sociology

Social Control and Deviance

Crime

• Think of a crime…

• Street crime—committed in public and is often associated with violence, gangs, and poverty

• White-collar crime—committed by a professional against a corporation, agency, or other business

• Although street crime is the most prevalent type of crime, white-collar crime has greater financial impact.

• Corporate crime—a type of white-collar crime committed by the officers or executives of a company

• Examples include bribery, fraud, false claims, and violating environmental laws.

Broken Windows

• Philip Zimbardo’s broken window theory of deviance

• Explains how social context and social cues affect the way individuals act

• People who wouldn’t exhibit a certain behavior in one social context might do so in another context where the behavior seems more permissible.

• Abandoned cars in two neighborhoods –Palo Alto (by Stanford) and South Bronx to see what happened.

• Concluded visible signs of crime, disorder (e.g., broken windows) leads to more serious crime.

Crime Reduction

• Deterrence theory is a philosophy of criminal justice based on the notion that crime results from a rational calculation of its costs and benefits.

• According to deterrence theory, stiffer penalties, increased prison terms, and stricter parole guidelines should help reduce crime.

• Recidivism occurs when a person who has been involved in the criminal justice system reverts to criminal behavior.

• Questionable whether tougher sentences reduce recidivism.

Social Control

• Punitive justice focuses on making the violator suffer, and thus defines the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

• Rehabilitative justice examines the specific circumstances of an individual transgressor and attempts to find ways to rehabilitate him or her.

Crime Reduction • Since the 1970s, there has been a change in the United States from a more rehabilitative sense of justice to a

more punitive one. This is evidenced by historically high rates of incarceration, despite the fact many crime rates have dropped.

Recent news: California bill bans private prisons

Social responses to crime

As in the case of deviance, there is a social component in reacting to crime.

Demographic traits (such as race, class, gender, age) of offenders may affect judgments made throughout the criminal justice process (reporting crimes, convictions, sentencing, etc.).

• Labeling theory • People see how they are labeled and accept the label as being

“true.”

• People behave the way they think someone with their label should behave. • In this way, deviance becomes a social construct. Labeling individuals can lead to

those individuals acting out their labels.

• This is especially true if the labels are anchored or confirmed among many agents of socialization.

• Thus, if a child is labeled as a “troublemaker” by the parent, and then by the school, and then at after-school care, and then by friends, the label is more likely to become part of that child’s self-perception.

Symbolic Interactionist Theories

Symbolic Interactionist Theories

• Primary deviance • The first act of rule breaking, which may result in the rule breaker

being labeled “deviant” and thus influencing how people think about and act toward him or her.

• Secondary deviance • Acts of rule breaking that occur after primary deviance and as a

result of a person’s new, deviant label. • After you are labeled a deviant (a criminal, a drug addict, a shoplifter), you

might begin behaving differently as a result of the way people think about and act toward you. Others’ expectations about how you will act affect how you do act.

Symbolic Interactionist Theories

• Stigma • A negative social label that changes your behavior toward a person and also

changes that person’s self-concept and social identity

• Has serious consequences in terms of the opportunities made available—or not made available—to people in a stigmatized group

Examples

• Bedbugs

• Pit bulls