Defining Crime and Deviance

Defining Crime and Deviance

1. Crime, Deviance and Social Control

   • Social control is the process of socially regulating people's actions, behaviour and appearance and even their thinking
   • This can be done in three ways:
     • coercion - people are forced to act in certain ways through fear of sanctions
     • legitimisation - people are trained to believe, through the process of socialisation, that some actions are acceptable and others less so
     • internalisation - some rules become so much part of an individual's thinking that they cannot be broken because they are part of a person's identity
   • Social control can take two forms: formal social control and informal social control
   • Formal social control is when there are laws, and people who break those rules are punished according to a clear legal set of principles and guidelines
   • Failure to follow those rules, and the possibility of conviction in a court, makes an action criminal
   • Informal social control consists of unwritten rules such as norms, mores and values by which we regulate behaviour
   • Those who break unwritten social rules will experience hostility, rejection and possibly bullying from those around them
   • Failure to follow unwritten rules is deviance
   • However, deviance is not as clear-cut as criminality, so in many ways it is easier to be unknowingly seen as deviant by others than to be a criminal
   • Criminality and deviance are therefore related but not entirely the same concepts
   • Crime depends on law, which makes it very inflexible, but deviance is usually context-dependent
     • some actions can be deviant and not criminal, for example wearing wedding clothes while gardening
     • some actions are criminal but not deviant: for example, speeding just above the limit is not seen by most as very deviant, but will result in a fine and points on a licence
     • some actions are both criminal and deviant, but these are generally serious crimes such as murder or violence
   • Sanctions
     • Sanctions are social responses to behaviours:
       • formal rules have formal rewards and punishments, such as promotion at work or medals and certificates for good behaviour; the results of criminal behaviour might be prison, fires or even death in some societies
       • informal rules have more informal rewards and punishments, so if you are seen as 'good', you may be invited to parties, bought drinks or treated well; however, deviants may experience rejection, abuse, loneliness and victimisation

2. Control Theory

   • Durkheim, Crime and Deviance
     • Durkheim was one of the first to study crime from a sociological perspective
     • He claimed that the universal beliefs and values of a society were known as 'the collective consciousness' or 'the collective conscience'
     • He believed the law represented the collective beliefs of society, so to be a criminal was to offend the strongest beliefs of the collective conscience
     • The criminal is punished in order to allow those who are not criminal to strengthen their sense of social solidarity and to make an example of those who break rules
   • Hirschi and Control Theory
     • Control theory developed from Durkheim's thinking and a functionalist perspective and it is concerned with social conformity
     • According to Hirschi, given that many criminal or deviant acts actually benefit the criminal, it is remarkable how little crime and deviance there is
     • He argues that people are rational and if they believe they have no more to lose from crime than they gain, they will conform
     • If one of the four elements of social bonds are broken or weak, then a person may feel they have more to gain from crime than they have to lose, and they will therefore commit criminal acts
     • The social bonds that can be broken are:
       • attachment to others - displaying conventional attitudes and behaviours
       • commitment to conformity - we gain status through conventional activities and invest time and effort in them, therefore we value them
       • involvement in conventional activities - we are so busy being conventional that we do not have time to consider or commit deviant acts
       • a belief in the morality and validity of social rules - individuals have a strong moral belief that they should obey the rules of conventional study