a gun. Shoplifting, by contrast, is more predominantly associated with women.

Secondary Deviance

The moment when someone acquires a deviant identity, occurring when he or she repeatedly breaks a norm and people start making a big deal of it, so the rule breaking can no longer be attributed to a momentary lapse in judgment or be justifiable under the circumstances but is an indication of a permanent personality trait.

Explain the split image of police in the United States and how that is related to different experiences of the police among different groups in society.

The number of police officers in the United States has increased;there were 3.4 full-time law enforcement employees (this includes sworn officers and non-sworn civil employees) for every 1,000 people. This is more than most countries: France has 2.3, Japan 2.3, and Canada 1.95. But police officers actually spend only about 20 percent of their time in "crime-fighting" activity. A surprising amount of their daily routine involves completing departmental paperwork: arrest and accident reports, patrol activity reports, and judicial statements. Today the police have become "knowledge workers" as much as they are "crime fighters". They offer tips and techniques, such as "stay in well-lighted areas," but in the end, you are responsible for your own safety. The police have a split image. To some people, seeing a police officer on the street makes them feel safe and secure, as if no harm will come to them. To others, seeing that same police officer is a terrible threat, and they might feel that they are in danger of being arrested or killed simply for being there. The most important trends in police forces across the country have been to embed the police within the communities they serve; to encourage more minority police, especially in minority areas; and also, to train new groups of women officers, especially to respond to complaints about domestic violence. Since the 1990s, the number of women and minority police officers has increased.

The gender gap may be influenced by the "chivalry effect"

The sociological thesis that women are treated more leniently for committing certain crimes by police, judges, and juries who are likely to perceive them as less dangerous and their criminal activities less consequential. Women who belong to stigmatized groups—who are black, Hispanic, or lesbian, for instance—are more likely to be arrested and convicted, perhaps because they are not granted the same status as more privileged women in the mainstream. Feminists note that women receive harsher treatment when their behavior deviates from feminine stereotypes, that is, when they "act like a man"

Explain shifts in the U.S. incarceration rate, and consider them in international perspective.

Today the United States has 2.3 million people in jail or prison, about 1 in 110 adults, many more than any other industrialized country in the world.We have more people in prison than the total number of U.S. military personnel—Army Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Reserves, and National Guard—combined. The United States also imprisoned at least three times more women than any other nation in the world. We lock up more people per incident than any other country in the world. The U.S. prison system has become partially privatized. That means that prisons are run like a business, with an eye toward profits. The more prisoners, the more profit. And the cheaper it is to house them—including food, computers and television, libraries—the higher the profit. A large number of people now have a vested interest in making the prison system even bigger and perhaps also less "hospitable." The Great Recession has made the high cost of so many incarcerations impossible to sustain. During 2008, 20 states reduced their prisoner counts by a total of about 10,000 inmates. As a result, the number of state and federal prisoners grew by less than 1 percent overall nationwide, the smallest increase in nearly a decade, and the number of African Americans behind bars has dropped nearly 10 percent from its peak

Using the example of drugs, explain the ways that local crimes are related to global trends.

Today, global criminal networks operate in every arena, from the fake Gucci handbags for sale on street corners to the young girls who are daily kidnapped in Thailand and other countries to serve as sex slaves in brothels around the world; from street gangs and various ethnic and national organized crime networks (the "Russian Mafia," the Italian Mafia) to the equally well-organized and equally illegal offshore bankers and shady corporate entities that incorporate in countries that have no regulations on toxic dumping, environmental devastation, or fleecing stockholders. And yet much crime also remains decidedly "local"—an individual is assaulted or robbed, raped, or murdered in his or her own neighborhood. Despite the massive networks of organized global crime, it is still true that the place where you are most likely to be the victim of a violent crime is your own home A good example of this connection between the local and the global is the subject of drugs. GLOBALIZATION: NETWORKS OF PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, AND PROTECTION—Because drug use is illegal, different types of criminals produce and distribute them. Sociologists of organizations can examine how different networks may connect your local campus pot dealer with murderous organized drug cartels in other countries DRUGS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM- According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 46.3 percent of incarcerated adults are serving time for a drug offense (Federal Bureau of Prisons 2017). More than one-fourth are incarcerated for simple possession, and nearly 70 percent are there for trafficking. The War on Drugs propelled the incarceration rate to a nearly 10-fold rate of convictions. But that war's casualties have been distributed unequally toward poor and minority young men, who compose the large majority of all drug-related arrests and convictions. Black people account for 13 percent of the U.S. population, but 31 percent of those are arrested for drug law violations and almost 40 percent of those are incarcerated in state and federal prisons for drug violations. Similarly, Latinos make up 17 percent of the U.S. population but account for a much larger share of those incarcerated for drug offenses, 20 percent in state prisons and 37 percent in federal ones. Research finds that people of color are no more likely than whites to sell or use drugs, but tend to face tougher charges when arrested; so, their higher rates of conviction also result in lengthier prison terms DRUGS AND PUBLIC POLICY-In 2009, New York State abolished the punitive "Rockefeller Drug Laws," which severely punished possession and use of drugs like marijuana with significant prison sentences. Defendants convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces, for instance, faced a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Sociologists study drug policies ranging from legalization of drugs, drug law reform, funding for rehabilitation and treatment, to medical use of marijuana. Yet, relatively little research suggests that harsher penalties for drug use will resolve this social problem. Sociological research shows that more punishment is not the answer.

Deviance

Violating a social or moral rule, or refusing to follow one, whether or not that act is illegal. May or may not be illegal. We can also be considered deviant without doing, saying, or believing anything bad or wrong but just by belonging to the "wrong" group in some circumstances (Hispanic, gay, Jewish, for example) or by having some status that goes against what's considered "normal" (e.g., mentally ill, disabled, atheist, being overweight at a fitness club). There is even deviance by association: If you have a friend or romantic partner who belongs to the minority group, you may be labeled as deviant just for being seen with them. Most is not illegal

Understand how labeling theory explains deviance, and distinguish among primary, secondary, and tertiary deviance.

We used to think that the wrongdoing in deviance resided somewhere in the wrongdoer: You break a social rule because you are "that kind of person," with faulty genes, a criminal personality, or a defective soul. But now we know that wrongdoing is not inherent in an act or an actor but in the social context that determines whether an act is considered deviant or not and how much punishment it warrants. the power imbalances between the deviant and the majority—or inequality. After all, if most people do something, is it "deviant" in the strictest sense of the term? The ability to label something deviant, and to have that label stick to others, is an expression of one's relative power. You may decide, for example, that text messaging is deviant, but unless you have a lot of support, it probably won't make much of a difference. And labeling theory helps us understand when, how and why we accept labels and when we don't. Sociological research examining stereotype threat and stereotype promise provide examples of just how powerful social labels and identities can be.

Occupational crime

White collar criminals might commit occupational crime using one's professional position to illegally secure something of value for oneself or for the corporation. ex. (crimes like income tax evasion, stock manipulation, bribery, and embezzlement)

Summarize how youth gangs went from being considered youthful mischiefs to deviant and criminal subculture.

Youth gangs are a good example of a deviant subculture Before the 1950s, youth gangs were considered to be relatively innocent. Their "deviance" consisted of swiping apples from fruit stands and swimming in the East River despite the "no trespassing" signs. Meanwhile they helped out mothers and friends in distress and sometimes even cooperated with the police. They were juvenile delinquents with hearts of gold, mischievous but not bad. It was the adult gangsters who posed a threat, trying to seduce them into lives of adult, hard-core crime. In 1955, juvenile delinquency was getting a lot of publicity in the United States. Sociologist Albert Cohen wondered why young people, mostly working-class and poor boys, were rejecting the values of the dominant society and committing so many crimes. As lower-class youths, they had the least opportunity to achieve economic success, but their crimes were usually not economically motivated. They were not trying to get rich. Cohen drew upon Sutherland's theory of differential association to propose that the gang members were not being socialized with the same norms and values as lower-class non-gang members or the middle class. but argued that it is not just lower-class boys in gangs whose norms and values differ from those of the dominant society; he suggested that it was the entire lower class. In other words, behavior that mainstream society might consider deviant actually reflects the social norms of the lower-class subculture. 31,000 youth gangs in the US not including informal gangs like cliques, crews, and posses who may dress alike and share common customs and rituals but do not engage in organized criminal activity Almost 9 in 10 cities with populations of 50,000 or more now have a "gang problem. Yet, although the media sometimes portray gang activity as on the rise, it has been relatively steady since the mid-1990s in the United States. Larger cities have more gang activity than suburban counties, but the level of gang activity within each area type has not changed dramatically in recent history Most gangs composed of poor working class young men, generally retire or go to jail by mid 20s.Racial and ethnic minorities are overrepresented, in part because, as numerical minorities, they often feel a stronger need to belong to a group that can provide identity and protection Women tend to leave gangs at an earlier age than men. In one study, women in all- or majority-women gangs had the lowest delinquency rates, while both men and women in majority-men gangs had the highest—including higher rates than men in all-men gangs This helps us better understand gangs are responses to institutionalized forms of inequality.

Travis Hirschi (1969; Gottfredson and Hirschi 1995) argued that

people do not obey lots of hidden forces: They are rational, so they decide whether to engage in an act by weighing the potential outcome. If you knew that there would be absolutely no punishment, no negative consequences of any sort, you would probably do a great many things that you would never dream of otherwise, like propositioning an attractive coworker or driving like a maniac or stealing something you couldn't afford to buy. Hirschi imagined that people perform a sort "cost-benefit analysis" during their decision-making process to determine how much punishment is worth a degree of satisfaction or prestige. Therefore people with little to lose are often the rule breakers

Labeling Theory

to stress the relativity of deviance. Labeling describes a relationship between a dominant group and the actor. For something to be "deviant," it has to be labeled as deviant by a powerful group—a group powerful enough to make that label stick Howard Becker's term stresses the relativity of deviance, naming the mechanism by which the same act is considered deviant in some groups but not in others. Labels are used to categorize and contain people. Deviance is a process, not a categorical difference between the deviant and the non-deviant. The same act might be deviant in some groups and not in others. It might be deviant when one person commits it but not when another person commits it. In fact, an action, belief, or condition is neutral in itself. It only becomes "deviant" when someone decides that it is wrong

Durkheim view

Émile Durkheim suggested that deviance actually serves society: Having some number of rule breakers reminds everyone what the rules are in the first place, and affirms their identity as rule-followers. Without knowing what is wrong, we can't know what's right. Deviance heightens social solidarity among members of the group, and lets those groups or societies draw a clear distinction between right and wrong, good and bad. Deviance is socially useful because it reminds "us" that we are "normal"—it's they who are different and deviant. Durkheim's theory explains how deviance serves to unite us all under common beliefs and moral codes, but it doesn't explain why or how it happens in the first place.

Sexual scripts

A cognitive map about how to have sex and with whom. Psychologists believe that these boys are still developing their notions of appropriate sexual behavior, so their preference for coercive and violent sexual activity is capable of change. But college students are old enough to have already developed their sexual scripts. Because there is increase in rape and sexual assault among the teenage youth rape is the most common violent crime at colleges and universities in the United States.

hate crime

A criminal act committed by an offender motivated by bias against race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability status. Anyone can commit a hate crime, but perpetrators usually belong to dominant groups (white, Christian, straight) and victims to disenfranchised groups (black, Jewish, Muslim, or gay). Many cases go unreported. ex. Hate crimes are distinguished because they affect not only the individual but the entire community as well. Lynchings in the American South were used to terrorize the entire black population, and contemporary antigay hate crimes demonstrate to all gay people that they are unwelcome and unsafe in the community.

crime

A deviant act that lawmakers consider bad enough to warrant formal laws and sanctions. can be defined as any act that violates a formal normative code that has been enacted by a legally constituted body.

Anomie (normalessness)

A term developed by Émile Durkheim to describe a state of disorientation and confusion that results from too little social regulation, in which institutional constraints fail to provide a coherent foundation for action. If we didnt have deviants to tell us whats right and wrong we would fall into anomie.

5 Potential Reactions to Structural Strain

Accept cultural and institutional means (ritualists-follow rules for their own sake; they might work hard but have no aspirations to financial success) Reject cultural and institutional means (innovators-financial success is important but find different/new ways of obtaining those goals-try to win lottery or be con artists) Accept cultural means and reject institutional means (retreatists- they may not care about financial success or pursue it, but they dont have any alternative goal either) Reject cultural means and accept institutional means (Conformists- a lot of hard work and education can help us achieve goal) New goals and New means (rebels) cultural goal: achieving financial success institutionalized means: of obtaining that cultural goal

recidivism

An individual's relapse into criminal behavior after having served time or endured some intervention aimed to affect their future behavior. Thus, the "recidivism rate" is the rate at which people who have served time will commit another crime after leaving.

Primary Deviance

Any minor, usually unnoticed, act of deviance committed irregularly that does not have an impact on one's self-identity or on how one is labeled by others. Provoke very little reaction and therefore have little effect on your self-concept. ex. If I decide one day to run that red light on campus at 6:00 a.m., a passing police officer may label me as reckless and irresponsible, but I am unlikely to believe it.

Hate groups

Groups with beliefs or practices that attack or malign a class of people often due to immutable characteristics associated with the group (like sexual orientation, skin color, ancestry, gender identity). Members of these groups commit hate crimes

Crime= young people

Since the rise of the first adolescent subcultures in the 1940s, minors have been committing far more than their share of crimes. In 2014, 15- to 24-year-olds constituted about 14 percent of the U.S. population but nearly 41 percent of arrests for property crime and 36.1 percent of arrests for violent crime. Young people under 25 were arrested for 44.6 percent of all murders, 55.9 percent of all robberies, and 49.6 percent of all vandalism And the data make it clear that crime is largely an activity of young men—and has been for some time. to prove their masculinity

Summarize what sociologists mean by "stigma" and the strategies stigmatized individuals rely on to interact with others.

Sometimes, you don't have to do anything to be considered deviant. You just have to be it—that is, you just have to be a member of a group that is considered deviant. If some part of you—your race or sexuality, for example—is considered deviant, you would be considered "stigmatized." So, someone who identifies as gay or lesbian might choose not to be "out" at work for fear of negative consequences. Because being stigmatized will "spoil" your identity (as Goffman put it), you are likely to adopt one of three strategies to alleviate it.

racial profiling

Stopping and searching minorities because members of minority groups are seen as "more likely" to be criminals. It's more a self-fulfilling prophecy: Believing is seeing.

Stereotype threat

Term coined by Claude Steele to assess the extent to which labels about people "like us" have measurable impacts on their performances. It refers to the variation in performance measured when the belief that people who belong to an identity category you share are worse at a particular task than the comparison group.

Stereotype Promise

Term coined by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou to address the "promise" of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to perform in ways that confirms the positive stereotype (the counterpart to "stereotype threat").

cybercrime

The growing array of crimes committed via the Internet and World Wide Web, such as Internet fraud and identity theft. ex. Some of these crimes involve fraudulent maneuvers to get victims to reveal personal information that can then be used to commit crimes; others involve theft of online identities. Internet-based crime is the fastest-growing category of crime in the United States.

criminology

The study of crime that has developed into a subdiscipline separate from the sociology of deviance, with its own special theories about the causes and consequences of different kinds of crimes.

Summarize the social problem of bias in the courtroom including why and how mandatory sentencing legislation failed.

Thus, criminal proceedings pit the government (its agents, the police, lawyers, and the like) against a defendant, unlike civil courts in which the court is an arbiter of arguments between two individuals or groups. 90% of criminal cases never go to trial.Instead, most are resolved by plea bargaining or pleading guilty to a lesser crime.

Understand the differences among social control theories of deviance.

What is deviant to one group might be something that enhances our status in another group. For example, students who behave in an irreverent, disrespectful fashion in class may be seen as deviant by the teachers and even punished for it, but they might also receive a great deal of prestige from their peers. They may calculate that the benefit (increased prestige) is worth the minor punishment they might receive. Thus, Sutherland argued, individuals become deviant by associating with people or joining groups that are already deviant and therefore are in the position to reward deviant behavior Deviance is learned WE have multiple moral voices in our head (devil and angel) But the theory does not explain how the "carriers of criminality" became deviant in the first place. It also does not explain acts that occur without a community, when everyone around disapproves, or when no one is even aware of the deviance. All of these theories consider deviance as determined by the social structures within which people exist. Deviance, according to each of these theories, is rational (sometimes). Similarly, sometimes we conform to social norms even when breaking the rules would be perfectly acceptable. It shows just how much we internalize those norms. They are institutionalized to such an extent that they become a part of our identities whether we're deviant or not.