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6-18 Chapter 6 Deviance and Social Control
Gender and Crime. Gender is not just something we are or do. It is a feature of society that surrounds us from birth. Gender pushes us, as male or female, into different corners in life, offering and nurturing some behaviors while it withdraws others. The opportunity to commit crime is one of the many consequences of how society sets up a gender order. The social changes that opened business and the professions to women also brought new opportunities for women to commit crime. From stolen prop- erty to illegal weapons, Table 6.2 shows how women have taken advantage of this new opportunity. In Sum: Functionalists stress that just as the social classes differ in opportunities for income and education, so they differ in opportunities for crime. As a result, street crime is higher among the lower social classes and white-collar crime higher among the higher social classes. The growing crime rates of women illustrate how changing gender roles have given women more access to what sociologists call “illegitimate opportunities.”
the Conflict perspective
Class, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System
TRW sold transistors to the federal government to use in its satellites. The transistors failed, and the government had to shut down its satellite program. TRW said that the failure was a surprise, that it was due to some unknown defect. U.S. officials then paid TRW millions of dollars to investigate the failure. Then a whistle blower appeared, informing the government that TRW knew the tran- sistors would fail in satellites even before it sold them. The government sued Northrop Grumman Corporation, which had bought TRW, and the corporation was found guilty (Drew 2009).
What was the punishment for a crime this serious? The failure of these satellites com- promised the defense of the United States. When the executives of TRW were put on trial, how long were their prison sentences? Actually, these criminals weren’t even put on trial, and not one spent even a night in jail. Grumman was fined $325 million. Then—and this is hard to believe—on the same day, the government settled a lawsuit that Grumman had brought against it for $325 million. Certainly a rare coincidence. Contrast this backdoor deal between influential people with what happens to the poor who break the law. A poor person who is caught stealing even a $1,000 car can end up serving years in prison. How can a legal system that proudly boasts “justice for all” be so inconsistent? According to conflict theory, this question is central to the analysis of crime and the criminal justice system —the police, courts, and prisons that deal with people who are accused of having committed crimes. Let’s see what conflict theorists have to say about this.
The Criminal Justice System as an Instrument
of Oppression
Conflict theorists regard power and social inequality as the main characteristics of society. The criminal justice system, they stress, is a tool designed by the powerful to maintain their power and privilege. For the poor, in contrast, the law is an instrument
TablE 6.2 Women and Crime: What a Difference
Of all those arrested, what percentage are women? Crime 1992 2009 Change
Stolen property 12.5% 20.9% +67% Car theft 10.8% 17.8% +65% Drunken driving 13.8% 22.7% +64% Burglary 9.2% 14.9% +62% Aggravated assault 14.8% 22.0% +49% Robbery 8.5% 11.9% +40% Larceny/theft 32.1% 43.6% +36% Arson 13.4% 17.3% +29% Illegal drugs 16.4% 18.7% +14% Forgery and counterfeiting 34.7% 37.7% +9% Fraud 42.1% 44.3% +5% Illegal weapons 7.5% 8.1% 1%
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012: Table 324.
a Few Years Make
How is gender related to crime?
the Conflict perspective 6-
of oppression (Spitzer 1975; Reiman 2004; Chambliss 2000, 1973/2012). The idea that the law operates impartially to bring justice, they say, is a cultural myth promoted by the capitalist class to secure the cooperation of the poor in their own oppression. The working class and those below them pose a special threat to the power elite. Receiving the least of society’s material rewards, they hold the potential to rebel and overthrow the current social order (see Figure 8.5). To prevent this, the law comes down hard on its members who get out of line. The working poor and the underclass are a special problem. They are the least rooted in society. They have few skills and only low-paying, part-time, or seasonal work—if they have jobs at all. Because their street crimes threaten the social order that keeps the elite in power, they are punished severely. From this class come most of the prison inmates in the United States. The criminal justice system, then, does not focus on the executives of corporations and the harm they do through manufacturing unsafe products, creating pollution, and manipulating prices. Yet the violations of the capitalist class cannot be ignored totally,
In early capitalism, children worked alongside adults. At that time, just as today, most street criminals came from the marginal working class, as did the boys shown in this 1911 yarn mill in Yazoo City, Mississippi.
Why do conflict theorists view the criminal justice system as an instrument of oppression?
reactions to Deviance 6-
Why don’t the characteristics of prisoners match those of the U.S. population?
TablE 6.3 Inmates in U.S. State and Federal Prisons
Source: By the author. Based on Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003: Tables 6.000b, 6.28; 2006: Tables 6.34, 6.45; 2009: Table 6.33.2008; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011: Tables 8, 10, 56, 227.
Characteristics
Percentage of Prisoners with These Characteristics
Percentage of U.S. Population with These Characteristics
Age 18–24 15.9% 9.8% 25–34 33.6% 13.5% 35–44 29.1% 14.0% 45–54 14.8% 14.6% 55 and older 6.7% 23.9% Race–Ethnicity African American 38.4% 12.8% White 34.3% 65.6% Latino 20.3% 15.4% Othera^ 6.9% 5.5% Sex Male 93.2% 49.2% Female 6.8% 50.8% Marital Status Never married 59.8% 26.0% Divorced 15.5% 10.4% Married 17.3% 57.3% Widowed 1.1% 6.4% Education Less than high school 39.7% 13.4% High school graduate 49.0% 31.2% Some college b^ 9.0% 26.0% College graduate 2.4% 29.4%
a (^) Asian Americans and Native Americans are included in this category. bIncludes associate’s degrees.
THINkING CRITICALLY
“Three Strikes and You’re Out!” Unintended Consequences
of Well-Intended Laws
A
s the violent crime rate soared in the 1980s, Americans grew fearful. They demanded that their lawmakers do something. Politicians heard the mes- sage, and many responded by passing “three-strikes” laws in their states. Anyone who is convicted of a third felony receives an automatic mandatory sen- tence. Although some mandatory sentences carry life imprisonment, judges are not allowed to consider the circumstances. While few of us would feel sympathy if a man convicted of a third brutal rape or a third murder were sent to prison for life, in their haste to appease the public the politicians did not limit the three-strike laws to violent crimes. And they did not consider that some minor crimes are considered felonies. As the functionalists would say, this has led to unanticipated consequences. Here are some actual cases:
- In Los Angeles, a 27-year-old man who stole a pizza was sentenced to 25 years in prison (Cloud 1998).
- In Sacramento, a man passed himself off as Tiger Woods and went on a $17, shopping spree. He was sentenced to 200 years in prison (Reuters 2001).
6-22 Chapter 6 Deviance and Social Control
How are the three-strikes laws part of the reason for the explosion in the number of U.S. prisoners?
Number of federal and state prisoners
(in thousands)
900
700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1970 1980 1990 2010 2020 Year
1,
800
1,
1,
1,
1,
2000
1,
1,
1,
1,
1,
2,
316,
774,
1,800,
1,391,
196,
1,610,
FIGuRE 6.2 How Much Is Enough? The Explosion in the
Between 1970 and 2008, the U.S. population increased 50 percent, while the number of prisoners increased 821 percent, a rate that is sixteen times greater than population growth. If the number of prisoners had grown at the same rate as the U.S. population, we would have about 294,000 prisoners, only one-fifth to one-sixth of today’s total. Or if the U.S. population had increased at the same rate as that of U.S. prisoners, the U.S. population would be 1,670,000,000—approximately the population of China and all of Europe combined. Sources: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 1995: Table 349; 2011: Tables 1, 6,
- The broken line is the author’s estimate.
Number of U.S. Prisoners
- Also in California, Michael James passed a bad check for $94. He was sentenced to 25 years to life (Jones 2008).
- In Utah, a 25-year-old sold small bags of marijuana to a police informant. The judge who sentenced the man to 55 years in prison said the sentence was unjust, but he had no choice (Madigan 2004).
- In New York City, a man who was about to be sentenced for selling crack said to the judge, “I’m only 19. This is terrible.” He then hurled himself out of a courtroom window, plunging to his death sixteen stories below (Cloud 1998).
For Your Consideration ↑
Apply the symbolic interactionist, functionalist, and conflict perspectives to the three- strikes laws. For symbolic interactionism, what do these laws represent to the public? How does your answer differ depending on what part of “the public” you are referring to? For functionalism, who benefits from these laws? What are some of the functions of three-strikes laws? Their dysfunctions? For the conflict perspective , which groups are in conflict? Who has
the power to enforce their will on others? n
6-24 Chapter 6 Deviance and Social Control
Based on recidivism, how effective are our prisons? Why do you think we have a gender bias in the death penalty?
a breakdown of three-year recidivism by type of crime, it is safe to conclude that prisons do not teach people that crime doesn’t pay.
The Death Penalty and Bias
As you know, capital punishment, the death penalty, is the most extreme measure the state takes. As you also know, the death pen- alty arouses both impassioned opposition and support. Advances in DNA testing have given opponents of the death penalty a strong argument: Innocent people have been sent to death row, and some have been executed. Others are just as passionate about retaining the death penalty. They point to such crimes as those of the serial killers discussed in the Down-to-Earth Sociology box on the next page.
Geography. Apart from anyone’s personal position on the death penalty, it certainly is clear that the death penalty is not administered evenly. Consider geography: The Social Map (Figure 6.4) on page 6-26 shows that where people commit murder greatly affects their chances of being put to death.
Social Class. The death penalty also shows social class bias. As you know from news reports, it is rare for a rich person to be sentenced to death. Although the government does not collect statistics on social class and the death penalty, this common observa- tion is borne out by the education of the prisoners on death row. Half of the prisoners on death row (50 percent) have not finished high school ( Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2009: Table 6.81).
Gender. There is also a gender bias in the death penalty—so strong that it is almost unheard of for a woman to be sentenced to death, much less executed. Although women commit 9.6 percent of the murders, they make up only 1.8 percent of death row inmates ( Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2009: Table 6.81). Even on death row, the gender bias continues: Of those condemned to death, the state is more likely to execute a man than a woman. As Figure 6.5 on page 6- shows, only 0.9 percent of the 1,137 prisoners executed in the United States since 1977 have been women. This gender bias could reflect the women’s previous offenses and the relative bru- tality of their murders, but we need research to determine if this is so.
Race–Ethnicity. At one point, racial-ethnic bias was so flagrant that it put a stop to the death penal- ty. Donald Partington (1965), a lawyer in Virginia, was shocked by the bias he saw in the courtroom, and he decided to document it. Going back to 1908, he found that 2,798 men had been convicted for rape and attempted rape in Virginia—56 percent whites and 44 percent blacks. For rape, 41 men had been executed. For attempted rape, 13 had been executed. All those executed were black. Not one of the whites was executed. After listening to evidence like this, in 1972 the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty, as applied, was unconstitutional.
Unfortunately, whatever prisoners do learn about themselves in prison—if anything—fails to keep them from coming back.
© Mike Twohy/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com
FIGuRE 6.
Stealing cars Possessing or selling stolen property
The rearrest rates of those who had been convicted of: 0%^ 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
Robbery Illegal weapons Illegal drugs Fraud Arson Drunk driving Rape Murder
Burglary
Theft
Of 272,000 prisoners released from U.S. prisons, what percentage were rearrested within three years?
79%
75% 74% 70% 70% 67% 66% 58% 52% 46% 41%
77%
Source: By the author. Based on Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003: Table 6.50. Note: The individuals were not necessarily rearrested for the same crime for which they had originally been imprisoned.
Recidivism of U.S. Prisoners
reactions to Deviance 6-
LO
The execution of prisoners stopped—but not for long. The states wrote new laws, and in 1977 they again began to execute prisoners. Since then, 65 percent of those put to death have been white and 35 percent African American ( Statistical Abstract 2011: Table 349). (Latinos are evidently counted as whites in this statistic.) While living on death row is risky for anyone, the risk is higher for African Americans and Latinos who killed whites. They are more likely to be executed (Jacobs et al. 2007). The most accurate predictor of
What do you think the penalty for serial killers should be? Why?
Down-to-Earth Sociology
The killer Next Door: Serial Murderers in Our Midst
H
ere is my experience with serial killers. As I was watching television one night, I was stunned by the images. Television cameras showed the Houston police digging up dozens of bodies from under a boat storage shed. Fascinated, I waited impatiently for spring break. A few days later, I drove from Illinois, where I was teaching, to Houston, where 33-year-old Dean Corll had befriended Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, two teenagers from broken homes. Together, they had killed twenty-seven boys. Elmer and David would pick up young hitchhikers and deliver them to Corll to rape and kill. Sometimes they even brought him their own high school classmates. I talked to one of Elmer’s neighbors, as he was painting his front porch. His 15-year-old son had gone to get a haircut one Saturday morning. That was the last time he saw his son alive. The police re- fused to investigate. They insisted that his son had run away. On a city map, I plotted the locations of the homes of the local murder victims. Many clustered around the homes of the teenage killers. I decided to spend my coming sabbati- cal writing a novel on this case. To get into the minds of the killers, I knew that I would have to “become” them day after day. Corll kept a piece of plywood in his apartment. In each of its corners, he had cut a hole. He and the boys would spread-eagle their handcuffed victims on this board, torturing them for hours. Sometimes, they would even pause to order pizza. As such details emerged, I became uncertain that I could recover psychologically from months-on immersion into torture and human degradation, and I decided not to write the book. My interviews confirmed what has since become com- mon knowledge about serial killers: They lead double lives so successfully that their friends and family are unaware of their criminal activities. Henley’s mother swore to me that her son couldn’t possibly be guilty—he was a good boy. Some of El- mer’s high school friends told me that that his being involved in homosexual rape and murder was ridiculous—he was interested only in girls. I was interviewing them in Henley’s bedroom, and for proof they pointed to a pair of girls’ panties that were draped across a lamp shade.
Serial murder is killing three or more victims in separate events. The murders may occur over several days, weeks, or years. The elapsed time between murders distinguishes serial killers from mass murderers, those who do their killing all at once. Here are some infamous examples:
- During the 1960s and 1970s, Ted Bundy raped and killed dozens of women in four states.
- Between 1974 and 1991, Dennis Rader killed ten people in Wichita, Kansas. Rader had written to the newspapers, proudly calling himself the BTK (Bind, Torture, and Kill) strangler. - In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Aileen Wuornos hitchhiked along Florida’s freeways. She killed seven men after having had sex with them. - The serial killer with the most victims appears to be Harold Shipman, a physician in Manchester, England. From 1977 to 2000, during house calls Shipman gave lethal injections to 230 to 275 of his elderly female patients. - In 2009, Anthony Sowell of Cleveland, Ohio, was discovered living with elev- en decomposing bodies of women he had raped and strangled. Is serial murder more common now than it used to be? Not likely. In the past, police departments had little communica- tion with one another, and seldom did anyone connect killings in different juris- dictions. Today’s more efficient commu- nications, investigative techniques, and DNA matching make it easier for the police to know when a serial killer is operating in an area. Part of the perception that there are more serial killers today is also due to ignorance of our history: In our frontier past, for example, serial killers went from ranch to ranch.
For Your Consideration ↑
Do you think that serial killers should be given the death penalty? Why or why not? How do your social locations influ- ence your opinion?
Ted Bundy is shown here with his defense attorney, when he was on trial in Miami for killing two college students. You can get a glimpse of his charm and wit and how, like most serial killers, he blended in with society. Bundy was executed for his murders.
reactions to Deviance 6-
FIGuRE 6.5 Who Gets
99.1%
0.9%
43 Women
5, Men
Executed? Gender Bias in
Capital Punishment
Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011: Table 349.
Source: By the author. Based on Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2010: Table 6.80 and Figure 9.5 of this text.
The Race–Ethnicity of the 3,316 Prisoners
on Death Row
Percentage on Death Row in U.S. Population
Whites 44% 67% African Americans 41% 13% Latinos 12% 14% Asian Americans 1% 4% Native Americans 1% 1%
TablE 6.
How are the sexting laws an example of an evolving criminal justice system?
Even some parents received the photos on their cell phones, and, as they say, then all hell broke loose. Sexting , sending sexually explicit text or images electronically, is a new crime brought about by changing technology, and it is giving lawmakers and enforcers a hard time. Not to mention teenagers. If two people over the age of 18 send sexually explicit messages to one another, this is a matter between them. If someone forwards those images, it is still a problem between those individuals. But people under the age of 18 are legally minors, and their sexually explicit photos are classified by law as child pornography. And what should law enforcers do? If they learn about sexting by minors, can they just ignore it? No, because they are sworn to uphold the law, and sexting comes under the law. And those who are convicted—both those who send the messages and those who pass them on to others—are guilty of producing or disseminating child pornogra- phy. So let’s prosecute, say some district attorneys. And those who are convicted will have to register as sex offenders for decades! “Absolutely ridiculous,” reply other district attorneys, teachers, and parents. “This is just kids having misguided fun. Let’s just teach the kids that they are being foolish and irresponsible.” “You’re all getting excited about nothing,” says one 17-year-old girl. “You’re overlooking the positive side to sexting. You can’t get pregnant from it, and you can’t transmit STDs. It’s a kind of safe sex.” Lawmakers and enforcers are grappling with sexting. Some think that the current laws are good enough, but the general consensus seems to be that the laws passed to prohibit child pornography don’t apply to this new behavior. Most proposals for legal change center around educational programs and community service for minors who transmit images of “sexually explicit conduct.” Then, of course, there is the more severe penalty—banning the offenders from using cell phones.
For Your Consideration ↑
(^) Do you think there should be any sanctions for sexting by minors, or should this be a private matter, much as it is for adults? If you think there should be sanctions, which ones? The same ones for sexters age 13 and age 17? The same sanctions for nudity and for the depic-
tion of activities like penetration, sadism, and masturbation? n
Source: Based on “What They’re Saying…” 2011; Hoffman 2011.
The Medicalization of Deviance: Mental Illness
When the woman drove her car into the river, drowning her two small children strapped to their little car seats, people said that she had “gone nuts,” “went bonkers,” and just plain “lost it” because of her problems.
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People whose behaviors violate norms often are called mentally ill. “Why else would they do such things?” is a common response to deviant behaviors that we don’t understand. Mental illness is a label that contains the assumption that there is something wrong “within” people that “causes” their disapproved behavior. The surprise with this man, who changed his legal name to “Scary Guy,” is that he speaks at schools across the country, where he promotes acceptance, awareness, love, and understanding.
Neither Mental Nor Illness? When people cannot find a satisfying explana- tion for why someone does something weird or is “like that,” they often say that a “sickness in the head” is causing the unacceptable behavior. To medicalize some- thing is to make it a medical matter, to classify it as a form of illness that properly belongs in the care of physicians. For the past hundred years or so, especially since the time of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Viennese physician who founded psychoanalysis, there has been a growing tendency toward the medicalization of deviance. In this view, deviance, including crime, is a sign of mental sickness. Rape, murder, stealing, cheating, and so on are external symptoms of internal disorders, consequences of a confused or tortured mind, one that should be treated by mental health experts. Thomas Szasz (1986, 1996, 1998), a renegade in his profession of psychiatry, disagrees. He argues that what are called mental illnesses are neither mental nor illnesses. They are simply problem behaviors. Szasz breaks these behaviors for which we don’t have a ready explanation into two causes: physical illness and learned deviance. Some behaviors that are called “mental illnesses” have physical causes. That is, some- thing in an individual’s body results in unusual perceptions or behavior. Some depres- sion, for example, is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. The behaviors that are associated with depression—crying, long-term sad- ness, and lack of interest in family, work, school, or grooming—are only symptoms of a physical problem. Attention-deficit disorder (ADD) is an example of a new “mental illness” that has come out of nowhere. As Szasz says, “No one explains where this disease came from or why it didn’t exist 50 years ago. No one is able to diagnose it with objective tests.” ADD is diag- nosed because a teacher or parent is complaining about a child misbehaving. Misbehaving children have been a problem throughout history, but now, with doctors looking to expand their territory, this problem behavior has become a sign of “mental illness” that they can treat. All of us have troubles. Some of us face a constant barrage of problems as we go through life. Most of us continue the struggle, perhaps encouraged by relatives and friends or motivated by jobs, family responsibilities, religious faith, and life goals. Even when the odds seem hopeless, we carry on, not perfectly, but as best we can. Some people, however, fail to cope well with life’s challenges. Overwhelmed, they become depressed, uncooperative, or hostile. Some strike out at others; and some, in Merton’s terms, become retreatists and withdraw into their apartments or homes, refusing to come out. These are behaviors, not mental illnesses, stresses Szasz. They may be inap- propriate ways of coping, but they are behaviors, not mental illnesses.Szasz concludes that “mental illness” is a myth foisted on a naïve public. Our medical profession uses pseudo- scientific jargon that people don’t understand so it can expand its area of control and force nonconforming people to accept society’s definitions of “normal.” Szasz’s controversial claim forces us to look anew at the forms of deviance that we usually refer to as mental illness. To explain behavior that people find bizarre, he directs our attention not to causes hidden deep within the “sub- conscious” but, instead, to how people learn such behaviors. To ask, “What is the origin of someone’s inappropriate or bizarre behavior?” then becomes similar to asking, “Why do some women steal?” “Why do some men rape?” “Why do some teenagers cuss their parents and stalk out of the room, slamming the door?” The answers depend on those people’s particular experiences in life, not on an illness in their minds. In short, some sociologists find Szasz’s renegade analysis refreshing because it indicates that social experiences , not some illness of the mind, underlie bizarre behaviors—as well as deviance in general. The Homeless Mentally Ill Jamie was sitting on a low wall surrounding the landscaped courtyard of an exclusive restaurant. She appeared unaware of the stares elicited by
What is the medicalization of deviance? What is the argument that mental illnesses are problem behaviors, not mental illnesses?
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of the unwanted. White-collar criminals continue to get by with a slap on the wrist while street criminals are punished severely. Some deviants, who fail to meet cur- rent standards of admission to either prison or mental hospital, take refuge in shel- ters, as well as in cardboard boxes tucked away in urban recesses. Although no one has the answer, it does not take much reflection to see that there are more humane approaches than these. Because deviance is inevitable, the larger issues are to find ways to protect people from deviant behaviors that are harmful to themselves or others, to tolerate those behaviors that are not harmful, and to develop systems of fairer treatment for deviants. In the absence of fundamental changes that would bring about an equitable social system, most efforts are, unfortunately, like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. What we need is a more humane social system, one that would prevent the social inequalities that are the focus of the next four chapters.
What Is Deviance?
Deviance (the violation of norms) is relative. What people consider deviant varies from one culture to another and from group to group within the same society. As symbolic inter- actionists stress, it is not the act, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant. All groups develop systems of social control to punish deviants —those who violate their norms. Pp. 6-4–6-6.
How do sociological and individualistic
explanations of deviance differ?
To explain why people deviate, sociobiologists and psy- chologists look for reasons within the individual, such as genetic predispositions or personality disorders. Sociologists, in contrast, look for explanations outside the individual, in social experiences. Pp. 6-6–6-7.
the Symbolic Interactionist
perspective
How do symbolic interactionists
explain deviance?
Symbolic interactionists have developed several theories to explain deviance such as crime, the violation of norms that are written into law. According to differential association theory, people learn to deviate by associating with others. According to control theory, each of us is propelled toward deviance, but most of us conform because of an effective system of inner and outer controls. People who have less effective controls deviate. Pp. 6-7–6-9.
Labeling theory focuses on how labels (names, reputa- tions) help to funnel people into or divert them away from deviance. People often use techniques of neutralization to deflect social norms. Pp. 6-9–6-12.
the Functionalist perspective
How do functionalists explain deviance?
Functionalists point out that deviance, including criminal acts, is functional for society. Functions include affirming norms and promoting social unity and social change. Ac- cording to strain theory, societies socialize their members into desiring cultural goals. Many people are unable to achieve these goals in socially acceptable ways—that is, by institutionalized means. Deviants, then, are people who either give up on the goals or use disapproved means to attain them. Merton identified five types of responses to cultural goals and institutionalized means: conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. Illegitimate opportunity theory stresses that some people have easier access to illegal means of achieving goals. Pp. 6-13–6-18.
the Conflict perspective
How do conflict theorists explain deviance?
Conflict theorists take the position that the group in power imposes its definitions of deviance on other groups. From this perspective, the law is an instrument of oppres- sion used by the powerful to maintain their position of privilege. The ruling class, which developed the criminal
Ch^ Summary and Review
APTER
Summary and review 6-
What is the medicalization of deviance?
The medical profession has attempted to medicalize many forms of deviance, claiming that they represent mental illnesses. Thomas Szasz disagrees, asserting that they are problem behaviors, not mental illnesses. The situation of homeless people indicates that problems in living can lead to bizarre behavior and thinking. Pp. 6-27–6-29.
What is a more humane approach?
Deviance is inevitable, so the larger issues are to find ways to protect people from deviance that harms themselves and others, to tolerate deviance that is not harmful, and to develop systems of fairer treatment for deviants. Pp. 6-29–6-30.
justice system , uses it to punish the crimes of the poor while diverting its own criminal activities away from this punitive system. Pp. 6-18–6-20.
reactions to Deviance
What are common reactions to deviance
in the United States?
In following a “get-tough” policy, the United States has imprisoned millions of people. African Americans and Latinos make up a disproportionate percentage of U.S. prisoners. The death penalty shows biases by geography, social class, gender, and race–ethnicity. In line with conflict theory, as groups gain political power, their views are reflected in the criminal code. Sexting legisla- tion was considered in this context. Pp. 6-20–6-27.
Thinking Critically about Chapter 6
1. Select some deviance with which you are personally famil- iar. (It does not have to be your own—it can be some- thing that someone you know did.) Choose one of the three theoretical perspectives to explain what happened. 2. As explained in the text, deviance can be mild. Recall some instance in which you broke a social rule in dress,
etiquette, or speech. What was the reaction? Why do you think people reacted like that? What was your response to their reactions?
3. What do you think should be done about the U.S. crime problem? What sociological theories support your view?
